Octopus Ink

This is my first foray into blogging, and thus this post is accompanied by the first bit of artwork I did that involved a true combination of traditional pen & ink and Photoshop. The entire scene was colored using a laptop touch pad. I have since invested in a wacom tablet.

Most of my work is for the Birch Aquarium in San Diego. I make images, design graphic stuff, and occasionally make toys for the education department. I help out in the exhibits department as well, for example, by creating concept drawings when we're designing exhibits. I like thinking that my artwork serves the purpose of
inspiring people to appreciate and to become interested in biodiversity and the natural environment. That can happen in the smallest ways, such as a tiny black and white illustration on a kid's worksheet, to this tide pool scene you see here, designed to be a large scale backdrop for a tide pool class for kids who perhaps have never seen a tide pool before.

I have a lot of fun projects, and I realized that I want to document the fun stuff that I produce. And why not share my artwork too? I figure most people don't even realize that there are artists working behind the scenes at museums, to make the museum experience as great as possible for visitors. Hopefully you'll get some insight into making art for non-art museums, as well as peek at my creative process. On this end, it will be helpful for me to practice talking about and critiquing my work. It's been a year since I finished art school, and I have to admit, I miss the artsy discussions we had on a daily basis.