Preliminary designs for a poster.

This year I’ve permitted myself not to take on any new design jobs. The one exception to this rule (which I’ve been able to stand by so far) is a poster for the upcoming residents’ exhibition at Toi Pōneke.

The above images are my first exploratory stabs at the elements for the poster. And I’m delighted with them.

Moving away from digital, these blobs are hand cut from some old magazines. The variety of colour, texture, and shape of the blobs represent the diversity of the individual artists and their practices at Toi Pōneke.

Next is to play around with the scale, the spacing of the blobs, and the typography as I start to pull the poster together.

I continue to follow the course outlined in Lynda Barry’s Syllabus book. Without being in one of Lynda’s classes, I’m making some things up as I go, cobbling together what I can from her notes into a complete lesson.

While I miss the sharing, insights, and comradeship I’d get from being part of a cohort, an upside is I can be a little slack on the homework and avoid being marked down.

Part of the homework is keeping a daily diary of things you’ve done, seen, and heard along with a quick drawing, being sure to include yourself. Over time the diary format is changed – the current variation is four panels, no words. You get one minute to draw each scene, then a minimum of three minutes to ink it in with a rollerball pen. As I’m not enjoying drawing with the rollerball, I cheated and used my brush pen today (and maybe that’s a word in the first panel).

I am enjoying getting to know the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen. The pens come with a rich black ink, enabling fluid drawing.

Following instructions from Austin Kleon, I’ve also been able to make some colour brush pens.

The transparency of the orange and cobalt blue inks contrasts sharply with the solidity of the velvety black ink and gives me another dimension to play with.

In short, I’m having fun!

The four × four drawing exercise from Lynda Barry is a variation on an Ivan Brunetti exercise. It goes something like this:

• Select four things from a daily diary entry. They need to be neither too simple nor too complicated to draw.

• Use a non-photo blue pencil and draw the objects in the first column, 45 seconds per drawing.

• Draw the objects again, this time in a different order and from different perspectives in the other three columns. 45 seconds per drawing.

• Spend some time and draw a frame around each, ink them in and add colour.

On Friday, I attended the last workout for the Change Makers program I’ve been fortunate to be part of (thank you, Wellington City Council).

As part of the day, the dozen participants each gave a five-minute presentation with the structure There - Here - There. The format involves looking back to where you were before the Change Makers course, looking at where you are now, and looking forward to where you want to be.

The drawing above is one of the two I made for the Here part of my talk. Despite experiencing a bit of wobbly leg syndrome while giving my talk, it went really well.

What a course, what a group of people, and what a day!