Rococo Cocoa

I'm trying my hand at doing one of those graphic-designer-playing-around-with-quotes posters.

This is a not so quick study that I did for my upcoming poster. The best part about this is that it appears I invented a photoshop technique for something: glitter. Go figure. :)

I should have the actual thing finished... soon...ish.

This must be some record! I blogged not once, but two times in a row.

I, again, have resigned my logo. I'm glad I didn't order those business cards! For this redesign, I refer to one of my favorite design blogs, BrandNew for an image-and-explain format:

So, the reason I switched logos is that the first logo I designed was made from one of my favorite fonts, and the thing is just that... it was a font. It was pretty, yes, but my hand just wasn't in it. So, I took the original letterforms as a illustration and I actually hand drew my initials.

I feel as if my logo says this: that my work is elegant, but still has aesthetically pleasing imperfections that make my work so endearing. Also it shows I know both vector design (graphic design) and hand drawing (illustration), which are the two main services I provide.

Redesign of this blog (and its header) and identity to follow soon. Hurray for change!

I know guys. The three of you who read my blog have been asking: where in the world have the posts been? Well all I can say is I apologize. Just know, as long as I still do art, and blogger is still in business, this blog will be updated... eventually.

I've been designing my new website for a while, and I've even had the web space for a full two months without even loading a coming soon splash page. Silly me. But all that is fixed! I have a theme, and consistent branding, et.cetera.

So this is what my site will look like eventually. A little more variety in the way of thumbnails, though. Stay tuned!

On the left, my picture, on the right, Kanye. 

My picture was taken about a year ago.

I had no advance knowledge of his picture, 

I did a drawing for Civilian Art Projects here in DC for a Barack Obama benefit. It's the largest drawing I've done to date at nearly 4 and a half feet square.

© Joseph Lamour 2008. If you would like to post this, please let me know. Thanks!

Further branding and website theme inspiration through Abduzeedo tutorials. I tried my hand at light painting using part of this tutorial. Pretty nifty.

So a new contender for logo has arrived. It's two swashy "JL"s interlocked. I like it for it's symmetry, its simplicity of concept. It really has some great design potential too. Look at some business card designs I came up with in like 3 minutes:



And a back to the card too...

Fancy look, better clients... right?

pluck (n.)-
1. the trait of showing courage and determination in spite of possible loss or injury [syn: gutsiness]
2. the act of pulling and releasing a taut cord


I've decided a title for my first Black Fruit series piece. Pluck is basically an emotion piece, which is to say it really doesn't have concise message, I really want people to take what they will from it. I know I have my own meaning, and I bet it'll pretty clear once it's in the context of my other pieces from this series.


Here's a closeup of what the vines will look like. I hope to finish this by next week. With any luck!

You know... work is crazy. But now its not, so much... so here's a design that I did for my sister + cousin's team for the upcoming Susan Komen Breast Cancer Walk on Saturday in DC.

Excuse the blurriness... And the shadow. But here's the first piece from my new seires "Black Fruit". Just polling... what does the fruit I'm holding look like?



Here's an artist's statement:

• "Black Fruit is a discovery of my unique situation of belonging to two well talked about social groups- African Americans, and gays. As a black gay artist I want to talk about my relationship dynamics affected by my upbringing in a Haitian household, and my race in relation to my love life. Black Fruit is a symbolic study of two things that make up who I am and the experiences I've been through because of them."
  

Collage reference for upcoming drawing.

I'm going to title it "Self Portrait with Heads from March 21st issue of Entertainment Weekly, Coincidentally the Artist's Sister's 33rd Birthday".

I like long titles.

Wee!

This is a pastel I've been working on for a charity benefit for Save Darfur. I'll post the finished piece on here, as well as pictures from the event, I imagine. I credit them for getting me back into the handmade arts. I needed a push to start again.

To explain the piece, I wanted to focus on the beauty of the Sudan rather than the pain, since, someday, with any hope, there will be happiness there again. The vine like flowers around her are... the scientific name is Utriculara inflexica, and for some peculiar reason I can't find the real name of them... anyone know a botanist?

Deliciousness defined is this soup from WFLH with red peppers, onion, tomato juice and a hint of cayenne pepper and- strange as it sounds- maple syrup. I didn't really taste it in this recipe, so you might want to up it depending on how strange you like. It's really quite delectable. I halved the recipe- that provided ebnough for dinner and for lunch today. Also. of course, I changed a couple of things from the original recipe to my liking... I always must :)

Ingredients
2 red bell peppers - de-seeded and coarsely chopped
1 red onion - finely chopped
2 tablespoons black truffle oil
1 tablespoon paprika powder
250 ml tomato juice
1 cup of sauteed sausage (I used chicken sausage for this, but use whatever you'd like)
1 teaspoon maple syrup (or 2, if you're feeling adventurous)
Dash of cayenne pepper
Salt
Freshly cracked black pepper
sour cream
parsley, as garnish

Directions
Heat the truffle oil in a saucepan. Sauté the pepper and onions for 2-3 minutes, then sprinkle with paprika powder. Allow to cook for another 2-3 minutes.

Pour in the tomato juice and maple syrup. Add the dash of cayenne pepper, salt and pepper and simmer covered for 20 minutes.

With a puree machine puree the soup finely. If you find it too thick add some more tomato juice. Add cup of chopped sausage, sauteed in another tablespoon of oil.

Serve on pre-warmed soup plates with a splodge of sour cream and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese or parsley.

(thanks WFLH!)
________

Blogging really feeds into my desire to cook, and cooking pretty food feeds my desire to take pictures, and I'm just really happy that I have this blog. I hope you're happy about it too :)

I think I may be getting pretty good at this food photgraph thing. This is my roomate Dawn's Delicious dutch apple cake with a scoop of my rosewater mint ice cream. The flavors together were... well... interesting. But at least they look pretty together!

We did some work for the Pentagon over the weekend (fuck yeah!) and my boss bought me a gift. It's this snow globe that plays the National Anthem. Wonderfully kitsch. As you can see, I'm making use of my newly constructed light tent.


As you can also see by these pink lemondade cupcake pictures I took last night, I need Daylight light bulbs, these are quite yellow. No matter! They didn't taste yellow! More (less yellow, I hope) pictures tommorow.