As everyone engages in the typical back to school routines, I can only reflect on all the things still left to do with "Summer of Fun". No matter how close we are to the Labor Day weekend, the unofficial "end of summer", I have to mention that the season has a whole SIX weeks remaining. This summer was planned to include group paintball battles, river tubing, trolley pubbing, speedway racing, camping, attending a Durham Bulls' baseball game and many other activities. In anticipation of all the fun that remains, I finished some vector art today created in Adobe Illustrator from an original pencil sketch. Being that this would be my first time experiencing a lot of these activities, the excitement still bounces and there's no way I'm giving up on these plans before September 22nd! 
  I am happy about the fun I have had so far, however. Although it has not felt like much time has been set aside from work for fun, I've volunteered often, traveled a little, attended a few concerts, cookouts, and weddings. Of course, creating art always falls into my category of fun, and I've had some opportunities to draw and paint so far, i.e. the J Cole drawing I thought I could finish before the Dollar & A Dream Raleigh Tour. That did not go as planned, but feel free to browse some progress pictures of the drawing below. More summer updates to come... Enjoy!

  The month of June was surprisingly packed with a number of activities that I had the pleasure of attending and being part of.  Those included Wine and Painting at the Hayti Heritage Center, outdoor sketching and exploring with the Triangle Sketch Crawl meet up group,  a Community Art Show at the Carrack and the normal leisure art and design.  July is proving to be the same, but stay tuned for a follow up post about that!
  On June 6th, I visited the Hayti Heritage Center (HHC) for the first time where Triangle Friends of African American Arts (TFAAA) hosted a fun Wine and Painting event.  Instructed by Brenda Miller Holmes, Director of the Durham Civil Rights History Mural (DCRHM) Project, we learned about Artist John Wesley Hardrick (1891-1968) and recreated his painting called Forest Pool. It was a pleasant surprise to meet Brenda finally. I had been in touch with her after signing up to volunteer to paint  when I heard that the planning and design process for the mural were underway. I am happy to say the mural is currently in the grid-drawing process at the wall and the TFAAA will team up and work on painting it this weekend. The gallery below shows pictures from the TFAAA event. Also, please find two shared Facebook pictures at the very bottom, one from TFAAA and the other from a day of volunteering with the DCRHM Project -- both link to their Facebook pages, so go check them out and hit like!

  The next day was the meet up with Triangle Sketch Crawl and we met at Trinity Park. This was also my first time at the small, community park near the Duke's East Campus. I walked around until I found a shady, picturesque place to sit. Below are a few pics I snapped out what I saw and what I drew. In addition, that same weekend was the drop-off for the Carrack's quarter-annual community art show and third birthday, so I took "The Drum That Spoke" over to be displayed. 

 As mentioned in my last post, here is a process video of my Save The Elephants design - inspired by the presentation I attended a couple of weeks ago at the Carolina Theater. Environmental Artivism... Support!

  I post today to share a couple of new logos done in Adobe Illustrator CS6. The process was very experimental, but as I approach the completion of the designs, I am pleased.
  The DSR logo was originally hand-drawn. I then vectorized it and played [a lot] around with the colors. The image to the left is my favorite of all the edits. I used a Deke's Techniques video (of lynda.com) to place an image as a color fill on the states, gradients to fill the space created by the lines, and the pen tool to fill the letters. The lesson of the video is a little different from what I actually did, but again I say, the process was very experimental! I used his technique of adding a stroke to the text of the Minor Bros logo (below) as well. As far as the reflection for that logo, I used a howtechgraphics video from youtube and some blurring effects I learned some time ago.