I’m a creative, experienced, multi-purpose artist and art director
who can take projects start to finish in a variety of styles.

Good designs sell –
my designs sell out!

Saturday, April 10, 2010

"Linked"

Patterns are links of images, and people are linked in patterns too. This is in my mind because after much prodding by a friend, I put a profile on LinkedIn.com. This lets us post resumes, link to sites, and contact people from the past.

Contacting old friends was emotional for me. I had let them wander out of my life when they scattered to different parts of the world, or changed priorities, or any of the other reasons we let people fade away from our daily lives. I still missed them from time to time, but I had gotten kind of ashamed of myself for letting so much time go by, or frustrated when Google searches turned up empty. LinkedIn suddenly made people accessible again.

It’s been fun to reminisce with old pals about drinking parties and stupid adolescent behaviors since we survived, but we’ve also grown up somewhere along the line. Some of my college friends have children in college now, and I seldom have two glasses of wine. It’s hard to imagine so much time has passed, and we can commiserate with each other about the struggles we’ve had to endure in order to earn livings with our talents.

Maybe this all sounds dull to someone still in college and looking forward to starting their career? Yawn. Old people talking again. Yeah, yeah, but maybe you can learn something they don’t teach you in school? Contacts matter. Friends matter. They matter in ways you just don’t imagine when you’re scraping yourself off the floor after a keg party or when you wake up next to someone you really didn’t intend to sleep with. The fact that someone might remember your youthful indiscretions after 30 years matters because you never know when or how some of these people will turn up in your life again, and if those people really mattered to you at one time, maybe they will matter to you again.

I’ve needed time to contemplate all of this, and spent some time doing a mental exercise of taking one doodle, and figuring out how many patterns I could make with it. Making patterns was a meditation, though I’ll probably use these patterns as backgrounds in future projects. I also use this kind of thing in packaging.

We are all linked in one way or another. Everyone participating in Illustration Friday is linked, and the links made here are linked to the links we have other places, and sometimes we find out that we are linked to each other in multiple ways. It reminds me of a discussion I had with little kids about infinity. The number of connections is mind boggling.

All of these patterns are made in PhotoShop, all from the same 5 lines. It’s simply a matter of linking the same piece together in different ways. I made 30 patterns before deciding to just stop. It starts getting into the infinite possibilities, and I just can’t deal with infinity any better than 8-year-olds.

In the end, the important thing is to treasure the links we have with people who matter to us.

5 comments:

  1. Great pattern work...funny how people dismiss such items as 'simple and easy to do'...then they try to do it...Superb!

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  2. Thanks! I wondered if people might think patterns are too boring, but I agree, they aren't as easy to do as people might assume until you get the hang of them.

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  3. It's amazing what you can do with 5 lines, lovely patterns. Thanks for your comments too.

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  4. Thank you. I love getting feedback, especially the pleasant kind. I enjoyed going to both of your websites.

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  5. Pleasant patternings. Good abstractions often provide more interest than realism.

    A brief note (feel free to ignore, delete, or be upset at (I don't bite...well, at least unless asked...plus i'm in CA, so yr safe): I believe you are acquainted with "raison d'etre" (french for reason for being!). She seems to be a nice person, somewhat talented, if a tad narcissistic but she's also friends with some nutty right-wingers at this blog.

    Now, she might protest or not at being called right-wing, but the family men who run that blog certainly are--one thug "byronius" in particular, a mormon, Schwarzenegger supporter, Prop. 8 supporter (like "max" the dolt who runs the site) steroids binger, and mail order fraud scum (ie " chiropractics"...hah) etc. Some people around Demo blogs --and the bay area Ahht scene, I believe-- are aware of this.

    RdE lies if she calls me a rightist, or creepo, deviant, etc. I'm no angel, but never supported repubs/sunday schoolers, or Osiris forbid, mormons. I pointed this out to her like several months ago. Really, I think "creatives" should be aware of who they are dealing with--

    Take care

    J.

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