I Drew Todays Google Doogle Of Frederick Douglass. Happy Black History Month! *black Fist Emoji*

I drew today’s Google Doogle of Frederick Douglass. Happy Black History Month! *black fist emoji*

Fellow printmakers, are you as excited for SGCI Portland 2016 as I am? 

Here’s a little sneak peek of a project I’m working on for all you conference goers (and anyone else in Portland in March) for the show VARIABLE STATES: PRINTS NOW at one of my favorite Portland galleries, Upfor. Fellow printmaker and friend Heather Lee Birdsong is curating the show - follow her tumblr @smidgeonpress if you don’t already.

Trillian really is the best.

Unemployment Comic #32: I Love @smidgeonpress & @wcwilliams

Micron and Tombow

Be Kind Online, made by Michael Buchino and BT Livermore

Available for sale at shop.btlivermore.com, but also as a free PDF download here.

A recurring conversation between myself and fellow artist friends for years has been a naive desire that something similar to the WPA still existed today. The WPA was an incredibly broad program, of course, but the Federal Art Project within the WPA has been a source of inspiration for me for years, in visual style, but also for its honest, and often blunt, message delivery.

There’s a drive within myself and many artists to be able to use their skills not merely to create products to beautify a space, but also to inform, and perhaps even change minds for the better. Running parallel to that drive is a hope that it be recognized, and supported on a larger scale, that unique pieces of art and design have a power to promote causes and disseminate necessary information effectively and efficiently in ways that other, drier methods do not.

I’m hoping this poster is only the first of many, on a variety of topics, that I would like to create in the near future, whether alone, in collaboration with Buchino again, or alongside other artists as well.

This is the second screenprint collaboration between @buchino​ and I this year. We chose to work within the general feel of the WPA poster style, but with a message necessary for our modern times (although doing so while also referencing an old saying, “do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”). To challenge ourselves further, we opted to create the entire print without the use of computers. All original images and lettering were drawn to size first, then cut from rubylith, or drawn with grease pencil. Textures were created by spattering ink onto transparent plastic with an old paintbrush.

Buchino did a much more in-depth writeup of our entire process, including more photos and even some rubylith-cutting videos. That can be seen here.

Finally able to share the news: I did today’s Google Doodle for MLK Day! 

This means more than I can even describe.

Original illustration by Robert Fawcett, source unknown.