Val and I love to travel and immerse ourselves into the local culture to gain a broader perspective into the myriad of people who live in this world. When we visited Berlin, it was undeniable that street art dominated the culture of the city. We were fortunate enough to find a tour that not only gave historical context to the movement but also a workshop to create a canvas in street art painting styles. Layering, masking, and patience are critical to a successful product. The techno group Daft Punk provided great subjects for my work.
Acid-Etching Glassware /
Acid-etching glassware is a perfect process for me to make physical versions of my logo design. I digitize my designs then use a computer controlled cutter to make adhesive backed stencils. I can then simply paint acid-etching cream through the stencil onto a glass and create a bold representation of my logos.
This project was a gift for one of my best friends who loves flying wings. Since he builds and modifies the wings himself, I pulled an image of one of his projects shown above and made a high contrast interpretation of it. I then had a perfect stencil to etch the design onto a glass.
Wrapping a planar stencil around a surface that is convex in one plane is hard enough, but wrapping a stencil around a spherical surface is extremely difficult. Making sure the stencil is 100% in contact around the perimeter of the etching area is necessary to produce clean lines. I had to separate out the etching of the "Circuses are in-tents" glass into 3 separate operations in order to ensure proper adhesion of the stencils.
My wife and I wanted to have a very personalized wedding with symbolism that had a deep meaning to both of us. That ideal proliferated itself into our decorations, colors, signage, and gifts. I created this logo to combine the V of Val with the W of Will and the date of our wedding in a retro style that perfectly matched with the design for the rest of the wedding. I then etched the logo onto glassware as wedding party gifts and laser cut the logo into stainless steel then hand formed tie clips for the guys and money clips for my father and my father in law.
Etching glassware requires a pristine glass surface to produce an even etch. Any oils on the surface will interfere with the acid and produce unintended streaking in the logo. I initially tried just using soap and water with a microfiber towel, but the finish was not perfect. I then added in a step cleaning the surface with 93% isopropyl alcohol before stencil application as well as after. This process ended up producing the desired results while remaining simple enough to keep hand etching glassware feasible.
Worldly Fonts /
Artwork doesn't have to be made with a brush and a canvas. There are times when a Sharpie marker and the side of a box are all you need.
I was thrilled to find a giant cardboard box in the recycling and repurposed it as a canvas. I had the idea of a map floating in my head and got inspired to list the continents in a street art style after seeing the box. Integrating the names into the shape of the continents and lakes rather than superimpose the names over features was critical to the unique aspect of this design. I am very pleased with the final product and ended up framing it and gave it to my sister-in-law who now hangs it in her room.
Tracing the outlines of the continents with the help of a projector