So…. I was looking through my external hard drive again… I ended up wandering through past projects. I was intending to find an .ai file of a company logo I vectorized back in the day for use on our new jerseys for the Mello Velo / BTB Cycling Team.

I came across a bunch of my first arts and designs, I thought it would be fun to share.

hikeschool

About 10th or 11th grade in highschool I decided I wanted to pursue some sort of design. I was very interested in industrial design because I was taking classes on CAD programs, 3d modeling, and learning to use CNC milling programs and equipment. So inherit to applying design school, I had to load up on art classes. Since junior year where I took college level calculus at La Fayette hs in conjunction with Syracuse University I had the math & engineering (in conjunction with Rochester Institute of Tech.. project lead the way classes) stuff underway… This is about when I consciously got into art to develop skills to be able to sketch out ideas and form.

Pretty sure this was a grid based still life… I had some fun with the melting neon green and black grid look familiar?

Acrylic painting in the style of David Hockney:

Still drawing with concentration on highlights:

college

I ended up going to Monmouth University, down in Jersey. It was the best combination of decent art program, and division 1 athletics. I ended up doing graphic design and running track and cross country, which was awesome. Every time I visited the school it was sunny, a mile away from the ocean, 2 hrs from NYC… Seemed alright to me.

So we did some basic design classes:

Typographic Self Portrait:

We did tons of other projects but in addition to that I got an on campus job as the art lab assistant so besides keeping the printers and everything in working order and eventually becoming the on hand tutor, I got to use the programs and do numerous independent projects which were very fun.

An illustration of my car entitled ‘the blackura’:

at this point it was a work in progress, until i realized i really liked the unfinished look… where after I developed it further I deleted those new layers to keep it like this.

Cletus:

I did a series of photoshoppings of friends to capture their true selves. Included in the series was also the jolly green giant, the hamburglar… and a bunch of others I cannot recall. Perhaps I will unearth them at some point. Here is the source of this handsome project:

freelance

So after goofin’ around, enjoying design and arts, being in the art lab 70-90% of my life. I got my first freelance job, some lady was starting up a dog care company and was looking to employ some design student and it ended up being me, I made some sketches…

Over some conversation, we put them all together:

And put together my first freelance logo:

While I working on that I got some tips from one John Vigg on how to optimize the color process to make things easier for application in signage, printing, etc… Started to really learn about organization and keeping a nice clean file and did another little freelance vectorization for Vigg.

From there I ended up working at the sign shop, learning more and more, doing more freelance, interning at some sweet firms, and now here we are… starting a cycling team and livin’ the dream…

ok.. so back to looking for that .ai file.