Coffee & Lipstick

Mmmm... morning coffee... can't start my day without it.

A fun shot I took the other day after I took my first sip... taken with my Nikon DSLR and using a piece of junk mail for some added reflective lighting in the foreground.

"Tractor Pull" Poster

These are the very first posters I have hand printed using the screen printing process. I did the illustration by hand based on a tractor that we borrowed for our garden this spring. I laid out the poster with Adobe Illustrator, and also did the color separations with AI. I made a screen for each color, and printed the color poster twice, lining the images up from each screen... a two-color image. Also, the tractor pull event is entirely fake, I made it up and made it on Greg's birthday. He is 45 years old this year, so it is the "45th Annual."

Where I used to work, we used the screen printing process also -- except we used it to print solder paste onto printed circuit boards. I found it interesting that the types of problems we had with the screen printing process at the factory also translated to this process. Registration, snapoff, etc have to be just right to get a good print. It's a challenge, but overall, the process really intrigues me and I hope to have lots of new artwork to share with you.

Garden Progress

Our garden is coming along really nicely. So far, we have corn, beans, pumpkins, cucumbers, melons, various types of squash and peppers, lettuce, cauliflower, chard, onions, carrots, radishes, and lots of flowers. This is my first attempt at a fully organic and sustainable garden. Currently it is 40 ft x 40 ft, but we have 1/3 of an acre available for planting. I'm hoping to eventually turn all of it into food production, including a small orchard. This "starter garden" is an experiment in companion planting and organic weed and pest control. Everything is coming along very nicely. I will be blogging about all of the different "experiments" we have going in detail in the future, so stay tuned! For now, here are a few photos from different angles.