Here’s a drawing I did of the Cameo Theater for the 48 Hour Film Project last month, for SimpleMan Productions, Jonathan Zitelman’s film production company. My drawing, ostensibly done by the lead actor, could have been about anything, but since the 48HFP films screened at the Cameo Theater, I thought it would be nice to give the Cameo a cameo in the movie.
Jordan and I just returned from a week-long roadtrip to Colorado, driving with my Dad to a secluded cabin not too far from Woodland Park. My brother and my nephew flew in to join us for the second half of the vacation — it was great seeing both of them for an extended, guys-only retreat. We all had a lake completely to ourselves, which meant a lot of quiet, reflective time sitting and thinking, talking, walking, preparing meals, sketching, casting a few lures, tending to the fireplace, and puttering around without an agenda. The other four guys stayed in the main cabin, and I retreated to the smaller cabin just uphill.
Jordan and Austin both caught brown trouts with spinning reels (what Gus Orviston called angling) while Dad and Mark practiced their overhead fly casting; I found a flat boulder and fished a bit one morning before commandeering the canoe: one thing I'm a purist about is quiet canoeing. Oars should not bang against canoes; and water splooshes should be avoided.
We also enjoyed a day in Colorado Springs, walking around the Red Rocks open space, driving through Garden of the Gods, and revisiting a flood of good, 20-year-old memories at Glen Eyrie and the Flying W Ranch. I'm posting these illustrations of the main cabin (a front and back view), the tool shed, and the dam bridge. I had originally intended to watercolor these, but I think I'm going to leave them as pen and ink.
I know I'll look back on this trip with great memories; the trip managed to capture a moment in time where my son was old enough to be considered one of the grown-ups, where Dad was young enough to participate in everything, where my nephew was old enough to run around without too much supervision, and where Mark and I were freed up from work distractions long enough to really relax and take it easy for a few days. I'm hoping we'll get in a few more guys' trips like these before Jordan goes off to college. I'll probably post some pictures soon.
Illustrations © paul soupiset. do not reproduce.
Painting: Jo’s / Austin (2006), Paul Soupiset
My morning destination, called “Millbrook (Roy-Hardin House)”, was nearby, and I got to experience a beautiful Austin street I had never driven down before. The street name is Mary, and like its probable namesake, this little street in SoCo is, in its own eclectic way, blessed. I’ll have to return and explore it (the portion running between Congress and Lamar). I arrived at the address I was given and rolled into a green oasis with a stone entry. The decomposed granite driveway produced a lovely rustic popping sound under my car’s tires.
I was a guest at Millbrook along with my friend Bob Carlton and the board members of the Texas Book Festival. Bob and I were on hand to facilitate a conversation with the board about the present/future of books/reading/digital publishing. I have to say I’m impressed with this organization: this is a forward thinking, smart group of people who are both engaged in the conversation, and are doing amazing things around literacy and promoting [good] Texas authors. Anyway, I was honored to come spend some time with this group, and thankful for Amy and the kids for generously letting me go. My public-speaking stage fright was more at bay than usual.
I could have easily hung out at Millbrook all afternoon. The lush, shady-green reminds me of my childhood backyard. I’m sure this is someone’s sacred space. I had a nice talk with Nancy Whitworth, the owner of the place as well. The grounds are amazing in April — the 1800s rubblestone house was once a mill. A carriage house turned photographic studio and other outbuildings are situated amidst dense foliage.
I swung by South Conress briefly on my return trip home, long enough to go on my ritual/habitual trip to Uncommon Objects and enjoy a couple of street musicians before coming home down IH-35.
I’ll post some iphone photos from Congress a little later tonight if I can last.
[Sent from my iPhone]
Paul Soupiset
Toolbox Studios, Inc.
454 Soledad Street, Suite 100
San Antonio, TX 78205
210.225.8269 x102
877.225.8205
210.225.8200 fax
210.787.8968 cell
[email protected]
http://toolboxstudios.com
Where ideas work.
[Sent from my iPhone]
Paul Soupiset
Toolbox Studios, Inc.
454 Soledad Street, Suite 100
San Antonio, TX 78205
210.225.8269 x102
877.225.8205
210.225.8200 fax
210.787.8968 cell
[email protected]
http://toolboxstudios.com
Where ideas work.
"There shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse, and a netzer shall grow out of his roots." Isaiah 11:1 (NKJV)
Yesterday I gave an hour-and-a-half design breakout session for participants at the 2009 Baptist Media Forum at Camp Buckner, up near Inks Lake. The seminar was entitled Between Heaven & Helvetica: How Good Design Can Energize Your Existing Communications. I hadn't delivered a talk that long before, so I was a little nervous to say the least. I figured I'd leave a half-hour for Q&A and prepared what I thought was an hour's worth of content.
