Alright, now I think I’m prepared to have a table, I just finished this sweet-ass fabric banner mere minutes ago. Look for it this weekend if you’re coming to the Portland Zine Symposium! Also featured in this photo, my moon landing paper, a giant cardboard/duct tape axe, and two of my four Jeremy Tinder paintings.

Here’s a very basic drawing of the four main BeardBots (as mentioned earlier). This is just to give an idea of the basic look and size relations of the first four bots. I’ll get more in depth on things in the coming weeks.

More in depth, like this! It’s a prototype plush doll of BeardBot #2! He’s about 8.5″ tall and cuddly as the dickens. For the school assignment that these are related to, I’m going to create some sort of finished piece or usage concept for each of these four, and perhaps a special #5 I’ve got in mind, so expect at least one painting, and some t-shirt designs and whatnot coming in the next week. BeardBots.com is still under construction, but one idea that I had a long time ago that has now merged into the whole BeardBot concept is the idea of custom BeardBots; you pick one of a few basic body shapes and whatever style of facial hair you’d like on your bot and I’d make a custom plush. Does that sound like a good idea to anybody out there?

A homemade printing press, plans courtesy of Ready Made Magazine. I’ve already pulled my first print on this and it turned out well. To give size reference, the metal posts on each side are two feet tall.

As I mentioned last week, due to this new press as well as an upcoming etching class, I am having a big sale on all of my older prints, all for $5 and available through my Etsy shop.

I’m making it my pre-New Year’s resolution to try to post here as much as possible before the end of 2007. It starts here:

Last week, I was fortunate enough to take a three-day bookbinding workshop at my school, instructed by my friend (and amazing artist) Seamus Heffernan. Over the course of the workshop (only like 1-2 hours a day), I was able to make this awesome, hardbound, 6″ by 9″, 76 page sketchbook, all by hand. I used actual, unused book cover material, from “2005 Oregon Revised Statutes” as my cover fabric. I feel like I’ll never need to buy another sketchbook again, and now I can actually fill one with paper I like, instead of relying on the default paper in most books. I think it will also give me a more personal connection to my future sketchbooks that I choose to construct myself, which I think can only help when it comes to filling its insides.

I recommend checking out Seamus’s site; besides knowing how to make a fine book, the dude can draw, comic, and paint his ass off, seriously. Maybe he can even make a book for you, I’m sure they’d make a lovely gift, what with the holidays fast approaching.

I don’t really like sketchbooks this small for project planning and the like, I’m more comfortable with something in the 8.5″ by 11″ size, but due to its portability, I plan on using this book only for drawings done from reference, either from life (something I need to get back into) or from photo reference (something I almost NEVER do, except to figure out a pose for something else).

(No relation to the other Tiny Showcase)

Long-time listeners may recall me mentioning a future group show that I was setting up, a show in which I hoped to include artists from all over the world. Well, I realized what a massive undertaking that would be, so I scrapped the idea and decided to only include people from my school, PNCA. Here’s the poster I made to get the word out. This probably took far longer than it’s actually worth, but I do so love to lettering (and drawing myself on items that will be seen in public).

I also made this little plush robot over the weekend; mostly for fun, but also as a prototype for some other plush bots I’ve got in the works.

I think I’ll sign all my future plush robots this way.

Here’s an illustration of mine that was in today’s Portland Mercury. The article it accompanies is about renters’ rights. In Portland, many apartment buildings are being converted into condos. The renters of those apartments get evicted, some on very short notice. There is a proposed law that would make the owner of the building pay the moving expenses of the renter if he/she was evicted for this reason.

Also, the last thing I will post about my new uke:

I really wanted to bike around to parks and play the thing, as well as take it on a trip I will be leaving for shortly, so I made a carrying case for it. It’s made from a pair of cargo pants that had been ripped. (My bike saddle has the reputation of ripping out the crotches of many a pair of pants; other than that, it’s perfect) I had been holding onto them for just such an occasion. I took a bunch of the pockets from the pants and re-sewed them onto the case, so it has two big pockets (one on either side) and three smaller ones for picks or spare change or other doo-dads. The shoulder strap is part of an old bike tube, a favorite material of mine lately. The tube makes the perfect strap, it’s made of very pliable rubber so it just sort of stretches itself to whatever size it needs to accomodate. You can’t see it in the photo, but the interior is lined with 1/4″ thick thermal fleece, the leftovers from Rembrandt’s hair.

