Good News comes in Twos

Nice. My portrait show at the Cornelia St. Cafe is extended by up to a week into January 2012 as next person not ready yet to hang their show. Hooray! Join me for drinks there.

I just sent the last issue (in paper) of Alimentum to press. It contains wonderful spot drawings by my very own artist daughter Caitlin Allen–her first time in print (I didn't let the editors know she was related to me until they said yes after seeing her sample art!) and another fun food map by me. Doing this map illustration/cartoon I discovered I can use real photos as textures in photoshop to add to my drawing instead of drawing them. I like the effect! Here it is:

My Jewish and Christian halves enjoy T-Day entirely.

Please buy this issue, it will be the last of 13 of this gem-like magazine. I am genuinely sad it is leaving the land of print. It fit so nicely in the hand. I won design awards for this one... But the marvelous publisher Paulette will continue the project online, however I am not the designer of the online incarnation. So goodbye paper Alimentum...and long live digital Alimentum.

Some of the spot drawings by Caitlin Allen for Alimentum, issue 13, published Winter 2012.

Junk Food map for Alimentum: The Literature of Food!

It's out! The 12th issue of Alimentum (which I designed) printed well and my map is in it. When I laid out the issue there was one blank page and seeing an opportunity I asked Paulette (head honcho) if I could try something... I created the map first on paper, rough pencil sketch, that I scanned and used as a basis for finished drawings in Photoshop (head outline) and Adobe Illustrator (everything else). Coming up with the A-B-C  commentary was not a cinch. The humor lurched from too personal to too snarky to just pathetically unfunny. In fact you may still think it is all of those things! I tested it on friends who raised eyebrows as they realized what churns through my gray matter. I thank Jim, Natalie, Deborah, Joe, Flash and Mia for their input...