UM (hmmm) graphics

A good day for Giving

2010-01-07T08:08:00.000-08:00

this is an illustration for Purim, its likely to wrap around a box creating a Shaloch Manos container. Shaloch Manos (or Mishloach Manot) is a good will gift givn to a fellow jew on the holiday of Purim.

Men's Mikveh

2010-01-06T11:59:00.001-08:00

There's a lot of ritual immersion in the Jewish religion. Men immerse themselves in a Mikveh (ritual pool) before Yom Kippur, some before the sabbath/holidays... new dishes have to be immersed also in a Mikveh of their own called a Keilim Mikveh. Sometimes time is sh...ort and you gotta do what you gotta do... women will send their men to do double duty... immerse yourself and take these dishes with you. Not supposed to happen like that, but sometimes it does. Weird. Don't worry, the dishes get a good scrubbing afterwards :-)...and the ocassional man will step on a stray fork on the bottom of the pool. OY.

Farbrengen

2010-01-06T07:47:00.000-08:00

there is a tradition amongst Chabad Chassidim (a certain "sect" of orthodox jews) for men to get together and drink, sing and do some soul searching mostly through storytelling. Occasionally the men will keep time (to the singing) with their fists or palms on the table... but either way, its not exactly delicate... its soulful and hard, and everything on the table jumps.. here it is a simple little mock-up up of a farbrengen:

places

2010-01-05T11:44:00.000-08:00

I mostly draw people. Places are amazing to me... but I don't draw them that often. Theyre like a mystery best left untapped..... but I gotta tackle it, specially for professional reasons... so here's one:

Talmud Learning

2010-01-04T19:48:00.000-08:00

been looking a lot at bob staake's stuff, and of course like the good natured generous illustrator that he is he dropped some tips, and I picked some up... thanks you!

IF: renewal

2010-01-03T19:25:00.001-08:00

midnight animation

2010-01-03T19:20:00.000-08:00

a short animation that I made in the wee hours of 10 mornings about how often its just as creative to recognize an idea as it is to come up with a new one

It isn't only a dream

2009-01-25T08:01:00.000-08:00

There is only one thing rarer in sleep than to dream we are sleeping, and that is to dream that we are dreaming. --Chassidic Saying

While awake I always dream of that time-in-between-time when everyone else is asleep and its quiet and I can do what I want w/o watching the clock. But my 3 little kids take turns waking up at night and I rush to their side. Look at the clock: midnight, 2 am, 3 am, 4:30 am, 6am husband wakes up...so I force myself awake not knowing how I'm going to make it through the day... but Ill work w/ what Ive got. I dont really know when Im sleeping and when Im not.

Last thursday a lovely post by Rachel Howard on Illustration Friday made me consider sleeping again.. I wanted to be in this dreamy picture:

...and I slept last night a whole 3 hours straight and then some... and this morning I found an animation that dreams are made of:

seriously I cant believe this stuff is out there. It makes me endlessly happy!

IF: pale

2009-01-20T02:51:00.000-08:00

inspired jewish themes

2009-01-08T11:50:00.000-08:00

So I still havent launched Simcha BOttling Company and the more time passes the more I think its a mistake to do custom labeled wine for a living (spend the whole time scraping b ottled clean) and the more Id like to come up with some inspired jewishly themed art (cards, prints etc...) What is that exactly... inspired jewishly themed art? Every time I let myself think that its the same thing as anything else thats "inspired" my brainstorming is interupted by nagging fingers telling me that I need to read up on my sources to understand meanings and reseaRCH MINHAGIM (traditions) before I creatively interpret anything. And then they come flooding back the uptight images of girld and mothers lighting candles, of men wrapped up in Tallesim (prayer shawl) or boys reading from the Torah or studying with there fathers. THose images are fine but theyre usually very disinfected, for someone uninitiated theres nothing ELSE in them.

