sketchbook 04 (moleskine sketchbook)

wupr illustration 03 ("unite")

The article that I signed up for was about unity in India over national tragedies and problems, and how it has been difficult in general to unite over many different issues because of the enormous diversity within the population. The article itself noted that the ability of the people in India to come together recently (specifically over the gang rape in Delhi) is somewhat of a symbol of a growing political movement in India, and that is the ability to unite over different social issues. 

Some initial sketches. I was trying to figure out how to show the "unite" aspect that the  article discusses. Also, ignore the pages on the right, as those are my notes for typography. 

inked version

wuslam - THE GRAND SLAM ("enough said")

WOOHOO! The Grand Slam is only a week away, and I'm already pumped to go. This was one of the bigger projects that I got tasked with, because I had to make one main poster and 10 individual posters featuring all of the poets. I decided not to go with a hand-drawn feel and come up with something very graphic, simple, because my main goal was clarity, not necessarily style. 

(you have no idea how many struggles occurred, because my computer had crashed while I was working on this. as a result, I scrambled from computer to computer for the right fonts.)

some initial sketches. i was just playing with basic visual ideas, because i felt that it would be the best way to tie together ten different poets. 

went with a vertical rectangle piano keyboard looking thing. 

white had a nice visual effect but I liked the way the dark shapes on the poets sat against  the black. 

sketches for individual posters! 

wuslam - december slam ("button poetry is clearly the visual theme")

the last slam of the year! I didn't focus on a color scheme in general for this slam, and instead looked to really incorporate the button theme, because the host poets Sam Cook and Michael Lee are part of a group called Button Poetry. 

Everything was hand-drawn, and when I used Photoshop I used a crayon-wax brush in order to keep that sketchy/traditional feel. 

final version

initial sketches. I was exploring visually what I could do with the two poets. 

and then i stumbled upon the wonderful information that they were part of a group called "button poetry," so i went ahead to incorporate a button/circle visual theme into the poster. 

circles are always tricky though, so i spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do with the layout. 

ended up settling on something close to that, just a little more compact. 

pencil sketch/lines; I wanted to keep a paper/traditional texture feel to the piece. 

here's a different color version. the blue's a little too teal and everything clashes too much, so i desaturated the colors, got rid of some of the shapes, and produced something much simpler. 

wuslam - november slam

Here's another poster for WUSlam. This one was done for the November Slam.

Went a little overboard with the "storm" theme, but it worked out. Done entirely in Photoshop. 

Some sketches/thumbnails! 

wupr illustration 02 ("wupr says stay green and alex says this cover was tricky")

I signed up to illustrate the cover for WUPR. The theme was "Wake Up," and the goal for the cover was to incorporate and explore the imagery of nature while staying in tune with the message of "stop hurting this planet/go green" theme (which I support 100%, coming from California and all). 

I drew the lines using pencil on normal sketchpad paper (which is the best sketch paper for my pencils that I've ever used) and colored it using Photoshop. I worked to maintain that traditional look because I think the texture has a really nice quality to it that I wanted to retain.) 

Sketches and process! 

Some notes I took after discussing with the Design Chief for WUPR about what to do with the cover. 

The original pencil sketch

in publication! 

sketchbook 03 ("i swear i'm alive")

good ol' moleskine: 

doodles from a normal spiral sketchbook (so no crazy page breaking going on): 

this is from a little horizontal sketchbook that i had. the long format was kind of weird to hold, but i liked the texture of the paper! most of this is just fun with letters: