createathon indeed...

This is what came out last yesterday/last night as a result of createathon. I am really happy with it and had SO - MUCH - FUN (!) working on this...

Right after I blogged about it yesterday, Riggs called and said to come in for the meeting. I learned that they had named the park art event "unearth" (which I thought was brilliant!). It really spoke to unearthing the beauty of drawing/painting/sculpting in nature... nature being the inspiration and often times the subject matter.

So where could we take it? What could we do to get people inspired?

Instantly I thought about the word "unearth" being created out of the earth itself. That would take care of the nature part, and then creating a painting around it to address the art part... playing the two off each other. I did up a little sketchy comp and they loved the idea.

So I strapped on my hiking shoes and went to the park with a bag to gather up all the interesting twigs, leaves, flowers, shells, nuts, and squirly gigs that I could find. (Of course Vince went with me, but he wasn't much help in locating items.)

At 1:30 I had an appointment at the photo studio to physically build the word and shoot it professionally (by the totally incredible George Fulton, who volunteered his time). I dumped out my bag of goodies and started playing around with different letter shapes. That was actually pretty tricky... getting the twigs to bend and playing with just the right amount of texture and interest, and having it still be legible. After an hour or so I had it and we were ready to shoot.

We shot the word itself all together, and then played with different variations and additions. Then shot all the colorful stuff separately, which ended up being very helpful because I put it all together in photoshop to get just the right balance and proportion.

Then I went to town on the painting part... yummy candy-colored watery acrylics. Paint blobs and swirls. Newsprint, copperplate paper, charcoals, fingerprints... It was so fun. And I got to use my superpower -- color. (I heart color!) hee.

About 1am it finally came together and I sat back (rubbed my blurry eyes) and was proud of it. So I slapped it on a disk and drove it into Riggs to present it.

Larry Thacker, the art director I was working with, and Maria Fabrizio, the designer thought it was great... and proceeded to make it into the outdoor board, brochure, ad and postcard it needed to be. I think they did a fabulous job... and the client did too. It was presented this morning to the park and they loved it!

I didn't stay up all night, but am still very sleepy this afternoon. Colin DID stay up and is fast asleep right now... He came home happy this morning though. Doing work you're proud of will do that to you.

Thank you, good folks at Riggs, for letting me be a part of this year's events. I loved it. :)

happy weekend everyone!