Graphic Design Notebook

I started a bare bones design blog / e-inspiration board / hyperlink tagged and labeled notebook. Send me interesting print design stuff and I'll add it if I like it!

Lovecraft / Doré / Ernst Mashup Illustrations

I just wandered across these illustrations for H.P. Lovecraft's literally awesome story At the Mountains of Madness from what I believe was a 1936 issue of Astounding Stories. Besides looking a little like Matt Diffee's New Yorker cartoons, they also reminded me of Gustave Doré's illustrations for Dante's Inferno. If no one does it soon I'm going to add making a collaged together Doré illustrated Lovecraft à la Ernst's Une Semaine de Bonté to my list of neverending art-projects!







Doré's illustrations of Dante and Virgil at the Gates of Hell:

Gordon Matta-Clark's Splitting Papercraft

I love Gordon Matta-Clark's artwork Splitting so much that I made a paper sculpture of it. Here is what it looks like finished:










You can download the instructions (that include the model itself) here and download a higher quality version of the model here. It only takes about 20 minutes to make!

If you don't know about the piece you can watch the first ten minutes of this video to see how it was done:



Not only was the project itself rad but the collages he produced documenting it were beautiful.

Friends Forever

So I made this children's book in college for a printmaking class. My professor thought it was "deeply upsetting" and that "[she] would never read it to my child." Meanwhile my mum keeps telling me to publish it. I'm too lazy to pull out the plates and reprint it so here it is in an e-version:

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Once upon a time, Patrick moved into a new old house with his mum and dad. He liked it at once.

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There were no other houses for miles around. At night it was so quiet he could hear the moonlight.

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But Patrick was all alone,
everyday he wished for a friend.

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One day his wish came true when
Madeline appeared at his door.

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They became best friends immediately.

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They liked to play with the animals,

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explore all the hidden places in the house,

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play hide and go seek,

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and take lots of naps.

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One morning, Patrick woke up and
couldn’t find Madeline anywhere.

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He looked by the pond,

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in the basement,

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and all over the kitchen.

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He finally found her on the roof...

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Inside, he tried to talk to his mum
but she always ignored him.

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So when Patrick’s parents moved away,
he and Madeline decided to stay,

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happily ever after.

Friends Forever Annotations

Of the two trees in the front yard, one is a sapling while the other is full-grown.

If you look closely there is someone peeking out of the same front window that the two kids are looking out of in the second to last image.

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Between this and the first image Patrick has entered into the house and is looking up the stairs towards where the figure upstairs should be.

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In the interest of full disclosure, all of these images are based on the house I grew up in.

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Patrick's family is represented on the wall with Patrick in the center with both parents looking away from (i.e. ignoring) him.

I incorrectly thought when I made this that walruses represented death in Inuit culture. That's what you get for reading too much about the Paul McCartney death conspiracies.

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Note Madeline is incorrectly dressed for the inclement weather.

The mother is opening the door for the father, not Madeline.

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The table is only set for three. Not only that, Madeline doesn't even have a chair underneath her.

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According to scientists, animals have a heightened sensitivity to ghosts.

(These are two of my childhood pets.)

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Madeline is adventurous, Patrick not so much.

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Nice girls don't climb up the chimney.

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Madeline doesn't require any sleep. She does however posses the ability to read.

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A flat-footed reference to Little Nemo in Slumberland.

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A good place to die.

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Another classic place to bite it.

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Or you could just pull a Plath...

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While strong winds seem to have an effect on Madeline's mood, they don't seem to have any on her hair.

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Loaded symbolism.

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His mother is oblivious to his presence as she sweeps up his recently fallen portrait.

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I never got around to tinting these images so you can't tell that the parents are dressed all in black as if recently returned from a funeral.

Both kids now appear in the window that Madeline was looking out of in the very first image.

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The sapling in the first image is now full-grown. Madeline is lazing in the sun while Patrick has learned to read.

So just to make this ridiculously obvious, Madeline is the ghost of a child that died in the house by falling off the roof. Patrick moves in and as he is "strange and unusual" is able to see her. The parents, of course, are completely unaware of her, their son's loneliness, and the two children's developing friendship. Eventually Patrick is led to the roof where he suffers the same fate as Madeline (as represented by the leaves) whereupon his parents quickly sell their house and leave. Patrick and Madeline get to live forever as friends, alternatively lounging in the sun and reading for all eternity, in other words, heaven.

Andy's Photo Project

[A rare (some say faked) photo of Rock Death]

I've been telling everybody about Andy's rad ongoing photo project for too long. Now you can see a few of them and read all about it here.

(Somebody give the kid a grant already!)

Little Napoleons & Japan

Today I started helping my friend Larissa make costumes of characters in her paintings, (specifically Little Napoleons) to use in front of a bluescreen towards making a performance/painting video to explain her work at an upcoming show in Denmark. I'm going to fuck this up but in a nutshell they represent patriarchal/domineering/rigid, binary gender systems trying to take over a world of Cry Babies/Maternal Men:



I'm really excited to be working on something visual & physical with another person instead of putting all my creative energy into audio/virtual stuff all alone.

They remind me of these portraits my friend Jordan tipped me to by Japanese artists who couldn't visually comprehend newly arrived westerners after two hundred of years of isolationism.


[Link to Commodore Perry & the Opening of Japan]

Oh, and I really liked this painting she had clipped out for inspiration, The Battle of Lances: