Graphic Design and Illustration.

Archive for ‘November, 2011’

Feeling kinda old

So, I went to another meeting of the now infamous Secret Handshake, a meetup group for creatives here in Winnipeg. Since my significant other had the night off, I dragged her with me kicking and screaming 🙂

It was held at the King’s Head Pub. A nice place I suppose, but considering the size of the crowd in relation to the room we were in, it did get rather loud. I had to fall back on the old, smile and just nod trick a few times as I simply could not hear the other person speaking. Or I’m just showing my age.

But we did get to meet a few more interesting people. Showing my age or not, it was definitely a… younger crowd. But we both had fun, and Kimmy did say she would do it again should she ever get a free Thursday night. Though, she did raise a good question: how does the group afford all this? There are name tags, pins, snacks, the room itself, and other things I’m sure I’m forgetting. Will there be someone coming a knocking on my door for collections, will I be paying into a protection racket? Or is it more of the Godfather approach and one day I’ll have a phone call from someone in need if a “favour” and suddenly I gotta see a man about a horse? Or maybe there’s a fundraiser meeting and I just haven’t been to enough meetings to know about it yet. Guess only time will tell.

Oh, and if you find yourself at the King’s Head Pub, and you order something spicy, go for the mild. We both ordered medium, and just a little too spicy. And we both enjoy a meal with a bit of a kick to it.

Winnipeg Arts Scene

Along with some snow, I few other things came my way at this weekend.

Firstly, there was a fundraiser at St. Luke’s. Seems every Tuesday morning, they run a soup kitchen of sorts. Friday night they had an Irish folk music group perform a concert as a fundraiser for that cause. One of the players also attends the youth group that Kimmy helps organize, so it was sort of a double whammy for us. The group is known as Rinn and they can be found here. They don’t seem to mention on their website, but as they explained at the show, Rinn is a Celtic word for “foot”, and they chose that name as one of the flautists (or flutist, if you really must) raisers her foot every time there’s a changeover in music. Not being a musician, I have no idea why they need something like that, but I’ll take their word for it. Anyways, it was a fun night, with good music. Good enough that we bought their CD. Kimmy has a soft spot for Celtic style music, and I must admit I don’t mind it much either.

And then on Saturday, a former boss of mine had an art opening in one of the many little galleries in the Exchange district. This one was the Mayberry. You can find Peter’s work online here. It was interesting to see his work. I’ve known Peter was an accomplished fine artist since I started working at Pollard Banknote almost seven-and-a-half years ago, but I’d never really had the chance to see his work. Now that he’s “retired” and pursing a career full time in fine art rather than commercial art, I thought it would be a good time to see his art. Was very interesting. Since most of the work on display were fall scenes, there were a lot of gray, monotone pieces with shocks of bright colours in them. And once you got a little closer to the pieces (some of the canvases were quite large), you could see the little dots of colours he was using. Very similar to a halftone dot used in commercial printing or a very controlled, simplified offshoot of Georges Seurat. Or as my photographer wife puts it, “Tiny little elves!” And speaking of Kimmy, as per usual, her favourite piece was, of course, the most expensive one! Not that I can really afford the prices he was asking (not that they weren’t worth it). Oh well, we have plenty enough art on our walls at home anyways. Any more, and we’ll have to start charging admission to people.

Who knows, maybe someday I’ll be in an exhibit someday…

It Worked!!!!!

As of sometime last night, I had real, solid, tangible proof that I am the greatest husband of all (sorry to everyone else, but I DO have physical proof). It’s just too bad everyone will just have to wait until after Christmas as to what I’m driving at, since my wife is an avid subscriber to the blog. But things definitely have some possibilities…

(Retro guy courtesy of me.)

3D Dino Test

Quite a while ago I was playing around with a free 3D program called Blender. So last winter I was learning how to use the program. It turned out pretty good, so I’ve finally gotten the nerve to post it. There’s quite a few things I think I’d do differently if I ever had to do that again (and I might at some point!) but otherwise I think he’s good to go. He’s a moveable, mostly fully rigged model, though not really animate-able as I am not an animator, and that stuff seems quite complicated. It’s one thing to make the model, quite another to get the damn thing to move!

In stores now!

So last weekend I took a quite trip to McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location. The freelance book design I worked on as a print on demand piece got a little more traction as a proper book in a brick-and-morter store! You’ll have to forgive the lighting, as I was trying to get a quick picture while nobody was looking and fluorescent lighting is not always very forgiving. But it proves the book does in fact exist. And can be found in the “Armchair Travel” section of the store.

Friday’s claim to fame

So here are the pics (such as they are) that prove that we did meet Peter Mansbridge, if only briefly. The second one is quite blurry, which just goes to show you that you can have a pro camera, but without a pro using it, you can still wind up with pretty crummy images from time to time. 🙂

The Call of Fame?

A Very Gracious Guest

Peter Mansbridge

So today I got the privilege of meeting Peter Mansbridge. You know, that guy from CBC’s, The National? Now how’d a nobody from Winnipeg manage to score something like that? Well, I just happen to be married to a somebody, that’s how!

Peter Mansbridge was in town as part of a fundraiser for some local charities. My wife has a fairly strong connection to one of those charities, and was asked to photograph the event. I was her +1.

So after skulking around the VIP room for about an hour, holding Kim’s photography gear, somebody grabbed myself and Kim and threw us into a photo with the guest of honour. Since Kim didn’t take the shot herself, it did turn out a little burry, so it might be a pic of us standing with Peter Mansbridge, or maybe the Loch Ness Monster. I’ll post the picture once I’ve got it in my hot little hands. Either way, he was gracious enough to shake my hand and pose with us. And quite a few other people as well.

The rest of the dinner was fabulous. Though I do prefer my beef a little more cooked than that. I heard a distinct “moo” come from my meat the fist time I went for a bite! And the talk Peter gave after dinner was very good. Quite an insight on his career and I am sure quite an inspiration to the students in attendance. All in all, a good night out!

Pumpkin 2011


So every year I put my fear of slicing myself to pieces and my sometimes acute sympathy pains aside and lobotomize a pumpkin. Not sure why, as we only had six kids this year. An all time low. We usually hit the double digits. Guess that’s what you get when you live on a sometimes busy street and almost none of the neighbours do anything for the trick or treaters. Also means we have quite a bit of candy to get through. Darn it all to heck.

And anyone know if you lobotomize something, and it was a vegetable to begin with, does the procedure make it any smarter instead?

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