Archive for the 'Rubylith' Category
Richard Amsel’s Sparkle and Shine
May 22nd, 2007Richard Amsel is one of my favorite illustrators from the ’70s and ’80s. Amsel first came to prominence when, as a college student, he won a contest to illustrate the poster for Barbra Streisand’s Hello Dolly. His portrait of Bette Midler on The Divine Miss M has become an icon of album cover art. He […]
Howard Pierce Desktop Patterns
May 18th, 2007Thought I’d share these nifty patterns I made back in 2000 — try them out for a cool “Desert Modernism” look. These are based on photos we took of the roofline borders on sculptor Howard Pierce’s home in Joshua Tree, California. The talented Mr. Pierce, who died in 1994, made his name designing whimsical ceramic […]
Dino-Maintenance
May 15th, 2007A maintenance worker tends to Disneyland’s Primeval World exhibit in 1966, part of the UCLA Department of Special Collections searchable index of photos from the Los Angeles Times and Daily News. For old L.A. aficionados, this one’s a must-see. Another site that one could spend hours poring through, great! (first spotted on The Blackwing Diaries)
The Land of Coulda Shoulda
April 26th, 2007You probably already know that I’m crazy about theme parks, both real and imagined. So it kinda blew my mind when I came across these concept drawings for an unbuilt Hanna-Barbera theme park which Dan Goodsell shared at his Sampler of Things weblog. The six-year-old inner me is jumping up and down at the thought […]
Objects in Darwinsanity
April 17th, 2007Here’s something for intelligent designers — online mag Inkling (no, I haven’t heard of it either) is holding a contest to redesign the Darwin fish seen on so many cars (via UnBeige). What the entries lack in polish they gain in the funny dept.
Idol Chatter
April 10th, 2007I was thinking I haven’t posted anything “artsy” here for a while, until this interview with illustrator Calef Brown came up via Drawn! Brown is one of my idols going back 15 years or so, and it’s good to read that he seems like a nice, down-to-earth kind of fellow.
Feudin’ Fillies of ‘48
March 27th, 2007So I’m sitting here at my computer, getting over another flu and nursing an ailing s.o. while simultaneously attempting to squeeze a 9 page playbill design into 8 pages. Between all that work I’m scanning through several dozen weblogs and wondering why so there’s so little inspiration to be found there. Seems like the bloggers […]
Gone Dotty
January 29th, 2007The screenshot below illustrates what I’ve been working at all day. Tell me, designers, have you ever had to deal with a bitmap file with an unwanted halftone pattern in the background? The only method to get rid of said pattern is to painstakingly chip away at it with an eraser in extreme close-up. It’s […]
Finalists, Miss Raised Eyebrows 1970
January 11th, 2007The line of ladies below comes from one of the few things I pilfered from my newspaper days: a sheet of ancient clip art. This and this were amongst the offerings by “Metro’s Mighty Miniatures” in 1970. By the time I joined the paper in the ’90s, Metro art was still in use alongside those […]
Vintage Subway Shilling
December 19th, 2006An eBay seller recently had for sale a great group of vintage advertising cards from the New York subway system. I grabbed the images, cleaned ‘em up, and uploaded them to my Cool Vintage Illustration flickr set. These cards are unusual in that the back sides had portraits and bios of the designers who worked […]
Monster Mash
December 13th, 2006Right now I’m lovin’ the cover design on Criterion’s forthcoming multi-film set Monsters and Madmen. The illustrations on this and the individual titles look like they were done by some currently hot comics illustrator, but I can’t think of the name. Anybody know? Regardless, anything with Boris Karloff might make for a great rental. Another […]
How Logo Can You Go
November 15th, 2006Fun little diversion: identify the correct logo in the quickest time (via Kris at Web Goddess). Being presented with six minute variants on popular e-company logos might sound simple, but some of them are unexpectedly tough. I completed the quiz in just under two minutes. The fact that it took me five tries before correctly […]
Altogether Ooky
October 31st, 2006NPR delves into Charles Addams today, interviewing author Linda H. Davis on her new bio of the delightfully dark cartoonist. Addams’ people obviously had an image of being sinister and macabre, but mostly they’re just misunderstood. Take the witchie on his Halloween 1986 New Yorker cover, considerate enough to share a sample of bubbling brew […]
Stop the Madness
October 18th, 2006The 7 Worst Fonts (via Kottke). It begs the question, once again: why is Comic Sans so popular? Here’s the font equivalent of a chubby middle-aged biddy in a hand-decorated sweatshirt. Simply put, it’s popular with people who don’t know any better. And it will depressingly remain on its reviled perch until Microsoft removes it […]
Notes on Freelancing
September 28th, 2006Work-wise, I’ve been having a lot of balls in the air at once lately. And it’s showing up in the lack of updates to this page. Sorry.
Speaking of which, a veteran illustrator provides some great advice in 17 lessons in 17 years of freelancing (via Drawn!). I’ve been doing this for coming on three years […]
