zEE-rays

I was driving behind a van with this logo yesterday. The company was "Erbsville Electrical" and I think this logo is perfection! I couldn't find it on the internet - so this is drawn from memory. If a logo can stick in my sieve of a brain after only one brief viewing it's pretty effective I'd say!

Witnessed #1: Morning Dog-walkers

A quick drawing of something I witnessed while walking along the river this morning...

The Walkers-of-Deminutive-Dogs-Club (Guelph Chapter) meets twice daily, morning and evening, at the Silvercreek Park. Though the only prerequisites for membership are ownership of a smallish dog and the willingness to walk it, there is an unspoken "club culture" to adhere to. Today the group was forced to entertain an unexpected guest...

(It's not a real club of course but this is pretty much the scene I witnessed... I "embellished" the speaker's t-shirt but I think it is safe to assume it was a beer shirt...)

Note: Dog-walkers look at you very strangely if you go for a walk along the river at 7:30am and don't meet one of the following criteria:

a) you have a dog

b) you look like you are headed to work

c) you are jogging or speed-walking for exercise

I guess early-morning-river-strolling-for-no-particular-reason is just not socially acceptable these days. Everyone looked at me like I going to mug them... maybe it was the bedhead. Muggers always have extreme bedhead.

DRINK N' DRAW 'N ARMADILLO

Last night was "Drink and Draw" here in Guelph-town. I can't believe how highly concentrated with working artists and illustrators this town is!

This lil' armadilla was my favourite drawing (that I did) of the night. You should see some of the other stuff! Hilarious!

I cranked up the contrast and down the brightness in Photoshop just for fun. I like it this way because it looks like the critter is shuffling through a Texan sunset.

I once did a cheesy, online, "what-animal-R-U?" quiz and it turns out I'm a nine-banded armadillo.... since then I've had a fondness.

Surprisingly, despite their looks, these armadillos can jump quite high. 4 feet vertical! Tragically, this interesting feature is also the most common reason they die... when cars drive over them, they startle and jump straight up into the engine. Poor fellas.

Operation Spirro-Pen-Pal #1

WOWSA!! I got my first response to my spirrograph offer!!

The lovely L-A from Hello Pineapples sent me this perfectly boring postcard of the Bedford Oceanic Institute in Nova Scotia! I love it and miss Halifax now.

I decided to make a pineapple-inspired-spirro in response but it took a few tries to get it right (these scans actually look cooler than they do in real life):

kinda plain

kinda too-muchy

just right (this is postcard-sized and is in the mail right now)

The Potato Shirt Strikes Again

2008 was the UN International Year of the Potato. My potato-farming in-laws asked me to design a celebratory shirt for their farm and we decided it would be neat to do something with the word "potato" in different languages.

They get a lot of international visitors to their farm because they do research and Pa-In-Law is on the board of CIP (Centro Internacional de la Papa - or International Potato Center in English). They give the shirts away to visitors so these things have spread all over the world now. There are some in Peru, China, The Phillipines, and I think one even got worn by an Irishman in NYC on St. Patrick's day!!

Now the shirt has made it to pg. 21 of "Top Crop Manager" - that's probably like Rolling Stone for farmers! And it's being worn by the potato-famous Dr. Banks (though she is looking a little happy despite the caption about "devastating late-blight disease" below her picture).