But then I found this: I was looking for the name of the artist who did the RED CUP campaign for Starbucks in 2006 (because I like the style) and I found the credits for that campaign here. It was done in conjunctions with LAIKA HOUSE. I went to the LAIKA HOUSE site looking for the name of the artist and found instead. Laika studions is responsible for a big chunk of the best animated commercials out there. Oh yeah, and the name of the guy responsible for the STarbucks campaign is Patrick Long turns out this campaign is what I like best out of all his stuff- kudos to art directors! I would never have picked out this guy for this campaign based on his other stuff. Im beginning to understand what it is that art directors do (that I don't). Id like to work with one one day :-).
So the, that seemed like a tangent, I know. There was no jewish theme in that LAIKA Studios reel. But it inspired me to do this: [stay tuned for the reveal]

IF opinion

2008-11-23T20:04:00.000-08:00

Opinion: a sheep in wolf's clothing (most of the time)

IF poof 2

2008-08-06T05:37:00.001-07:00

yes, yes I know: dude looks like a lady. happens sometimes. thats not the intention. THis is my second entry for IF Poof. Im not pro-smoking at all. I just think it looks really cool and a really weird habit... turns people into dragons....

IF Poof

2008-08-05T10:04:00.001-07:00

IF: fierce

2008-07-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

IF: Worry

2008-05-25T14:25:00.000-07:00

IF: Grow

2007-10-23T20:44:00.000-07:00

An un-democratic gem

2007-10-18T18:04:00.000-07:00

I started watching some Cheburashka clips with Yehuda. It wasnt what I remembered. What I remembered was a really cute animated character, and what it was was claymation with titles that kept on translating Cheburashka as "gremlin". Is that true? Wouldnt have mattered if he was cute - but Yehuda got scared of Genya the chrocodile. Called him "monster man" and wanted to turn it off. After I told him that it wasnt a monster, it was a crocodile- he called him "crocodile man" which wasnt much better and very oxymoronic, like this guy might just turn around and start eating himself.

So we turned it off and started looking for other soviet animation. I know theres good stuff out there. Ive had this book of Soviet Animation for as long as I can remember - maybe since I was 3. It immigrated with us - and the stuff in it was gorgeous - if only because it was (and still is) what I base my dreams on.

So we came across this:
There Once was a Dog (1983)

Why do I like this so much? Well, I guess anything foreign seems more exotic. Its just about a friendship... an equivalent American Animation would have rubbed me the wrong way - so I really have no solid reasoning on this- it just seems to have more levels to it. Levels that dont hit you over the head. The friendship is about 2 imperfect characters. They are both the same species w/ very different things expected of them. Yeah thats it - theres layers.

Sometimes democracy i.e. creating for the market, produces really crappy results for animation - maybe for the arts in general.

IF: camouflage

2007-06-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

often it takes more than clothes to camouflage someone different.

IF: citrus

2007-05-15T18:34:00.000-07:00

I started thinking about that vintage dubonnet poster (it turned out completely different ofcourse)... the guy without his citrus would have, well, just a drink and as a result (more likely the other way around) he'd be kind of unhealthy and depressed... then theres the citrified guy... who's more like the Miami lady's man - contagiously happy!

cookies into words

2007-05-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

My son's been having handfulls of alphabet cookies. He's in his terrible twos - but really not so terrible. Here was my thinking: Ill let him have rediculous amounts of cookies... he'll get sick of them sooner ...and then we can move on to broccoli ;-)... then, to go with the delussional theme...I imagined him eating these little cookies with letters on them, and as they entered his "head" they formed into words and as soon as he was done chewing he'd spit out intelligent conversation. Anyay, thats what this picture is about.

A few minutes ago he took interest in lettuce.

IF: topic I Spy

2007-05-08T07:23:00.000-07:00

just catching up on some Illustration Friday topics.

Illustration Friday first submission

2007-05-07T10:55:00.000-07:00

This is my first entry for Illustration Friday and the first entry in this blog. Theme is "Neighbors". My relationship with my neighbors is not at all contentious, but for some reason the word "neighbors" brought competitiveness to mind. Here are two neighbors having a friendly morning cup of coffee only to size each other up. (if it looks like something different let me know.