A little while back I had the notion that I wanted to make some letterpress prints with my college friend, Harold Kyle, of Boxcar Press. Then I was also thinking that I know a lot of artists who I’d love to make art with. The two great tastes tasted great together, and the Cloudy Collection was forged in a flaming furnace of fiery, um, flames. Or on a big fat Heidelberg, really.

Prints are on sale now! There’s all kinds of other exciting information about the project on the site, so please take a look.

The happiest of New Year’s to everyone!

The past year was rough on a lot of the country and a lot of the world, but I can’t help but be optimistic. Besides the long-awaited departure of a certain someone with the initials GWB, and the corresponding arrival of Mr. BHO, the extended and expanding Huyck clan had a good year.

In March my older brother made me an uncle. In August my younger brother got married to an awesome woman. And two days before that wedding, my amazing wife gave birth to our pride and joy, Susanna Elnora Huyck, who weighed in at 9lbs 1oz, and 21.5in long! All my photos and videos of her are on Flickr. Susanna has been a constant source of hilarity, joy, and drool, and without even attempting to avoid cliché, she has changed our lives.

It was a great year for drawing things and making stuff, too. Thanks to all who hired me, or invited me to participate in a show, or just brought their kids over so I could draw coloring book pages for them. I count myself lucky to have such wonderful clients!

And of course there is the relocation to Idaho (see above illustration.) We are very excited to be in our new home in Moscow, ID, and I will begin teaching in two weeks in the art department of Washington State University in Pullman, just across the state line from here.

And speaking of the above illustration, if you like the card, please download the PDF and print it out!

Thanks to you, 2008!

And welcome, 2009! We expect great things!

- DH.

It’s that time of year again: the fourth annual Plush You! show at Schmancy in Seattle opens Friday October 10! The opening runs from 5-9pm and will be up for a month. BONUS: This year, there will also be a San Francisco venue as well! WOW! I have sent different work for each place, but the work I did for Seattle is up on my Flickr page.

I have not stayed in the habit of regularly making plush toys out-of-season, but every time Plush You! rolls around, I have a great time playing with my big boxes of random felt and fabrics that I have collected. I use it as an opportunity to try out an idea, or as an outlet for something that has been on my mind. This year, I wanted to make wearable things, so I created a set of three Cryptid Crowns: Nessie, Sasquatch, and Yeti.

I also designed some labels for the crowns. I think I almost have as much fun designing and making the labels as I do making the actual plushies!

P.S. I just posted a set of haikus to the blog of Adam Rex, children’s author and illustrator extraordinaire. The poems I wrote seem to have a familiar theme…

Teh awesoem radio show, This American Life, posted a t-shirt contest a few weeks ago, and last night the muse visited, so I drew up this entry. See it on cream as well, below.

I was pleasantly surprised this afternoon to find a yard sign I designed used as an example on the Walker Art Center’s blog. The sign is for a project here in the Twin Cities to get some citizen voices heard during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul this year. I haven’t lived in St. Paul for very long, but even I know that this is a Democratic town (the Minnesota Democratic party is called the DFL for Democrat Farm Labor, and St. Paul is historically a strong labor town)– it’s no wonder they’re having trouble finding volunteers to work at the convention.

The inimitable Frank Chimero has done it again! Frank decided that this Wednesday and all Wednesdays forward will be known as Webless Wednesdays, where we all unplug for a day and share our stories of limitless productivity on Thursday. I think I’ll join him– won’t you?

(via Coudal)

Anyway, birthdays are good for a lot of things, but especially for getting things that you are not buying for yourself. I keep my Amazon wishlist(s) pretty full, though mostly as a reminder to myself of what I really want to buy or check out the next time I am at a bookstore. However, for my birthday last month I got a gift certificate to Amazon, and I could no longer hold myself back:

Not pictured is the copy of Graphic Design by Milton Glaser (which arrived earlier and has gotten its due lovin’), but in the photo are the contents of my big box of goodies:the latest edition of the Graphic Arts Guild Handbook, a contemporary drawing collection called Vitamin D, Charlie Harper’s Beguiled by the Wild, and Dave Cooper’s (aliased here as Hector Mumbly) Bagel’s Lucky Hat.

