Lac

In 1958 my grandparents were spending their summer with their children in rural Idaho. The cabin they built on Lake Coeur d'Alene still stands today, and the families of their three children continue to use the cabin to this day! Early in July, 2008, I decided to try my hand at woodblock printing. I drew a contour image of the view from a front window at the cabin, divided the shapes into three colors, and then transferred the color-coded shapes onto three pieces of wood.

I didn't have the appropriate tools to be carving wood... instead I used a flat-head screwdriver and some kitchen tools. It was a struggle, but considering this is my first wood block carving, and my first multicolor print, I'm fairly proud of the result.

Party Time!

Hello readers,
I was writing some rhymes with my friend Joey today, and we discovered that we both have blogs that we actually update regularly. He is doubtlessly a better and more focused writer, but I know that's not what you're coming here for anyway, so I am not exactly worried about the competition. Here's Joey's blog. He's a smart guy who writes about Twin Cities politics, and he's who I'm reading.

The new image is one that I hoped would be accompanied by some well thought-out political commentary, but the deadline is upon me, and I guess I hope that you will be held over with some links about campaign finance and an understanding of my frustration with both presidential candidates' plans if they are elected. I think I'm partial to some sort of IRV alternative to our current situation. Here's a goofy poster.



Good luck to everybody representing down at Tacoma's port, regardless of intimidation tactics and abuse from the police, I hope you all do alright and that nobody is injured.
Charlie

The Senior Senator from Alaska

Hello, world. I'm Andrew, and have joined the Staticalaska blog. Don't ask me what that's going to mean, though. And speaking of Alaska, I hear Mr. "The Internet is a series of tubes" got pwned by the federal government. I wonder if they've finally decided he's no longer useful?

In other news, I have been hard at work in sunny California experimenting with printmaking, using rubber, linoleum and woods. In the spirit of the anti-G8 actions, resistance to war from within the military, as well as the upcoming RNC/DNC actions, included are some prints I did almost a month ago.

a brief thing.

Hey Everyone,
I am back in Minnesota on Monday, I played around with images much of the day (unsuccessfully), but I have decided I can't get anything looking better than this ink sketch I did early in the week. Hopefully there will be something elaborate next week. I love that you can kind of see the texture in the shadow I got overly excited about with a brush and ink.
Charlie

Ideas! Hit me with them!

I have realized that this site might often come off as horrible self-promotion, which is not the intention. The thing is that I often want to play with script or illustrating or layout stuff, and my default subject matter often has to do with Flock (this week) or staticalaska itself (last week). So, anyway, I was thinking that I could do design for people in exchange for actually having something printed, or because we are friends, or for any other number of reasons. This blog is mostly an outlet for experiments with visual art stuff, but I would happily dedicate myself to some sort of project somebody wants help or input or collaboration on. I will design a poster for you if you'd like!
Okay, that started as an attempt to justify so much stuff on the site that seems like self-promotion, but ended up sounding like some pursuit of work. Sorry on that.
Anyway, this week I have been playing with pen and ink, and leafy lettering. Here is my first attempt at this sort of thing. I think the coloring on the letters might develop more in the future, but I guess we'll see.
Peace!




Oh, the background is a free texture shared from Lost and Taken, a key hookup for any of you photoshoppers.

random banners

Hey all,
Music has been more of a focus for me lately than visual art stuff, but I played with some typography and banner layout stuff today. My learning curve I think has slowed down for the most part and now instead of it being entirely new concepts, illustrator has turned into establishing habits for efficiency. This means that it is sort of frustrating, but more and more concepts that I can think of I can actually execute now. It is kind of coming up with an on-the-fly order of operations for each step in an idea.
I'd like to work some on the site, so maybe eventually I will figure out how to design it more thoroughly. One of these banners might help serve in that capacity. Sorry about the formatting, it is getting late, and I made a couple mistakes in the order I did things, so I was already getting sort of tired.
I think I'm most excited about the one on the top right, because it is not flashy effects at all, and came more from experimenting than the others did.
stay positive,
Charlie

You Can Never Go Home

There are a couple images here. They are the same thing, but I wanted to do a couple versions--what started as initially just doing a color remix ended up being a change in background, too, as the grid was hard to change, and I didn't want a solid color in the background. The darker fill in the type didn't stand well on a white ground, so the revamp got major. They are both supposed to fit on letter-sized paper in case somehow my posting this on the internet ends up with one of these hitting a printer.
I can't get my scanner (a gift from Andrew) to cooperate with my computer, but I don't know what more to do. Maybe later I will be able to post more pen & ink style stuff. For now I will keep my sketchbook to myself.
I will be better at responding to comments on here, from now on, I got blogspot emailing me about them (I think).
I hope this finds you well,
Charlie