I've been wanting to get a new tattoo for awhile now, but I have only a vague idea what I want to get, so I've been playing the past couple of days with a few designs . . . I'm only going to put up three of them this time. I'm digging the third one, but I'm definitely not settled on it.

Bloody Self Portrait

This has been in the making for awhile now, Illustration Friday's word was "Celebrate" and this is what it inspired in my dark mind. Enjoy.

Tree Swing Sketch

Sketchy sketchy sketchy. I am too lazy to write a new post so I'm going to copy/paste exactly what I wrote last night on DeviantArt.

So here is what's going on with me lately:

Now that summer is getting closer I find myself with way more energy. Today was spectacular out, which was nice since my/my brother's car broke down about a car length from a super-busy road, and we were sitting in it for about a half hour waiting for a tow with the windows open. That was fun.

On my own: I've been working on a few things. Been hanging out at Studio Sunday - http://www.lovesickrobot.org/studiosunday/ - I'm working (slowly) on one really big project, that could really be seen as a massive amount of really small ones, and at least two other unrelated smaller ones...

At work: I'm designing a logo for IMCO Technologies - http://www.imco-tech.com/ - most promising product (IMCO-STAT).

I really like designing logos, although I've realized that making them for people who have no knowledge of art is practically impossible. For example, I made about 10 logos to start (all similar to the company logo) and the bosses got to talking about changes like changing the type on one to a font that was closer to the original logo. Here's the kicker-I had another logo, the SAME DESIGN with a font that was much closer to the one in the original logo. Totally frustrating.

http://www.heidischwartz.net/

Dear HILO Martini Lounge,

Two days ago a couple of my friends took me out to dinner for my birthday, after dinner we weren't quite ready to go home. On my suggestion, we decided to go to HILO and get a few more drinks. We waited at the bar for at least ten minutes and though the bartender stood right in front of us, not once did he meet our eyes, and not once did we get the impression he had any intention of taking our drink order. I don't know for a fact that this is the reason that the three of us weren't served, but it certainly seemed that the only reason we weren't was that we were the wrong color.

I just wanted you to know that I am a nice person, so are both of the friends I was with. From now on whenever I think of having a martini, I will think of HILO and how I felt there - I know this, because I haven't been able to push the incident from my mind. I've just turned 23 and I've never been treated like this before. Maybe I was naive to think that we could get past racism, but when I heard Barack Obama saying "Yes we can" I believed him. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe we can't.

Two nights ago you didn't just refuse to serve a young white woman, you changed a world view. I hope that this letter can change yours.

Sincerely,

Heidi Schwartz

Homework Post Logo Concepts

Look at this! Three posts and February isn't even done yet! Woot. Anyhows, I made this as a freebee for my brother and a couple of his friends at MSOE, for a project they've been working on. It goes like this: they created a website where people in classes there can post homework assignments and talk about problems they're having with them and other such stuff. They wanted a logo so below are the first batch of ideas, and some that happened along the way. The bubbles and the rainbows were mostly a joke. And after going back and forth with changes and improvements-here is the final one:I would like to include the link, but you can't see it on the site unless you register-and who wants to do that?
I think that I may make a few holiday versions too, although I can give no prediction of when that might appear up here...

Ryan

Twas the day of Christmas and all through the house Ryan was singing, dancing, and performing strange experiments on cookies. I tend to draw at family gatherings-this is my cousin Ryan, who keeps me entertained, and laughs at all my dumb jokes.

This sketch is something that I've just started brainstorming. I'd like to make "Rex the Monster & Jeremiah Zombie" into a children's book/series of illustrations. I have been thinking about it a lot but have yet to really write anything down as a solid plot idea. Should be fun! The other sketch is just something I drew when I got bored waiting for my ride after work.