what do you think of lasik??

i am going to be taking a small break from freelance work for a bit to work on some upcoming salty merchandise & comics. i'll be accepting work on a limited basis though so feel free to be in touch about projects but also please don't be offended if i happen turn you down! it's nothing personal, i'm just trying to make time for myself.


the last project i just finished was a fun blog header graphic for one dr. maayan keshet's new blog, eye-spy. maayan is an eye doctor whose brother happens to be my best pal, yair. maayan can fry up some ridiculous potato pancakes! maayan is also famous for painting a mural on the second floor of J hall in lexington high school! however, i haven't been to my old high school in many years so i am not sure if that mural still resides there. they redid a lot of the school in the early 00's so perhaps not.
anyway if you have any eye concerns, perhaps the answer resides in her blog. it's relatively new but i have already learned that carrots aren't as good for your eyes as i was made to believe & the eyelid is evolution's super advanced version of a squeegee!

product review: pilot precise rolling ball pens, 5 mm & 7 mm

the other day i was at the stationers' when i decided to try out the pilot precise rolling ball pen series. i've been thinking of trying them out for some time but i didn't want to change the whole system i had going. i guess i just never see a point in changing when you have a good thing going.

for pens my two standbys are the uniball vision & the pilot p-500/700. both pens are great pens, the vision is a rollerball pen & the pilot p500/700's use gel ink. both pens are made in japan & claim to be archival. i usually use the vision to go over pencil on my roughs & then the pilot when i am doing my trace-over with my lightbox on a new piece of paper. if i'm doodling i prefer the needle tip of the pilot to the pointy tip of the uniball. it has a nicer balance to it as well.

i would use the p-500/700 exclusively if it could trace over pencil better but because it is gel ink it doesn't really soak into the paper so when you erase pencil markings a good amount of the ink usually goes along with it making your line very faint. you usually will have to go over it again which is both a pain & can often compromise your line. when i bought the pilot precises i was hoping to maybe find a rollerball alternative that wrote like the pilot gel pen. this would really save me a lot of time because maybe i wouldn't always have to draw things over 3 times (pencil, rollerball, trace over with gel)!

the pilot precise has a needle tip which is similar to the pilot gel pens. in fact, i think pilot is supposed to have some patented needle tip technology that they often advertise on their packaging. so far i am having positive experiences with it. it draws great! i like the weight of the pen as well as the line it makes which is similar to the pilot gel pens but a little looser. in many ways i like it more than the gel pen. probably the biggest argument against using this pen for art is that the ink is not archival. i'm not sure how much this matters in the digital age, especially in my process where most everything i draw ends up scanned on a computer anyway, but it's nice when you do something & you know it's not going to eventually turn your paper brown even if you probably won't be alive to see it happen. another small problem i had with the pen is that the ink flows quite liberally so if you stay in one spot and are applying pressure you have a good chance of bleeding through the paper -- especially if you are not using bristol board or a thick stock. this shouldn't be a huge problem unless you are drawing on the top of a pad! i definitely wouldn't draw ruled frames for comics with this pen unless i was feeling gentle as a surgeon or i had a good solid 2 ply bristol board.

all in all, i'm going to switch over from the uniball vision to the pilot rollerballs because of the tip of the pen. i often find myself having to clean the tips of the visions because they tend to somehow get ink all over them. after a long day of inking the fingertips of my left hand will be black from rubbing ink off the tips of the visions. a non archival alternative that doesn't make that much of a mess is a welcome addition to my inventory, especially if used primariy on rough drafts. i think i will continue drawing final pieces on a clean sheet of paper with the gel pens because they are archival & i always seem to miss erasing that one line of pencil & it's a pain to deal with when it's all scanned in the computer. two kinds of pilot pens?? if i bought stocks now would probably be a good time to invest in pilot!

funniest thing since lawyer cat.

hahahahahahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahaha!

this is like that time we played 'follow that bird' with the sound off & played that whitesnake album.

reject read posters.

please excuse the temporary blog banner...
i'm trying to draw something original for it but nothing has seemed quite right yet!

i spent all day yesterday trying to remember what html i had forgotten & sprucing up the online store. if you go to www.saltykisses.com now you'll automatically go to the online shop. this is just an attempt to kind of streamline things. i also spent about 3 hours yesterday designing & coding that nifty rollover menu. when you roll over a link it'll change color! was it worth it? i am not sure.

anyway, after doing all that boring programming yesterday & a lot of kind of laborious drawing today, i decided to have a drink tonight & frankenstein together some reject READ posters. these are dedicated to all the people who have told me i should just slap the word READ on whatever i make... it won't work!

enjoy...

'dammit lennie, why'd you have to kill curley's wife??'

this one could say 'Read: CPR Books.'

this one just makes me laugh but i am not sure why.

sorry...

i am messing around with the look of the salty kiss variety so please bear with me for the next day or so! i promise it'll stay the same way sooner than later.

free range notes.

how great is it when you do work for someone & you know it's going to be for something totally AWESOME? this is my life in a nutshell when i have a pen in my hand. i'm not going to put my time into something unless i think it's going to be something i'll like.

exhibit a:

i just finished this poster project for the newly christened belfast free range music festival.

introverts blog.

this is not really art related but i just found this really cool blog today all about being an introvert!
it's on the psychology today website which while i don't think of it often when i do find myself on it i end up reading way more than i was originally planning to. they even had this article that meg d sent to me that sounds pretty much like how my brain works.

i thought the article about being an introvert vs. being shy was very interesting.

toughcats cd contest.

i have a free copy of the toughcats new cd, run to the mill, to give away! all you have to do is answer the following sci-fi cat questions correctly:

1. what the name of the cat aboard the nostromo?
2. what is the name of commander data's cat?
3. in farscape, what was the name of the crichton family's cat who got his hair burned off in the fireplace?
4. what is the name of VT's cat (from cowboy bebop)?

you can probably figure these out even if you aren't familiar with any of these series. just google it! the first person to e-mail me the right answers gets the cd. please remember to include your mailing address.

run to the mill.

today my friend colin from the toughcats stopped by my studio to give me a few copies of their new album, run to the mill, which i designed & illlustrated. i had finished the artwork & layout for it a few weeks ago & it looks great to finally see it & hold it. i had printed out a mock album but there's nothing quite like seeing the real thing. & it sounds great! you should pick one up if you can, www.toughcats.com . if you are around maine, i think they have them at your local bullmoose. but don't quote me on that...!

here are some rought scans i did of the album because i left my camera at home...

here's the front. the original front was to be a 3 panel illustration but we had some last minute formatting snafus with the cd publisher & i ended up adapting the drawing for a two panel layout. despite the fact that we had been planning to do a 3 panel image for over a year, when we finally had to compromise & do a 2 panel drawing, it came out looking... really good! like i think it looks better than it would have three panel. all these weird issues i had with the floor plane & perspective were all fixed & it just looked tight. yeah. this rarely happens though, usually when plans change things are a pain in the butt.

for the inside we wanted something kind of like the interior of an old mill. i spent a lot of time studying old mills... it was a lot harder than i thought but if you buy the cd all the gears connect to another gear it is disturbingly intricate. also, the cd is a gear which in theory would crank with the other gears! holy cow! i am kind of glad we had to go with a two panel interior in this case as well because it was so much work to make everything connect & i got to squeeze everything in together to make it even more chaotic & messy!

anyway, the are going on tour next week so if you notice they are coming to your neighborhood i recommend checking them out! pick up a cd while you're there... the toughcats won't disappoint!

lawyer cat.

my life would be a lot easier if i had one of these.