The tale of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary comes from the Middle Ages, a traveler’s tale from the far east. It’s full name was ‘Planta Tartarica Barometz’ - ‘barometz’ is the Tartar word for ‘lamb’. The fruit of the Vegetable Lamb was cotton, but travelers from Europe knew nothing about cotton in those times. They reasoned that the material was wool - a fabric they did know. The figured that since wool came from sheep, and that the plant was some kind of animal/plant. They thought that the puffs of cotton were tiny sheep attached to the plant by their navel. It is said that the plant bent to let the sheep graze on the grass beneath it, and that when all the grass was gone, the sheep dropped from the plant and ran off, the tree dying.

text source: “Vegetable Lamb.” Encyclopedia Mythica from Encyclopedia Mythica Online.

As promised, here are images for the second ink pass of the Dept of Energy Promo poster I’ve been working on. Shown above is the second split fountain done in light green to medium green to a dark brown color. The illustration on the block is my polymer plate for the second image. More photos showing the process behind this set-up is behind the link that follows….

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I printed the first & second runs of the Dept of Energy Promo Poster I’ve been working on. Being a tease, I’m only going to showcase the first ink pass today. You’ll have to wait until Monday to get the pictures from the second ink pass.

Shown above is how the split fountain looks on press and on the large block I used. (It should also be noted it was * gasp * sunny out!) If interested in more photos continue on into the post.

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Surfing the net today looking for ispiration, I found this thing of beauty on neha.manoka’s flickr photostream with an explanation of where it’s from. Thanks for permission to show it off here!

“Made in 1983 this is a 25 years old classic 4.5V zinc-carbon battery with its three 1.5V cells enclosed in a cardboard case. It was a very common thing in the “past era” in Hungary. Obeying to the laws of physics almost all of them have disappeared since as these babies had a natural habit to leak.”

I love walking around to spy what is on my teams desktops. Everyone has different habits-some 1-2 windows open (me), some 10, some 50 (Styk!)…Therefore I thought it would be fun to start showcasing what some of ‘em look like at any given time.

The first one is from Micah’s computer. He’s from the 2D design department and is currently working on a logo for a current client (Round 2, I believe) as well as a few illustrations, a CD cover simply for the exercise of it (always good to expand your skills as a designer), as well as iTunes (music is always an essential around here for getting the creativity going full throttle) plus many other windows.

His desktop, which can only be slightly seen here, is of a dog parachuting from out of the sky. “Why?” you ask? Well, we leave that story up to you…

I have a sketch book that I’ve been keeping for a few years ongoing now that I do collage work in. It started after a design class I took while at school; the assignment was to bring in found items, markers, white out, tape, etc. and a stack of 11″ x 17″ blank paper. Then in 10 minute increments, you had to create something on the page with no thought, no judgment, no rules, just simply “spontaneously create”.

Being someone that loves rules and guidelines and taking as much time as needed to “get it just right”, this was both a scary & liberating exercise for me. I have held on to the tradition, and now years later, I have quite the book going. I use all kinds of found objects, from lace, to string, to bottle caps, nails, masking tape, whatever I find & like at the time. The pages are constantly morphing, rarely deemed “finished”. (That’s a rule if I were to say that, right?)

At times, elements from within the book end up in designs, which is never the intent behind the book, but if you find inspiration or a solution within it, it should become a tool within one’s toolbox, yes?

I worked in it over the weekend, so if you want to see a few pages from the book, (the cover is what is in the image above) then come on in and take a peek…

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