Tapigami Exhibit at Maker Faire 2013

"Tapigami"

Last weekend I attended the Maker Faire in the Bay Area, CA.  The Maker Faire's tag line is "The Greatest Show and Tell on Earth.  It's a family friendly celebration of the maker movement.  If you've never heard of it before or want to learn more about it, I recommend checking out the official site, here.  You can also read about it on past posts here and here.

One of the attractions that caught my attention was the Tapigami Exhibit.  Tapigami (pron: Tāpəˈgämē) is a contemporary art form created by Northern California artist Danny Scheible.

The exhibit consisted of over 80,000 masking tape sculptures, with most made of basic cream masking tape.  I overheard someone on the tapigami staff say this exhibit took ten years to make. 

I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture, but the backdrop is hangers covered in tape.

If you want to make your own tapigami work of art, Danny has a new tapigami book available for sale which debuted for the first time at the Maker Faire.  I'm wondering how this technique would look with some washi tape.  What do you think?

Secret Asian in Disguise

Children can say the most unexpected and funny things.  I decided to take some of those unexpected moments and work them into my art.  Pictured above is an illustration of my son.  When he was little he used to think "secret agent in disguise" was actually "secret asian in disguise".  I feel like I need to give you a little background on this so you understand why we thought this was funny.  First off, I'm Caucasian and my husband is Japanese.  My son ended up taking more after me when it comes to looks; he has medium brown hair and fair skin.  That said, he kind of is like a "secret asian in disguise".

Below is a little bit about how I created this illustration.

I started off with the photo above.

I cropped the photo and turned it into a black and white image.  I used the "photocopy" filter in Photoshop to make it.  If I'm making an illustration that's mainly black and white, I like to do this so I can get a better idea of how the image will look.

Next I sketched out the image on Bristol board.  Once I had a good outline of the image, I started inking it in one section at a time. I recommend using Micron pens for this. They come in all different sizes.  I used a 03 for this illustration. 

Last I colored in the image with markers.  Lately I've been using Copic markers for my illustrations.  I also like Tria markers. 

If you were going to make a piece of art from an overheard quote, what would it be?

InstaThis Turns Photos into Art

 

Not to long ago I was approached by InstaThis to review their wood or acrylic prints.  This was perfect timing on their part because I was just sharing on Sulia how I never know what to do with all my Instagram photos.  Usually there's not enough photos of the same event to create a photo album which leaves me with a bunch of photos hanging out on my computer/phone.  Now I can say I've converted at least one photo into a lovely piece of art thanks to InstaThis.

How InstaThis Works

You can connect with Instagram to upload your photos or upload directly from your computer.  I uploaded an image from my computer.

 My daughter wearing her ewok hat.

Here's a close up of the image I had printed on 10 x 10 birch wood.  InstaThis also gives you the option of printing on acrylic but I thought the warm tones of this picture would play off with the wood texture nicely.  This brings me to an important point, printing on wood will produce slightly different results than printing on paper.  My image came out a little darker which is expected.  That said, I thought the printing quality was very good.

Here's a couple pictures of what the back of the wood looks like.  I like how the edges are beveled to give it a more polished look.  You'll also notice the groove in the back of the wood.  That's for mounting your art.  Each piece comes with mounting hardware that you place in the wall.  Then you just slide the art onto it.

I don't have a picture to share but my print came very nicely and safely packaged.  The print was neatly wrapped up surrounded by paper to cushion it and packed in a sturdy cardboard box.  When I receive a neatly wrapped package, it tells me the sender takes pride in their product.

Thinking of converting some of your Instagram photos into prints?  InstaThis is offering a 15% discount to Zakka Life readers!  Just use the code KAWAII15.  I do not receive any kind monetary compensation or commission from purchased products.

Word Play

Just in case you haven't found enough ways to squander your time on the internet, I've found a site to help you out and it's called Tagxedo. Tagxedo helps you create word clouds from a URL, twitter feed, theme, etc. But what makes this word cloud site stand out is that you can make the words into any image you want. You can even change the font, font direction, color, and more. To test out the site I uploaded one of my profile pictures and created a word cloud based on the Zakka Life URL. It was fairly easy to make and fun to do. Check it out and tell me what you think.

Odosketch: Fun Site for Sketching

Have you seen the site Odosketch? It's basically what you would guess from the name, a site where you can sketch images. What makes it a little different is that it creates an animation of all your strokes like the image above. The sketch board has a specific color pallet and brush selection which is really quite lovely. Below are a few pictures from the Odosketch gallery so you can see this tool's true capability.

Happy Day Sketching!

Child Birthday Invitation

For each child's birthday I like to design the invitations. This is what will be going out in the mail this year for my daughter's birthday. We decided on a tea-party theme. Okay, okay, I decided on the tea party theme. She wanted a princess party but when we discussed the matter it turned out her main concern was if there would be a cake. I'm pretty sure this will be the last year I get to choose the theme, so I plan to make the most of it. I plan to share more details of the party in late October.

Have any good party tips? Please share.

Combating Creative block

"Penny Plains" and "Two-pence Coloulred:" English Theatrical Portraits 1799-1847 in the William Appleton Collection

This image is from The New York Digital Library . I have found the digital library to be a great source for inspiration, education, and reference for crafts and art among other things. They have thousands of digital pictures you can access.

This is one of my favorite sites for inspiration. I'd love to hear from all of you what sites inspire you. Please share with all of us your favorite sites in the comments section and leave a link if possible.