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Art on the Go: Quick Landscape Doodle for Fun Travel Memories
Everyone likes to doodle, right? Here’s a fun art exercise for those “down times” during your trip– create a doodle sketch of your surrounding landscape. You can do it while waiting for the plane, on a train, sitting at the beach or resting on a park bench. No fancy art supplies are needed, just a pen and paper… so let’s get doodling! Here’s a quick “how to” for creating your own landscape doodle – just 2 simple steps. First, take a pencil and create a very light (and quick) outline of the major portions of your landscape. Second, start doodling! Begin doodling the main portions of your landscape, then continue…
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Free Printable Vintage Wild West Post Card
If you’ve ever seen a satellite image of the US at night, it’s clear to see why they call the western portion of America the “wild west.” The Eastern seaboard is light up like a Christmas tree with city lights. The West coast (Los Angeles and San Francisco) is just as bright, but head east of California’s central valley and west of St. Louis, and there sure is a lot of wide open space! In the spirit of the rugged wild west, I’ve made a free printable vintage-style post card based on one of the images I took in Southern Utah along the Colorado river. I’d imagine if I were…
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Time+Place: Wild West Horseback Riding in Utah
It was a gorgeous summer afternoon in Southern Utah. The rusted reds in the sandstone cliffs reverberated against the cerulean blue skies. We got on our horses, left the stables of the resort, and slowly moseyed up the mountain side away from the mighty Colorado River. Within minutes the only sounds we could hear were the hoofs of our horses trundling up the rocky trail. With each step, it felt like we were heading back in time– straight into an old western movie. There is nothing like the landscape of the American Southwest. The sandstone buttes jutting out from the desert landscape is an iconic scene in almost any Western…
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Type+Place: Bar Time!
It’s 5:00pm on a Friday, it must be bar time! I took this shot while hanging out in the Mission District of San Francisco. I couldn’t resist these marquee letters. Weathered, rusty, and red, they are quite trendy to have as decoration in your living room these days! After taking a few shots, I got a little bummed out that I wouldn’t be able to see them light up– it was only 12:30 in the afternoon. In comes the magic of photo post-production. With a few modifications, and using a very low-tech animation technique in Photoshop, I got my sign to light up. Now that it’s on, it’s time for…
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Culture: Cooking Class in Cusco – The Versatile Aji Amarillo Sauce
My mom has always been a wonderful cook. She’s a lot like me in that she loves to cook delicious dinners with rich sauces, spices and flavors, but is not much of a baker. She’s also been a huge proponent of eating various ethnic foods. Before she and my dad would head off on a big adventure, she’d always come home with what seemed to be very exotic ingredients (exotic ingredients to a pre-teen, that is!) She’d whip up various dishes typical to the place she was traveling. Of course, we kids would complain. She’d just inform us that if we didn’t try it, then we just weren’t up for…
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On Location: Rocky Mountain High – Solitude at 10,000′ in Fairplay Colorado
Past bustling Frisco, Colorado, through the ski town of Breckenridge and over 11,542′ Hoosier Pass lies the little town of Fairplay, Colorado. Situated on a high grassland basin known as South Park (yes, the South Park… more on this later), you definitely get the feeling that John Denver must have visited Fairplay before he wrote his famous ballad, Rocky Mountain High. There are the “cathedral mountains” and the “silver clouds”, there’s the starlight sky, and the streams. But most of all I found the “quiet solitude.” Perhaps the solitude was unique to when I visited, I can’t be sure, but this small town of less than 700 people, situated in…
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Art on the Go: Free Printable Venice Journal and Sketch Page
Gondolas gracefully gliding up the canals, palaces glimmering in Italian splendor, a crowded St. Mark’s Square, a boutique mask shop… capture your memories of Venice with my latest free printable Venice journal page and Venice sketch page. Head to the Rialto bridge and make a quick sketch, or jot down a few notes about the delicious gelato you ate while people watching. Keeping a journal and making some sketches will make your trip to Venice one-of-a-kind. Free Printable City Pages: Venice Journal and Sketch Page Below are my Venice printable Journal and Sketch pages. To use, just select the link below the image and print out from your browser. Use…
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Pattern+Place: The Graphic Tudor Timber Framing of Shrewsbury
I learned at the ripe old age of 8 what Tudor style or timber framed architecture was. Seems pretty young to be studying architecture, huh? Well, really I wasn’t studying it, it just happened to be the style of house we moved into. This is the same house my parents still live in today, many, many years later. My childhood home is in California, not really the place you’d expect a lot of Tudor architecture. Our home is rather old by California standards (it was built in the 1930’s), but by European standards, it’s just a baby. So, when I traveled to Shrewsbury, England, I was so excited to see…
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Type+Place: Type Inspired by India
Like many designers, I have a font fetish! I just love type. In my studio, I have a bookcase full of books about type. There’s something so elegant, yet simple about fonts… it’s amazing what a few lines, brush strokes and curves can do to give characters personality. Because I have this font obsession, and, of course, I love travel– I thought I’d start a series of posts dedicated to exploring typefaces that are reminiscent about a location. Here’s the first to kick it off, type inspired by India. In looking for font inspiration that reminded me of India, I looked for types that had some ethnic flair as well…
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Happy Memorial Day
In memory of all those who have fallen, fighting for freedom and honor. Happy Memorial Day!
