Thursday 31 May 2012

THE MONTH OF MAY.

Oh hi! It's hard to believe that it's been a whole month of freelance life. The biggest surprise so far has been how fast time flies. I hope everyone has been enjoying the glorious start of summer - here's what May has been all about around here:

1. FALCONWRIGHT Danielle and I have been working away all month preparing some new summer leather goods. We updated our shop today with some old faves and some new kids on the block all dressed up in gems, waves, pyramids, and party mix! YEAH. We've learned a lot about leather this month. We've experimented with new inks, we've learned how to use our new sewing machine, we've standardized the size and shape of certain items, and we've ordered some pretty new mailing stuff (stickers, wrapping, etc). It's felt great to dive into things and work hard to improve our stuff - we hope it shows! I've decided to steal this guy below for myself:


2. THE GARDEN. I constantly flip flop between thinking that a garden is the greatest thing ever and a total waste of energy.  For instance, I could buy tomatoes in a second and eat them immediately, or I could grow them for months and lose half of them to the evil squirrels that run my hood. But practicality is never really the reason for doing things yourself, right? It's about the experience, man. And the smell of tomato leaves is pretty much the greatest thing in the world. So, despite my bitterness towards all of natures creatures, I decided to fill those boxes UP. These pics were taken a couple weeks back so everything has grown considerably. Except for the chard, which all died. And only the chard. Is chard fussy? Chard is a mystery!

 


3. TRAMP BY SHARON VAN ETTEN. This album is good. That's all. 


4. GLAZING IS AMAZING PART 3. Ceramics: so hot right now (kiln jokes!). These are the very last pieces from my ceramics course. I've now got many little bowls sitting on my kitchen table. I'm not really sure what to do with all these little bowls, but I really want to take another class anyways. Or find a place in Toronto where I can just pay to fire and glaze. Does that exist? If anyone in the know has any recommendations, I'd love to know!

 
 

Other then that there has been lots of eating unhealthy fistfuls of food, painting text, photo editing, summertime beer drinking, and the triumphant beginning of softball season (Go Rebels! Go Bottle Rockets!). I'm also starting to flesh out some ideas for a new series of prints. More to come...


Wednesday 9 May 2012

QUITTING TIME.


Something big happened a week and a half ago - I left my office day job! And I'm just writing about it now? Apparently I did the vast majority of my web stuff while I was there (shhhhh). 

I'm not generally a big risk taker, so this move was a pretty big deal for me. Big ups go out to my pals for encouraging me to take the leap. 10 days in and it's really feeling like the best decision ever. Scary and exciting.

Danielle and I can now devote more time to Falconwright (check out the new sewing machine we scored above - it's a beast!) and hopefully I will eventually settle into some kind of routine that will enable more drawing, more screen printing, more music making. Who knows!

The past week and a half has definitely been a bit of a blur. I've been to the burb-y outskirts of town looking for sewing machines and various leathers. I've printed and cut and taken pictures. I've been working on some wedding invites for a friend with my new favourite thing in the world: ink and a paintbrush. I skipped out of work on a Friday afternoon to drink wine in the park with Jason. My google reader has ballooned to a truly intimidating number of unread entries. There have been highs and there have been lows. And time has flown by much faster than anticipated.

So! If you want a scrappy illustration to accompany your article, to adorn your book jacket, to advertise your event - I am officially open for business. Custom (unrealistic) portrait? Sure, why not.

And I also caught up to the present day phone-wise and joined Instagram. If you crave more gauzy photos of screen printing, plants, snacks, leather, and baseball in you life - you can find me here: @dead__weight