Temporary Tattoo Design.
I love this time of year. The weather, the wearing of shorts 24/7, being able to use my sun roof, cool breezes and the sweet smell of freshly cut grass, family vacations, trips to the coast, and an annual design event called the HOW Design Conference.
Before social media I use to hang out in the online forums for HOW Magazine. That started around 2001 and after five years of getting to know other creatives from all over the world I attended my first HOW Design Conference held in Chicago in 2005.
The best part of the conference experience for me was just hanging out with other creatives and getting to know them. And over the past seven years through the conference and continued contact through out the year a creative rat pack has developed which makes the annual event even more meaningful with each passing year.
Plugging In
Every year since 2008 I’ve spoken at the HOW Design Conference on a variety of different topics geared for the creative community. It’s a lot of work but it’s always a blast to produce.
The weeks leading up to the conference each year find me pulling a few all nighters to prepare, coordinating various events and arrangements I tend to schedule around the conference. This year is no different.
The artwork shown above was created for Peach Pit Press as part of a give away promotion for their booth at the conference. They asked a handful of their authors to design a temporary tattoo based on the theme of their book and will be giving them away to conference attenders who visit their booth. The tattoos will be printed by Tattly.
My design of course is based on my book Vector Basic Training.
Really Weird
My favorite drawing pen.
For nearly 20 years now I’ve been drawing using a PaperMate Flair pen. I find it kind of strange how I can get so attached, familiar, comfortable with an inanimate object. I suppose it has a lot to do with the fact that it’s so closely tied to my creative expression and passion to create?
At any given time you can find a bunch of these pens scattered through out my work area. Each one at various stages of use. Newer juicy ones to fill in bigger black areas, older ones barely bleeding ink that work well for drawing smaller details. I usually hold on to all of them until they give up the creative ghost and completely go bone dry.
I used a PaperMate Flair pen to do the majority of the creative heavy lifting on my most recent project, a poster design for Neenah Paper that I’ll be signing and giving away at the HOW Design Conference in Boston.
It’s illustrated using the same super doodle style I’ve worked in before. And this post will shed some light on how i went about creating the artwork.
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