Adventure Time Birthday Present

Yesterday was my darling husband's birthday! He's 25!
It was nine years ago when we first started flirting over AOL instant messenger and I thought to myself and said out loud to my sister, "If I was a different kind of girl, I'd date Luke Stone."
By "different kind of girl" I think I meant a girl who would date a younger bad boy ... and by bad boy I meant a guy who cussed and lit things on fire. We're a year and a half apart and when you're 16 and 17.5 it's a big deal.
We did eventually date and then get married and then we got really into this TV show Adventure Time.
Luke's favorite character is a vampire named Marceline. So I made this illustration as a present for my favorite man.

NAHBS 2012: The Faraday Electric Bike

The second day of the North American Handmade Bike Show is in full swing. Unfortunately I'm not typing this from the media room at the show, I'm at home waiting for someone to bring me a dishwasher - ooh the glamorous life of a homeowner.
Anyway. I'm only here for an hour so I thought I'd bust out a quick post about one of my favorite bikes so far.

I'm so in love with the Faraday electric bike built by some engineers from the innovation firm Ideo. I've been pretty obsessed with this company since I learned about them last semester in my design class. They specialize in innovating new and better ways to make things work. So exciting.

This electric bike has the batteries built into the frame and a cute little on/off switch behind the seat. It's sleek, beautiful and doesn't have clunky electrical features all over.
Adam Vollmer, one of the builders, said the bike rides like a really nice regular bike, but with an eclectic boost.

The front rack is easily removable and holds up to fifty pounds. Perfect for carting around two 12-packs. I especially loved the two headlights pictured in the upper right corner of the collage. They're epically bright, beautiful and efficient.

There are so many wonderful bikes at this show. I'm sure I could do a large post for each one. Soon, I'll be heading back over to soak up the awesomeness, get more pictures and talk to more builders.

Malcolm Reynolds Portrait

Firefly Fans; I give you - Captain Malcolm Reynolds.

Face 5: Twiggy Smirking

For my fifth portrait I chose the iconic 60s model Twiggy. 

I love her little smirk and dimples. That is all, because this took me a while and I'm tired. Stay tuned and vote for the next face you'd like to see, there's a poll on the right-hand side. 

Happy Birthday Abe Lincoln, have a t-shirt

I've been really into portraits lately. So in honor of Abraham Lincoln's birthday I drew a few portraits of the 16th president and made a couple t-shirts on Fibers.com. I made the portraits in Adobe Illustrator and then uploaded them into the fibers.com design tool.

The second t-shirt is referencing a very specific line in a very silly movie. Who knows what movie and scene this shirt is referencing?

If you don't know head over to the Fibers.com blog, there's a post I wrote about the top five Abe Lincoln t-shirts and it explains the "Did you say Abe Lincoln reference." If you're wondering why all this Fibers.com stuff; full disclosure, I totally work there and spend 30 hours of my week doing this awesome stuff and getting paid! Yeah, it's pretty much the coolest job ever.

If you like the idea of designing t-shirts for your favorite president start creating your custom presidential t-shirt on fibers.com!

Portrait 3: Elizabeth Taylor

So this is the official start of my 40 Faces Portrait Project. As an attempt improve my illustration skills and since I think faces are just the coolest things ever, I'm committing to illustrating a portrait a day for 40 days. Now I might do two or three in one day and then post them over the following days - but the idea is a portrait post a day for forty days.

This is day three. Day one was my Grace Kelly profile, Day two was Hedy Lamarr and today is Elizabeth Taylor.

So what do you think?
Who should I illustrate next? Tomorrow's already taken care of in honor of a very special president's birthday.

So stay tuned every day for the next 37 days for interesting faces.

Hedy Lamarr - Portrait

I posted my Grace Kelly portrait on Facebook and my sister said she looked like Hedy Lamarr. Honestly, I had heard the name, but wasn't familiar with her body of work. I looked her up and found a couple reference pictures and set about illustrating her in Adobe Illustrator (my new favorite toy).

I was really taken with her extravagant eye laces and took some artistic license when illustrating them.

Now to see if Boom Town is on Netflix streaming. 

