Oh, and speaking of chalk art, here’s a video we shot alongside the chalk project that features a couple shots of me in the illustration process. Both the board and the video “debuted” this past Sunday, and I was really impressed with the presentation. I work with some pretty talented folks.
New Chalk: We Are Ecclesia
Did another chalkboard for Ecclesia Hollywood last week. Here are some photos!
This is probably the most involved board I’ve done yet, which was fun for a couple reasons. First, it’s always a challenge when you have to have to fill the board with a lot of type elements. You have to somehow fit everything into a limited amount of space and also come up with an individual design to give each part a unique look. Second, it’s always fun to see improvement from project to project. On this one I noticed I’m getting a lot faster, and have developed a decent rhythm of bouncing around from piece to piece on the board. There’s a lot of drying time involved when you erase anything, so you have to keep moving and finding other parts to work on or you’ll find yourself stuck with nothing to do when parts of the board are drying. It’s a little more of an ADD-style of work that I’m used to, so I think it’s taken a little time to develop a workflow.
Recent Work - City of Los Angeles
I designed this as a print to be given away this past Sunday at the church I work for in Hollywood. We wanted to create an image that celebrates Los Angeles on its own and in a way that didn’t come off as self-promotional or gimmicky. No logos, no URLs, nothing that could really even tie it back to where it came from, just simple imagery that reflected our love for the city of Los Angeles. Smart idea, I thought (it wasn’t mine).
So this is what I landed on. I spent a lot of time trying to come up with a single image that would somehow “sum up” Los Angeles, but found myself coming up short. There’s a lot to love about LA, and most of the reasons—for me, at least—could better be presented in a flash of images as opposed to a list. That’s the feeling I tried to capture with this. I’m pretty happy with how it came out, but, to be honest, I could make several more of these if I had the time. I love Los Angeles a whole lot.
For fun, here’s a key to the images above, starting at the top and moving clockwise in a spiral to the center:
- The Los Angeles Dodgers: God’s own baseball team
- Taco stands on every corner
- The Cinerama dome
- Freeways: even though they’re jammed and spread out, they have a certain charm I can’t deny
- The 101, that cuts through Hollywood and Downtown
- Silverlake Reservoir
- Parking! It is a way of life
- The Theme Building at LAX
- My heart.
I am a street photographer in New York City. Several months ago, I was approached by a representative of DKNY who asked to purchase 300 of my photos to hang in their store windows “around the world.” They offered me $15,000. A friend in the industry told me that $50 per photo was not nearly enough to receive from a company with hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. So I asked for more money. They said “no.”
Today, a fan sent me a photo from a DKNY store in Bangkok. The window is full of my photos. These photos were used without my knowledge, and without compensation.
I don’t want any money. But please REBLOG this post if you think that DKNY should donate $100,000 on my behalf to the YMCA in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. That donation would sure help a lot of deserving kids go to summer camp. I’ll let you guys know if it happens.
(via nedroidcomics)
The Internet.
Yes. This. Forever. Always. Yes.
NAILED IT.
As a creative person who makes original things and puts them online, I think a lot about making sure credit is given for the things I do. It’s not about getting big-name recognition or a big payday or something like that—even though that would be amazing and I would never stop high fiving people if it happened—it’s just about common decency, you know? I like making things and I like showing them online to whoever will look at them, and If you like something and feel like sharing it, GREAT! TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW! Just don’t pass it off as your own thing, because why would you do that?
Nothing I’ve made personally has ever popped up online with someone else taking/removing the credit (to my knowledge, at least), but it’s a thing that happens quite a bit and to a lot of good, hard working people, and I just wanted to throw my voice, however much that’s worth, into the larger conversation.
And look, it’s not like the people passing off an artist’s work as their own is a new thing, and this has been a problem long before computers, let alone the internet, but it has certainly become a larger problem in the age of online sharing and social media. I don’t really know what the answer is; maybe it’s just about more people being more vocal on the subject and taking people to task when they rip off another person’s work. It just sucks that it happens, and it sucks that people who feel motivated to create things and share them with people have to also worry about someone else abusing that motivation.
LADYBUSINESS COMICS™ #6!
Story by Charissa C.
Art by Kenny ChapmanFirst comic of 2013, ladies and dudes! Enjoy!
Did you know I draw a comic called LADYBUSINESS? Well, I do, and there’s a new one up right now! And here it is!
Recent Work: more chalk!
Did this (roughly) 7x3 ft. chalkboard for Ecclesia Hollywood, a church in Los Angeles. The board currently hangs in the main lobby of the church, behind a coffee/tea bar. I don’t have a photo of it hanging up, but maybe I’ll snap one and add it to give a better idea of how it plays in the space.
Lettering tests for an upcoming project. These are *mostly* terrible, but there are a few parts that I kinda like.
LADYBUSINESS COMICS™ #5 - Story by Rachel D.
Those are the real article names, btw
Enjoy!
This went up at the end of last week, but I just remembered to reblog it to my own tumblr. So here we are! Ladybusiness!
