the blog

waste not water not

Conservationists are Sexy No Comments

I’m not going to chastise everyone for the overuse of water and put forth data like how an average American uses 114 liters a day (30 gallons) showering, or that our planet is covered with 70 percent water and we’ll never run out of it, but moving fresh sanitized water is economically unfeasible and virtually inaccessible into more than 35 percent of the world’s populated areas, or that several people in developing nations (”developing”: Tuh! That’s a misnomer.) die every second from water-born illness and disease.

I’m not going to say how ignorant people are in washing their own cars, washing dishes by hand, brushing their teeth while letting gallons of water run down the drains, cleaning their beautiful cement driveways with the hose, and not replacing their toilets with more efficient mechanisms that save 60 percent more water with each flush than older toilets.

And what about our American standard of luxury: water parks, water shows (especially the Las Vegas kind), water falls and fountains in both business parks and homes. It pains me to see a party of 5 people sit at a dining establishment and not take one sip of their 12 oz. water with ice cubes. Multiply that out!

No. All I’m going to say is, think a little more about this resource that we can not recreate or substitute. Amazingly the water you use today has been around since the creation of life on this planet. Appreciate the sound and site of a body of water whether it’s in a fountain or in your bath tub.

Be conscientious, be aware, be grateful.

folk mexican art meets octopus

Adobe Illustrator Techniques 1 Comment

MAKING FOLK ART FROM ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR?

In the midst of a diversity campaign, I was shooting some art at a Mexican restaurant chalk full of chotchkies (that’s Spanish for “chotchkies”), aluminum stampings, painted ceramic sea animal sculptures and window-box. ‘Love this kind of art because you don’t have to figure out what it is. You just enjoy it. I’ve always liked folk art—unschooled, simple and naive. But that doesn’t take the technique, charm and artistry away. Click to Continue »

not so common courtesy

Art of Business 2 Comments

How sad that it’s become common practice to start emails without a proper salutation and to end it with a trailing history of forwards and spam text. (Clean up your forwarded email, man!) That, I can except just for knowing that we are all in a hurry and it’s so easy to hit reply and shoot out some answer especially if it’s been an ongoing conversation. So now that we agree that email is easy, we can also label non-reply as quite rude, downright lazy, and extremely bad business. Click to Continue »

natural resources #3

Conservationists are Sexy No Comments

Hey, did you know there’s a whirl pool in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that is almost 1500 miles wide? Not a big deal except it’s filled with tons of plastic that washes out into the ocean. It’s a sludge of rotating plastic particles entering our sea life and finding it’s way into the food chain. So don’t forget to throw all those plastic utensils, bottle caps, water bottles, blister packages and stir straws into the recycle bin. Yah, I know they don’t have a rounded triangle with a number on it but they should! Oh, and think of all that plastic you throw into the regular trash from the bathroom. Plastic that holds cosmetics, shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, underarm juice, on and on and on.

chalk

Photoshop Techniques No Comments

CREATE A CHALK ILLUSTRATION IN PHOTOSHOP

It’s fast. It’s fun. It’s bright and colorful. If you want some editorial art that doesn’t look like your run-of-the-mill stock art, or need something to accent the corner of a print piece, here it is. Chalk à la Photoshop!

This tutorial will show how to use channels to create a “fixed” texture not unlike working chalk on a real canvas. Click to Continue »