Aren't profiles fascinating?

Not a profile article on an interesting person, but a person's profile. The side of their face. It's a tough look to pull off.
Flip through a fashion magazine and look for profile shots, you'll probably be able to count them on one hand. Yet, profiles are one of my favorite things to study (and some of my favorite articles to write).
When you're drawing front-on you have to worry about getting both sides to look proportional to each other and more-or-less mirrored. A profile is far more simple.
I love the strong, intimate feel of a profile. Like you're sitting with your lover at the movies or on the couch at home, or maybe you're studying their face while they sleep next to you.
So here's a profile I made for funsies. I used a picture of Grace Kelly for reference.

This was a pretty quick illustration, took me around 30 minutes. It's good practice with the pen tool.
What do you think? I'm have so much fun learning how to use Adobe Illustrator!

Retrieving a Stolen Camera - Hopefully

Hello Dear Readers,
Once again, sorry for my long absence from the blogging scene. But enough of that. Big terrible news: a few nights ago while resting peacefully in my friend's car, my camera, my beautiful Nikon D40, was taken against her will.

My Camera and me at an event in 2010, better times.

My camera is in the hands of a dirty thief and I'm determined to get her back!

How will I accomplish this? Sacramento is a huge town and my camera could be anywhere by now. Well, fun fact - all cameras have a unique image ID number.

So I paid a little visit to a site called StolenCameraFinder.com, my husband had read about it on Boing Boing.

I signed up for the free membership and dropped a unique photo in to their program; two-seconds later I had my serial number! Empowered by this information I began scouring the internet for more camera recovery resources.

A small side note here; always take a picture of the bottom of your camera so you have the serial number handy if it ever (God forbid) is stolen.

I also found Camera Trace by GadgetTrack; for a one time fee of $10, the service saves your camera's information and tracks the internet looking for jpegs that match your camera. Once a photo from your camera shows up on flickr or facebook you get notified and law enforcement can retrieve the camera and bring it back to you!

TechCrunch.com reported, "A photographer, John Heller, had $9,000 worth of gear stolen at a shoot in Hollywood. After giving up all hope of ever getting his Nikon D3 back, he checked with a site called GadgetTrak that scans Flickr and other image upload sites for photos matching the serial number of his DSLR. In a few seconds he had found shots with serial numbers matching his D3 belonging to a professional photographer. With the help of the police he got his gear back and now the tracking service is a recommend site for LAPD detectives on the hunt for fugitive cameras."

This story filled me with all kinds of hope!


GadgetTrack has a similar service for laptops and other web-connecting devices. You don't have to wait until one of your gadget is stolen. Registering your cameras and laptops now will make it easier to find if they ever do go missing. They even send you a physical lost and found tag to attach to your device to help people get it back to you if it goes missing. 

I also reported my camera stolen with stolen-property.com, not sure if anything will come of that.
In addition to all that I've been checking craigslist for my model of camera and on Monday I'm going to call around to pawn shops.

The lesson learned here is:

1. Don't make it easy to be a victim.
2. Take pictures of all your serial numbers and store them on dropbox or someplace they won't get deleted. Keep copies on your phone so you can easily present proof of ownership when you come into contact with your stolen items.

I hope this post is helpful. Also, if anyone's seen a home-sick-looking Nikon D40 probably accompanied by a slingback camera bag shoot me an e-mail at forevermelody@gmail.com - thanks!

Winter Bike Commuting in Sacramento

The mornings are pretty cold this time of year in Sacramento. Not cold enough to really complain, this is still California. But certainly cold enough to add layer after layer before my morning commute. Here's a comic of what i think I look like leaving for work each morning:

 Under the outerlayers I have a sweater, shirts, tights, there's a couple scarves in there for good measure, it's a little ridiculous. But I stay warm on my 15 minute ride to work.

I drew this picture using my brand new Inkling! Technically it's Fibers.com's inkling, but as the head of the art department I get to play with it!

This image is a little inspired by my new favorite blog Bikey Face! This girl is like me only in an alternate universe known as New England.

Anyway, what are your winter riding tips? What's your favorite piece of winter bike commuting apparel?