• Milton Glaser is an icon in the graphic design world. This book is a must-have for my library, and I love to see the mix of illustration-y with the design-y.
• Similarly, I’ve well-abused my old GAG Handbook, and it was time for the upgrade to this 2007 updated version. A must-have for the illustration professional.
• I’ve perused the Vitamin D book a couple times while I was in grad school, but I had to have my own copy. It’s really a great collection of where things have been going in the contemporary capital-A “Art World” drawing field. And it’s a beautifully-designed book, as you would expect from Phaidon.
• Beguiled by the Wild is even better than I expected. I fell in love with Harper’s beautifully designed creatures and illustrations a while ago after he started getting linked up around the web, but I didn’t realize the illustrations’ titles were going to tickle my inner word-nerd: “Jumbrella” shows the big elephants sheltering the baby elephant from the rain; “Owltercation” shows a murder of crows chasing an owl away. LOVE!
• And last but certainly not least: Bagel’s Lucky Hat is so beautifully illustrated, with lush colors, inventive perspectives and compositions, and lovely details embellishing the periphery. It is a high-caliber production, as we have grown to expect from Chronicle Books. I haven’t read the story yet, and while I would guess it is a great story, I wouldn’t care if it was lamer than Howard the Duck: the illustrations already make up for it.

While I’m sorry for the movers who will eventually have to move yet more books the next time we relocate, I’m not sorry to have these in my collection. The internet is great and all, but sometimes you just need more than 72 dots per inch to view the art.

Seeing the art in-person is better yet, but as we all know, money doesn’t grow on trees. At least not in Minnesota.

No, actually it is more abstract than that. Calling it a build-up suggests that there is an end goal. Really what we are trying to convey is that working as an artist or designer or in pretty much any other creative realm means just that: work. It is a steady perseverance that means generating a lot of bad ideas and bad drawings and bad work that will likely never see the light of day. You must keep at it in order to stumble over the really good ideas, the gems that end up at the front of your portfolio.

As a side benefit, while you are generating piles of ideas that don’t necessarily make sense in the current context of the work you are immediately focussed on, you inevitably spill a few unpolished thoughts that will seep into the back of your mind or get scribbled into your sketchbook or stashed in your web browser bookmarks, and you never know when they will leap forth again.

I’ve never taken a class that focuses exclusively on these types of ideas, but I’ve taken plenty of classes that suggest techniques or philosophies orbiting the concepts. I’m exited to compile and experiment and teach and learn from and along with my students. It is all about taking you out of your comfort zone so you can make some good mistakes and generate new experiences and create some new synapses in your crusty little brain. I am definitely out of my comfort zone, which by definition makes me uncomfortable. But the potential for discovery is huge, and much more than worth the discomfort.

Despite the fact that it is a pile of work and it takes discipline to come back to something day after day where you may not see the benefit for some time, I have a great job. I have a great teaching job that gives me access to other professors teaching these same ideas in their own ways, and I have the great job of putting these principles to work in my own studio.

And I pretty much get to draw every day. What job could be better?

It looks like the AA boys have a spankin’ new website for your viewing and purchasing pleasure. Here’s a classic video of their silkscreen process:

Apparently the MUFABOT design I did for the Madison Ultimate Frisbee Association a couple years ago has gotten a bit of a following. A friend just sent me a couple photos (including the above photo) from the the MUFA chat page of the disc I designed held in front of a sign at the south pole in -95F temperatures. I’m not sure what would happen if you dropped a plastic disc in those conditions, but I’m guessing it would test the strength of MUFABOT himself.

“Pitagora suicchi” = “Pythagoras Switch.” Apparently this is a children’s TV show in Japan.

My brothers and I used to make some complicated dominoes/playing cards/lego contraptions, but these thing blow me away! So amazing! The inherent creativity in figuring out and then engineering these flips and flops and rolls and turns is just brilliant!

(via BoingBoing)

These are cute and horrifying at the same time. They are inside-out teddy bears photographed by Kent Rogowski. (via BoingBoing)

Which reminds me, I don’t think I’ve linked up the plush books I contributed to. Plush-o-Rama: Curious Creatures for Immature Adults came out last November, and Plush You!: Lovable Misfit Toys to Sew and Stuff will be out this coming November. I’ve contributed not just work, but also instructions for making your own plush critters in each book. Enjoy!

A few years ago when my friend Dave Taylor first started working at Planet Propaganda with me, he designed a logo for one of our clients. The day after the final logo was signed off on, one of the company’s owners came in with a tattoo of their brand new logo! Dave was beside himself!

My story continues about four or five months ago, when I got an email from an internet stranger asking if she could use one of my drawings for a tattoo! I said, “Sure, as long as you send me photos.” Well, yesterday I got my photos!

I’m totally famous! (many thanks to tattooee, Heather in Florida!)