There were a few requests to actually hear the uke so here’s a quick mp3. I apologize for the poor quality of my computer’s internal microphone and for the fact that I’ve only been playing ukulele for a few days. DOWNLOAD

I’ll be taking a little bit of a summer vacation for the next two weeks, so I probably won’t be posting much as I won’t have access to my scanner. I plan on having quite a bit of free time to finish up a few necessary projects and comics though, so I should have a glut of material to show you when I return.

That’s it, I am officially the proud owner of my own ukelele! Here are the specs: Spanish cedar body (cigar box), mahogany neck with a 14-fret, rosewood fretboard. It’s a baritone ukelele so it’s a bit lower in pitch than your average uke, but it’s tuned similar to a guitar, so as a guitar player, I’m finding it easier to wrap my head around playing chords on it. It plays like a dream too. I spent countless hours today in a coffeeshop, in a hammock, and generally just wandering around playing this thing. I have yet to give it a name but I think it deserves one, so if anyone has any ideas, lay ‘em on me!

Also, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve contributed a page to the upcoming Kid’s Book Project. 60 different artists are all creating one page of the story and all profits will be donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The book is 20 pages in right now. I ended up getting page 8 and I’ll let you know right now that it is awesome. Here’s the catch, we need to get more people to pre-order the book now to make sure we can give a good amount to Make-A-Wish. If you could find it in your heart to order one (or more), that’d be swell. There are a lot of people attached to this project who are much cooler than I am so don’t let this opportunity to help out pass you by. Please click on the banner below for more info.

This post is dedicated to my good friend Liz, the first woman to teach me the true meaning of the word… ukelele.

I haven’t really been drawing much this week. I did an illustration for the Portland Mercury that can be seen in SUPER TINY VISION!!! in the photo, but that’s about it. I’ll post a more detailed shot of it on Thursday when the issue comes out. I’ve also been finishing up my part of a three-piece collaborative work for a show in July. It’ll be very different from my usual stuff, but I’ll have to wait until July to show you more. Anyways, the photo above is actually to show something else that’s super rad, the first steps toward my prototype for a plush robot series. If you can’t tell, the neck, arms, and legs are made from bicycle tire innertubes. Hooray for recycling.

I’ve also put a lot of work into the cigarbox ukelele I am making for my summer math class. I keep forgetting to bring my camera to class, so here is a shot from my phone’s camera. It’s really coming together, and check out those sweet mother-of-pearl dot inlays! I venture that I may in fact be finished with the uke by the time some of you are reading this. All I have left is to drill and install the tuners, attach the bridge, and slap some strings on it. I will post happy shots of me playing it later this week hopefully.

And a detailed shot of one of the sound holes and fretboard.

Here’s the final Rembrandt plush doll that I posted the WIP from on Friday. He didn’t end up quite as chubby as I would have liked, but I’m really happy with the result and of course now I want to make more plush things, so many more! Plus look at his sweet pants! One thing I’m quite happy with is that besides the flesh colored felt and thermal fleece hair, every other bit of this doll was made from fabric and things I already had. Hooray for not having to buy new supplies!

One of the paintings from my “Spoke Up!” show in January just got featured on a cool blog called Mixed Plate. It’s included with a lot of other bike related arts and crafts. Go check it out now!

The Robopocalypse Comics Collective had a meeting on Friday and we did another jam comic. Read it here!

New Baby Otto things should start posting tomorrow or Wednesday.

For the final project in my Art History class, the assignment is to take pretty much any work of art throughout history, of our choosing, and “re-envision” it as we see fit. I chose to work from a self-portrait of Rembrandt van Rijn, and obviously, plush is my medium. He still needs clothes (which will bulk him up a bit more) and some painting accessories to finish him off, but I think he’s coming along nicely so I thought I’d share a progress shot. I have decided to hand sew him despite the fact, as can be seen behind him, my sewing machine is readily available. I’m not sure why I made that choice, but I’ve stuck it out so far. Never again though, machines from now on, I say! He’s about 10-11 inches tall.

I need to make a few robots while I’m still in the plush zone.