My stated purpose was to "embark upon an interactive, multi-sensory conversation among designers, self-proclaimed non-creatives, quasi-creatives, and people who have to work with creatives in order to sketch at the intersection(s) of good design, good theology, and our role as culture creators." True to form, it was meandering and quirky — a soupçon of history, theology of the Imago Dei, a little design philosophy and advice, and visual inspiration/stimulation (I hope).
About 15 minutes into it, I realized I had too much content, but pressed forward, and we ended up getting through most of it without much compromise. Before I went on, my friend Marcus Goodyear gave a great presentation on online community building; I knew he was going to skew his content heavily (actually completely) online, so I weighted my presentation toward traditional media and channel-neutral branding design.
The preso was a mashup featuring three youth media case studies tied to some theological points I made at the presentation's "history unlesson" ... as well as a gallery of twenty logos I had designed, which I will glom together and present to you below. I also re-fashioned and re-presented my "six design nuggets for non-creatives" talk as a 10-minute overview.
I was really pleased with the mix of people — I asked the group of media professionals (I assumed I'd be getting mostly PR folks, writers and editors) to classify themselves (how modern of me): almost a third of the room comprised designers and creatives. Another third considered themselves quasi-creative, and only one guy thought he was a non-creative.
My friend Tim Snyder made the trip out to the hill country with his visiting friend (my new friend) Josh. They audited the whole session and Josh participated in the interactive [Playdoh sculpting!] portion of the talk as well. With them and Marcus and my friend Brad Russell from The Baptist Standard there in the room, I was more at ease than I would've been.
After the presentation, Tim and Josh and I spent the rest of the day together. On the drive back to San Antonio, we stopped in the Blue Bonnet Café in Marble Falls, TX. That's Josh and his chocolate meringue pie. After that we crashed at my house for a bit ( I really needed a nap) before heading to Alamo Drafthouse Theater to see Slumdog Millionaire.
It was a nice break in the middle of the week.
I leave you with an excerpt from an essay by Leland Ryken that I published in Communiqué back in the day, and dredged up for the conversation yesterday (but didn't have time to share with the group):
Here's a handful of the logos I've designed* — I used these in the presentation:
*the All Saints logo was a collaboration between myself and Von Glitschka, whose work also made it into the presentation.
In other good art news, I sold another painting today to a new friend from the west coast. You may remember EX VOTO from the Eucharist Series. I'm getting ready to crate it up and get it safely to San Francisco. There are still paintings and prints of mine at Viva Books all during December for all your Christmas presents. Prices range from $10 (giclée mini prints, matted) to $1200. And everything in between.
Some GREAT early morning news from the book's F+W editor, Amy, via Danny Gregory:
"The book just hit our warehouse on 11/11, so it should be on bookstore shelves in about two weeks. But it has now been officially "released" and Amazon pre-orders should begin moving very soon."
• We had to add more books to the initial print run because of all the pre-orders
• Also, on Amazon, we are #1 in Graphic Design and #1 in Drawing. (#1,308 in Books overall!)
• You can still hear the An Illustrated Life podcast interviews (including mine) here.
• Please consider pre-ordering your copy today at Amazon - you save $6.40 -- 32%!
or, A Tale of Two "Dannys" and Two "Everydays"
When I knew I was traveling to NYC recently, there were three people I wanted to sit down with and have conversations. The first was a former design intern named Danny Adrain, who is now a senior designer at Razorfish. The second was Thomas Turner, the young editor of Everyday Liturgy. And the third was Danny Gregory, a fellow creative director / author / sketchbook artist / podcaster, and creative force behind the Everyday Matters movement / craze / meme.
I ended up getting to hang with all three. I digress.
Danny Gregory, his wife Patti, and their son Jack welcomed me into their world for an hour or so — they live in a beautiful eighth floor apartment in the Village. Every inch of their apartment was either window glazing, book shelves, or space for hung artwork.
After talking a while [and letting the dogs smell me], we sat down and recorded this audio podcast about my moleskine journal sketching, about my faith and art and intersections therein. It's one of those things where afterwards, listening to it, I felt strange and self-conscious about all of the things I would've said differently (did I represent my art well enough? did I represent my faith well enough? my upbringing, parents and education? did I come off like a total dweeb? important questions like that).
