[monsters in the closet]

Good Morning Beautiful Whole Foods Market Yonkers!

linkworshiper — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 22:24:50 +0000

Yes, that is literally how every single page in our store goes. It’s a thing our Store Team Leader started and I guess it kind of stuck. Even other people emailing our store’s team members address us like that! We must really be that beautiful!

So to let everybody walking into our store through the main entrance know that (and also because the Columbus Circle store has something like this and we had to one-up them), I got put on the job of creating something to greet customers in the foyer. The challenge was that our regional coordinator wanted something to go on the glass over the doors, but the issue was not only figuring out how to attach something there, but also how to make it not look like crap from the other side of the glass. The other challenge was that if I was going to make something like the greeting at CIR, I would have to find material to even make it out of, as the CIR one was made out of a giant piece of cardboard that our store had long-since recycled. So what I ended up doing was taking some old dangling cardboard circles (I’m sure you’ve seen what I’m talking about in pretty much any Whole Foods you’ve ever been in ever) and cutting out some banner-like shapes so I could create a sort of wavy situation. Then I painted the pieces with chalkboard paint, and then emptied the ink out of a few markers so that I could just mix the colors and paint it on top of that with a brush. Hair dryer power, go!

The lettering happened sort of impulsively, but I like how it turned out. The other signmaker at my store is super into oldschool signs and he has a whole bunch of pretty examples pinned here and there around the desk, so I used one for reference and pretty much just free-handed it with a pencil. I think only I’ll see the flaws. Honestly, I think only team members notice this thing at all! Then again, it’s only been up for a day.

This is a Coney Island, Stillwell Avenue Bound Local F Train….

linkworshiper — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 01:33:49 +0000

I’m super done with all the usual representations of Duo Maxwell, the American Gundam pilot. They’re usually really overly patriotic or too… homegrown, I guess. Maybe it’s just my idea of Duo as a character, or maybe just my own life, but I prefer a more urban identity for him. A Brooklyn punk he’ll be to me, and I guess that’s why I’ve suddenly decided to let the boy tour the spots in Brooklyn that mean something to me. So hats off to you who will enjoy seeing the places he’ll go, and the places I’ve been… or at least the places that mean something to me.

Also, about the weird shape of the picture…. At work, I made one of those cardboard type things that has the face cut out for throwing pies at people. So I took the face-shaped scrap I’d already painted with chalk paint anyway, figuring I’d find some use for it one way or another. I guess I did!

Nervous Rex

linkworshiper — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:49:33 +0000

And how my stomach burns but only at night,
When the moon is bright
And I have dreams about bears with the reddest mouths.
But your arms are warm
And your legs are wrapped around,
And the sound of your heart
The unsteady sound.

Been listening to a lot of Laura Stevenson and the Cans to get me through this rough shit. I really do have faith things will eventually fall into place for me and my man, but the wait is killing me. So I guess it’s good I like to draw and such, right? I think it’s a good sign I’ve been able to get back into doing these things, as I have had a pretty tumultuous go of it. (I was in the hospital for about a month and adjusting to regular life and also trying to manage this awkwardness with my guy, plus land a promotion at work has been kind of overwhelming.) Anyway, this image was super inspired by the song it’s titled after, in particular the lyrics I put there. It is so moving to me and it reminds me a lot of how my man makes me feel, even if he’s being kind of an idiot right now.

My Heart

linkworshiper — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 22:40:01 +0000

My man and I have been split up for a out two months now and a lot of really intense shit has happened to me in the meantime. But there was a glimmer of hope that things might be turning around for us, and nothing could make me happier because he is still always on my mind. My muse if you will.

Beets Untitled

linkworshiper — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 03:07:38 +0000

Part of what I really like about music is how it helps me make art. I have been listening sort of obsessively to Brooklyn’s own Laura Stevenson and the Cans lately, and there is something about her music that really mellows me out in a way that makes me want to paint (among other things, haha). This particular painting happened in a really organic way, which I liked. It was originally a kind of dark and ugly painting I’d done of Billie Holiday a long time ago, and I kept finding reasons not to paint over it. But being poor and too lazy to make a long trip into the city just to buy canvas forced my hand. At first I was just going to cover up the old painting and go from there, but I ended up sort of creating the basic outline for the image with the colours that got worked into the background white. I decided to go with this somewhat happy accident because it was giving it this ethereal feel, and that’s exactly what I wanted out of the painting. It turned out alright for a two hour project if I do say so myself.

Anyway, my excuse for painting my boyfriend THIS time is that Laura Stevenson is one of his favourites and he is the one who introduced her to me.

