Corrie and I just attended a wedding in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Prior to the festivities we took a tour of the interior with Alltournative – Off Track Adventures. We had an amazing time! Our tour, “Maya Encounter”, included the exploration of the ancient city of Cobá, the opportunity to climb Nohoch Mul (the tallest pyramid in the Yucatan), a rappel down into and then swim within a cenote, a canoe trip across and then zip-line over a lagoon, monkey sightings, a purification ritual, AND a lunch prepared by local Mayan women. It was an incredible day! Above is an image of the lagoon, Punta Laguna, we canoed across and “zipped” over. Photographs of our entire day can be seen on Flickr.

The past couple of weeks have been a drag, doing real bland corporate illustration work. To keep myself from going insane I’ve tried to find enough time to sketch some of the other ideas that have been bouncing round my head for my new graphic novel, which I should hopefully be starting in the next fortnight. Hopefully.
You can learn more about my comic plans at an online interview with comics Brainiac, Matt Badham here.

I recently had the pleasure of collaborating with the musical duo Rara Avis(Terri Hron and Robbert van Hulzen) on the illustration and design for their new album, One Fell Swoop. They are based in Amsterdam, and make strange, mysterious music that spans many centuries and many cultures. You will hear dissonant medieval sounds coming from a hand-carved recorder, traditional South Indian passages, a home made toobophone and electronic rhythms to complete the collage.
The title of their album is from a great line in MacBeth:

“All the pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?”

So I ran with that dark imagery for the cover. I also had the fun task of designing the whole package for the CD case. I enjoy deign projects like this from time to time, and I had secretly always wanted to design someone’s album. Unfortunately I don’t have the final package in my hands yet, but I will post some photos in a few weeks when I get my mitts on one.
Click on the image for a larger view.

i hope i’m not cheating by posting this… but i figured since it IS valentines day, it is à propos. there are what my save the dates look like. im getting great feedback on them. now it’s on to the invitiations… have a lovely day everyone! 🙂

Last weekend I created this illustration for The Riverfront Times of St. Louis highlighting an article they did about The Clowder House, a local cat retirement home (for when the owner gets too old to care for the kitty). It was fun showing the details like the cat meds, the pajamas, the rubik’s cube and the Wii. Click the image to see a larger version.

The Festina Lente is a band about 5 brazilian kids that starving for different things playing together since 2004.
We just recorded a debut-ep called “tropical predial” in 2006. By now we are giving a break and hopefully coming back soon. You can listen our stuff on myspace =)
links:
http://www.myspace.com/lentefestina
http://tramavirtual.uol.com.br/artista.jsp?id=65545
photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ritagoestocollege
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29452035@N00
http://www.flickr.com/photos/daigooliva
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sastre

Illustrating an All Girls Skateboard Competition at a skatepark in Manchester presented itself as welcoming break from the other heavily art directed illustration I’ve been doing, and was fun to do. It finally gave me the chance to play around with some hand rendered type and to indulge in some 50’s/60’s surf style graphics. The hardest part was trying to come up something that wasn’t sexist, or even just plain girly. I dared myself to use pink, is that p.c. these days?

Just got back from Mexico! Full Flickr album including this photo of our day trip to the Coba ruins to come.

I’ve been keeping a small moleskin sketchbook in my pocket to augment my bigger, badder sketchbook. This group was sketched on the NYC subway in recent weeks.