Nonetheless, I invite you to listen. And commentezvous, por favor.
photos by oscar williams
i waited to blog about my recent new york trip, hoping some unifying thread would be found running through the whole of the tapestry — some way to serve up the sights and sounds and smells of the last week that would remain engaging. some way to let you experience some of the energy of the city, some of the joys and loneliness of being a solo guy traipsing around manhattan, of being a fish out of water in a consultancy full of anglican vibe, some of the small pleasures in meeting new friends, in logging a few precious hours with some heretofore online friends, in spending a few quiet evenings with friends danny and kristen trying restaurants in their park slope neighborhood of brooklyn.
no magical thread has been found, other than a celebration of the beautiful, threadless remnants that would not be sewn together, and a new label for that tendency of mine towards assemblage, appropriation, pastiche, and montage: yes, the word of the week was bricolage.
bri•co•lage (n) Something made or put together using whatever materials happen to be available
robert wuthnow's book after the baby boomers: how twenty and thirty-somethings are shaping the future of american religion was the preparatory text for the consultancy hosted by trinity church wall street; one of the main pulls from the text was the idea of spiritual tinkering:
Like the farmer rummaging through the junk pile for makeshift parts the spiritual tinkerer is able to sift through a veritable scrap heap of ideas and practices from childhood, from religious organizations, classes, conversations with friends, books, magazines, television programs and web sites. The tinkerer is free to engage in this kind of rummaging...
maybe i'll post some of my new york sketches soon. but for now, i'll post a few of the photos i shot (haven't been color corrected yet or anything).
m is for: manhattan. moma. mosaics.
then after brooklyn, guggenheim, apple store,
i headed out to west cornwall, connecticut:
The first three scans are the standard moleskine sketchbook; the balance are moleskine watercolor notebooks. This was about all the sketching I did while on vacation, but it was fun nonetheless. With the exception of the one pencil + watercolor, all of them were done using my standard supplies, staedtler black pigment liners (4-pack: .01, .03, .05, .07 mm), and windsor & newton artist's watercolor compact set (11 cm × 13.5 cm)
My car was parked down at Ruta the other morning and got its window smashed in. At first, I thought they grabbed the camera, but then discovered I just had an empty camera case in the back seat to begin with; the camera was at home. They did steal my messenger bag, however, containing Staedtler pigment liners, iPhone cables, one volume of my two-volume set of The Daily Office, and a bunch of random papers.
Today, three days later, the window glass company finally arrived to replace the glazing, vacuum up the safety glass crumbles, and hand me a bill that was conveniently just under my deductible. Facetious. Then I took it to get it washed by someone else. Occasional luxuries are good.
Then I took Amy's mini-van to get a 4-wheel alignment. It took 2.5 hours of waiting around, so I made this sketch, above.
So it's been an automotive week. Still need to get tie end rods on my car (Saturday) and wash and prep the minivan for the trip to New Mexico. Oh yeah: no Soupablog next week.
Have you subscribed via an RSS feed? You ought to. It's really easy. Be an aggregator.
what? caffeine is a stimulant?!?
does anyone else balance Half & Half portion packs, one on top of the other like i do (see above)? yes? ok, then, do you also take the little paper seal tabs and fold them downwards to clasp them both together? yep? then, do you try and lift them both up? try it next time.
i feel compelled to tell you that while I was sketching them (and asking them to hold still for five or ten minutes), Kate's shoulders and face were completely hidden by that blanket. So I don't have a four-legged daughter, but rather a pile of daughters on my hands.
Remember that "sketchbookbook" I told you about a few months ago? ¿No?
Last year I was asked to be a small part of a new book compiled by Everyday Matters author Danny Gregory. Honored, I gathered together some of my favorite 2007 Lentenblog sketches and a few other Moleskine goodies, and packaged them up and sent them off to NYC.
Over the next few months, as the sketches started pouring in from around the world, Danny gave contributors little sneak peeks, so we could catch a glimpse of the other artists' work. Trust me: this is going to be a cool book. One I'm honored to be part of. Anyway, it'll be 272 pages, full color, and chock-full of a wide array of illustrated journals, inky sketchbooks, watercolored Moleskines, with essays and interviews with the artists as well.
It's finished now, and being printed and readied for distribution in December:
An Illustrated Life: Drawing Inspiration
From The Private Sketchbooks Of
Artists, Illustrators And Designers.
You can now pre-order it through Amazon and knock a third off the price!
I can't wait! Get the word out, bloggers, ye!
— paul
an unused sketch (based on a line from the book) from the forthcoming Jesus for President
Paul Soupiset is a graphic designer, illustrator, songwriter, liturgist, youth media consultant, journalist, mentor, typophile, husband, father, and self-described armchair theologian who lives in San Antonio, Texas, USA, with his wife Amy and four children.
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