Your Food is in Another Castle

linkworshiper — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 02:53:31 +0000

Obviously when new products and such come in, the shelves need to get changed over into new and shiny things. This means more illustrations!! Which I love, but it also means a fast turn around time. To help us out with this, our Grocery Team gave us three illustrations that would be used regularly. I’m still working on the chips and salsa one that will go in this set, but here is pasta and cereal. Incidentally, the theme started with the more subtle nerdiness of the cereal one. Man, I really ought to do a Zelda one. Zelda is my fave!

Happy Turkey Day

linkworshiper — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 23:02:03 +0000

Unsurprisingly, the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s at Whole Foods is out of control with people buying enough food to feed a third world country in that short space of time. Suffice to say, things have been a little nuts at work! I’ve barely even had time to work on side commission projects since all I want to do when I get home is vegetate and read/play video games. On top of all that, I’ve been trying to apply to work at a Whole Foods that is way more convenient to where I live, so I can return my mom’s car and end my ridiculous commute out of the city to get to work every day. Cars are nice for trips, but having one all the time is such a huge money-suck!

On the bright side, here are some festive Thanksgiving and early holiday chalk illustrations to get your juices flowing. And your stomach excited.

Custom Evangelion Skateboard Deck

linkworshiper — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 20:12:29 +0000

My boyfriend is pretty hard into skateboarding, so he has a giant stack of old decks just piled up in his house that are too beat up to use anymore. So I asked him if he would be willing to let me have some of them to paint and hang up, and he was more than happy to oblige. This is the first one I made, and it is the angel from the first episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion, which my boyfriend requested. I wanted to find a way to draw the angel that was kind of cool and different from how it looked in the show, especially since the board is long and narrow and the angel is too. I used a lot of the same techniques I used for making chalkboards at work on this skateboard, right down to even using black matte base paint on the board before I started decorating it. A lot of people ask me what my technique is, but honestly when I’m doing stuff like this, I sort of just go with instinct. There is a certain sense for balance in an illustration and I add and take away based on that. Anyway, I hope you like it!

Progress shots and the finished product! Many episodes of Sherlock later!

This Is Halloween, Halloween, Halloween!

linkworshiper — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 03:38:18 +0000

Gearing up for Halloween and the month has barely started! I guess it’s going to come up fast, but it still seemed a little weird that we were carving a pumpkin and putting out Oktoberfest beer in September. Anyhoo, the fun part of Halloween is that there is so much fun decorating to do, and it’s a shame that it’s going to get kicked to the curb so quickly for the lame-o holiday season. (I am the biggest Scrooge on the planet, as I’m sure you will soon see once I’m stuck in the holiday cycle for work.) Anyway, here are some of the cool things I’ve made at work for Halloween so far! The carved pumpkin was a joint effort by Donald and I: I made the tongue and the baby pumpkin, and he did the big pumpkin’s face!

French Press to Go Chalks!

linkworshiper — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 02:20:38 +0000

There is a promotion going on at Whole Foods for this new on-the-go French Press lid for coffee. The idea is so that you can have a fresh ground cup of coffee that is super high quality prepared for your morning craziness. It looks more or less like a regular disposable coffee lid but it has a built in press, which might be a little hard to imagine… ergo why we pulled out all the stops in illustrating these new product for the coffee bar in our store as so customers would get a visual understanding of this innovative new product. I made two chalkboards for this, one of which is just a straight up advertisement for the program and a fairly standard illustration of the product, and another which demonstrates how you make a cup of coffee with this new lid.

There is another sequence of photos that demonstrate my process for this second chalk. I was a bit more painterly with it, which is nice to do when I have the time because I think the broader strokes of color really come together nicely with my sort of insane penchant for line detail. Because my boyfriend used to supervise the coffee bar at his Whole Foods (where he has been moving up the food chain on the Specialty team), and also because I’m crazy and enjoy drawing his face for some mysterious reason, my one-track brain used him as the lovely subject for the how-to chalk. So as you will see in clicking through the images, I first did a sketch and then started blocking in colours, building up shadows and highlights on top of a matte base colour first. Then I added the background and tightened everything up with some linework. Easy as 1,2,3! (Or using a French press!)

I also included a photograph of the whole display we made for the coffee bar. My coworker, Donald, and I thought it would be cool to make something big and eye-catching that you could see even from the other side of the store, and we settled on a big coffee cup with dangling coffee beans. We made the cup and beans out of layers of cardboard that we ganked from the receiving department, tracing the shapes on and cutting them out with an x-acto knife. Then we painted, taped and hung everything up!