Andrew Pomeroy: October 2009

First video tutorial segment uploaded

Posted by Andrew Pomeroy on Monday, October 26, 2009

Finally got what I had been working on uploaded.. Video rendering sucks.

As part of my focus on vector art, here's a video tutorial on how to prepare your Illustrator file for use with a vinyl cutter.

Preparing Vector Art for a Vinyl Cutter from Andrew Pomeroy on Vimeo.

Method of approach

Posted by Andrew Pomeroy on Thursday, October 22, 2009

At present, my habits and lifestyle are not necessarily conducive to the habits of a good designer. So in order to recreate a system of living that works more in the favor of the act of design itself, I decided to lay out a number of areas in which my design abilities could benefit from small lifestyle changes, as well as the ways I could be expanding my pre-existing design habits/abilities by focusing them towards improvement of daily life.

In theory, the separate efforts reciprocate beneficially, and in turn accomplish that which I set out to do, which is to bring the two elements of my being closer into synchronization. These practices begin to be more harmonious with one another, and the self-identity is forged into that of a true designer.

I started with the purely physical.

In order to truly open up a space for one's design abilities to flourish, one needs a blank canvas. So, in my quest to create an optimal habitation of a designer, I had to take a few big first-steps: A complete takedown of all furniture and decór in my surroundings.

(photos not available quite yet-- but trust me, it was drastic)

Having eliminated all but what I feel truly works for me at the most basic level, I'm left with a whole lot of open space. Having this vast emptiness benefits my work in two respects: firstly, by getting rid of the things that have never really worked for me all that well, I now have a massive amount of space in which I can design for my own personal taste. Secondly, the blankness of the end result is not necessarily pleasing in and of itself-- I am in effect forced to come up with solutions in order to avoid suffering through bleak surroundings.
The space which I have left in which to design my own aesthetic and functional surroundings is somewhat intimidating in its hugeness; however, herein lies an opportunity to expand my designs to an unprecedented scale.

Next: True basics; Fixing and enhancing my furniture.

breaking news

Posted by Andrew Pomeroy

I'm up too late. Shit happens.

DIY Stenciling

Posted by Andrew Pomeroy on Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Cuidado, el toro te ve.

Stenciling first caught my attention in a big way about a year ago, and ever since then I've been quite interested and inspired by that particular art form. There are many artists out there, most of them considered 'street artists,' who use stenciling methods to innovate in very interesting ways. One of the most famous is Banksy, an artist whose work has elevated him to worldwide levels of fame, and is largely seen as the figurehead of this particular style. Here are some examples of his well-known work:

I've always wanted to make stencils of my own and explore this art form for myself-- so I figure as a DIY project I'll give it a shot, albeit on a much smaller scale to begin with.

A highly traditional symbol of the nation of Spain has always been the Bull. I saw this represented in a myriad of ways during my 6 months there, among the most fascinating was the simple silhouette image of the bull that you could see plastered everywhere from bumper stickers to flags, even government buildings. The absolute best usages of it, however, were the giant silhouettes infrequently erected among the plains along the sides of the long stretches of highway:

I thought it would make a great stencil to have for various uses, given my thriving love affair with Spain.

Here's the rundown of my project:

Bought my spraypaint from the UO Bookstore basement-- So many colors to choose from! I just grabbed a can of black for the time being.

This I found at a craft store for about 2 bucks, it's a thin sheet of plastic that is made specifically for stenciling.

I found a good image of el toro and imported it into Illustrator.

I used Live Trace to painlessly convert the image into a vector, which I then changed to a simple outline, so I didn't have to use a massive amount of ink when it came to printing out the image.

This is one small edit I had to make. As you can see, the tail portion of the bull's image contained an "island," which unfortunately we can't have when making stencils. One has to make sure that all parts of the image that are intended to stay solid after cutting have to be connected. As such, I edited the paths a little bit so that there was a small "bridge" between the leg and the tail.

Once my image was corrected, I printed it out to my desired size.

Before I begin cutting, I placed both my printout and my stencil upon a solid backing (the backside of a whiteboard) and taped the two sheets together on all sides to ensure it would not drift at all during cutting.

I started cutting through the plastic stencil material along the lines with my (very dull) x-acto knife. It took a lot more force that I had imagined, making it very hard to stay aligned with the strokes on the printed image.

What I'm discovering is that I'm not cutting all the way through the stencil material in many places, so I'm left with many small spots where the stuff stays stubbornly attached and will require me to go once-over with my knife before removing the inner region.

By now I'm really wishing I had done this on a laser cutter instead.

Finally got the middle part separated.

It seems I was a little bit forceful in removing the middle section, as you can see some parts are sticking up from the flat plane significantly, which will pose a problem when we're spraying over it.

It's time to try this out. I taped it down as firmly as I could to my test surface (a sheet of white paper) to minimize gaps as much as possible.

Sprayed it down with my color of choice, not really paying too much attention to the bleeding on the outer edge of the masking tape.

The results! Not quite perfect, there's an obvious amount of underspray, probably a symptom of sloppy separation of the two parts of the stencil.

I wasn't totally satisfied, so I tried my best to flatten out the stencil by putting it under a stack of really heavy books for about an hour or so before trying it again. It looked a lot flatter when it was done, which I figured would give me a much cleaner spray.

The results of test number two. Much better if you ask me.

Now I'm ready to spray el toro wherever I feel like (that won't get me arrested).

I'd call this DIY project very successful. Though I was expecting the cutting process to be easier, I'm sure it was mostly a matter of having the right equipment in order. What I end up using the bull stencil for I'm not quite sure, but it was more valuable simply as an insight into the process of stenciling itself. I will definitely now be doing this more often with a wider variety of subjects and more complicated techniques; I've got a long ways to go before I'm a Banksy, but this was a very satisfying exercise for what it was.

the anatomy of designFAIL (part 2)

Posted by Andrew Pomeroy on Thursday, October 8, 2009

It only took but a gander to see the breadth of my frustration regarding my surroundings. First of all, I look immediately to my floor in my room and I see that familiar array of clothing and other items scattered throughout the floorspace-- a good portion of the various things I pretend not to notice every day. Let's just leave those out of the equation for now-- at some level they just don't count in this situation-- nothing that I'll ever physically construct will ever keep me from throwing my shit on the ground in moments of convenience.
However, there was plenty to find elsewhere that qualified:

Not for a moment denying my love of Session; however, I wanted something cool to pattern my door with, but in execution, it's still cardboard. And cardboard is pretty god damn tacky one way or another.

This is the most my blinds will close. My neighbors get a free show twice daily. Perhaps something I'd like to know how to fix.

What are these and why are they still here three weeks after move-in?

So I have two shelving units, one of which I'll end up keeping and one I'll be returning to the store. There's the shitty cheap one from Walmart and the expensive sturdy one from BedBath. Do I really have to choose between shitty and expensive with everything?

I must just be desperate for wall decorations-- an incredibly awkward poster that originated from an ex-roommate of a current roommate. We hung it in the bathroom anyway.

Count the travesties in this picture. First we have the coaxial cable very ungracefully strung across the ceiling. Then there's the parrot picture-- nothing needs to be said. Then the beer bottles across the mantle-- how original, right?

As a consequence of renting our house, we're forbidden from making holes in the walls from which to hang things, etc. Thus my industrial-grade blacklight fixtures sit lonely in the corner of the closet. What a shame.

That's a roof. It's quite broken.

I'm not looking forward to being burned alive in my sleep, so something about the heating unit being precariously close to my bed has me on edge.

The floor is an optimal position for a microwave. At least if the thing has a cord of about 1 foot in length.

This is perhaps my favorite-- A shoe rack masquerading as a dresser. I'll pretend that was just a clever "repurposing" of material.

Clearly some issues have manifested here. Not that I'm living in squalor or anything, but this was only a small sampling of the things that exist in my environment that clearly just do not work for me on some level. Ideally, I'd love to create my home surroundings completely in my own vision, but the means to do so escape me. With every year that goes by, life grows increasingly complicated, and I've never really given myself the time or devoted the amount of effort necessary to actually catch up to my own organizational and stylistic problem areas. It's clearly time for an overhaul.

the anatomy of designFAIL (part 1)

Posted by Andrew Pomeroy

As part of the Back to Basics group, I begun last week to consider the ways in which problems occur in my life relating to the more basic and concrete elements of my surroundings. Narrowing it down, it became very clear to me that the main problem I faced was that my surroundings simply did not work for me in one way or another-- The functional arrangement of my living space always leaves something to be desired, and I rarely have much of a passion for the objects which adorn my clothes and my walls, though I constantly strive to bring liveliness and cohesion to all of these things.

Great, problem identified.
Next step is to take a look around at my surroundings to pick out some symptoms.

Mind Map

Posted by Andrew Pomeroy on Tuesday, October 6, 2009

INTERNETS

Posted by Andrew Pomeroy on Thursday, October 1, 2009

OMG. Andrew Pomeroy designs. ON THE INTERNETS

Archives