Competitions

I entered a logo/poster competition this year for something I believe strongly in, a BEER festival.  Competitions can be fun to enter because you get a chance to see how your work stacks up against other artists. But they can also be painful, because you put forth a lot of effort to produce a finished product that could be rejected just because it reminds one of the judges of an old girlfriend or something (not a true example by the way). Of course the people that benefit the most from competition are the people holding them. They receive a wide variety of ideas and styles and can choose the work they like best for much less effort and cost than it would have been to hire someone to do the work in the first place.  But that's ok, the people who submit to competitions are likely like me (they have a day job and do things like this for fun), or they are trying to make a name for themselves and get some experience and some notoriety by winning a competition.

Winning entry

Amazing as it may seem, I did not win this competition. So - I boycotted the event and drank at home. Maybe I'll try again sometime, it depends on what else is going on at the time. I believe the winner of this competition received some printed versions of their winning entry, VIP passes to the event, and a basket full of goodies from many of the microbreweries. My guess is a value of $300 to $500 depending on the goodies. Let me know if you think of the winning poster compared to mine, and don't worry about hurting my feelings.

The tough thing about being a hobby artist is achieving just enough success to keep you optimistic that you could be pretty good at this if you keep trying. In the year 2000, I won a competition for the St. Joseph, Michigan Venetian Festival shirt design. I was not the overall winner, just the adult/commercial artist award winner (the overall winner was some high school kid that year). I felt great about winning the competition and was excited to enter again. I was a little disappointed in the prize for my category though - 1st; the judging committee seemed surprised that I really wanted to collect on the prize, 2nd;the award was 4 T-shirts with my design printed on them, which really meant ironed-on to them. It was a bit of a letdown, but I can understand from their point of view the hassle it must have been to provide 4 specially printed shirts. Like I said though the main thing that experience accomplished was to encourage me to keep at it - I'll break through and be an overall winner someday.

Chinese Famous Architects

Famous Architects in Chinese!

Outhouses by Famous Architects
Chinese cover

Phone Booths by Famous Architects
Chinese cover

Mobile Homes by Famous Architects
Chinese cover

The Chinese versions of the ...by Famous Architects books officially hit the streets over the summer.  For those of you out of the loop, a Chinese University was so impressed with the artwork, content, and popularity of this book series that they decided to reprint them in Mandarin to meet the high demand from their country.  Overall, the format of the books is relatively the same, except for new covers and some new filler pages that use pieces of the artwork from the original books in a new way and that they are written in Chinese! The new filler pages are entertaining in their own right.

Personally, I'm not sure about how well the humor (or should I say attempts at humor) make it through the translation. In fact, I was so interested in what this would be like that I searched the web to see what I could find. Here is some of what I found - keep in mind this is a translation of a translation (English to Chinese, then back to Engrish):

• from: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5031f5f70100p5tk.html
• Bring the house to go Rangers! West mobile home read past lives, all over Europe to see the classic architecture to life.This fun picture book for mobile homes rare in the country.
• Introduction:
  This is a book about "housing will go," A Short History of the building. Mobile home (Mobile Homes) in modern society, also known as "car", "trailer", but in fact, both ancient Egypt movable driven by human pyramids, ancient Greece, Park City, with horse-drawn, or modern by engine-driven car, the protagonist of the book we are. This is a professional architect, cartoonist 史蒂夫谢克尔 "master pieces of architecture" series of picture book three in one.
  Author:
   史蒂夫谢克尔 born in 1967, Columbus, Indiana, USA, has a dual career as an architect and cartoonist. Shekel like a fun easy way to spread to the public construction of knowledge, through his unique perspective on the master design techniques, and to study how the masters of these techniques applied to mobile homes, phone booths, and outdoor toilets on these architectural sketches of.
  Recommended artists:
  Now hopefully it's not just me that thinks something might be lost in the translation. But I don't really mind, I likely will not meet many of the Chinese people who may have read these books and were disappointed because they didn't make sense to them.
  
  
  
  This is Steve Shekel signing out
  
  
      

  

More book news

After so many years of marketing success, they will be taking the Phone Booths by Famous Architects books off the shelves.  The publisher has offered me a discount for the remaining stock.  So, I am pleased to offer these books to you at 1/2 price, which would include a personalized autograph to the person of your choosing. Shipping costs would be separate. 

If you are not familiar with this fine tome, it is a humor book based on architects.  This is the third in a series of books written and illustrated by yours truly, that focuses on building types that real architects typically do not design. The book takes an imaginary look at how some of the world's famous architects would design phone booths.  Supporting text explains who these architects are, or were, and why they are considered famous.  It also attempts to explain the thought behind their designs (that's where humor is attempted)

You do not need to be an architect to appreciate the humor, although architects may find some deeper meaning. Here is a pixelated sample page:

They are full color, hardback books, with a dust jacket. They make great gifts. Let me know if you are interested.

Famous Architects in China

A Chinese publishing company will be reprinting all three of my books in Chinese. That's right, Outhouses by Famous Architects, Mobile Homes by Famous Architects, and Phone Booths by Famous Architects will all be available in Chinese. It is my estimation that there has been a huge outcry from the world's most populated country to provide them with High American culture.  Of course these books go way beyond American culture.  I have not seen any of the reprints myself yet, but the picture above is how I imagine the cover will be modified (for those of you who read Chinese I hope the characters placed above don't say anything offensive).  If the book sells well to the Chinese,the publisher will send royalties my way occasionally. It will probably be like that Seinfeld episode where I will have a pile of $2.18 checks that will give me hand cramps.  I'm good with that though. 

Cartoons from last year

My stint as cartoonist for the Business Leader magazine(s) here in the Indianapolis donut region ended earlier this year. I didn't realize until today that I hadn't posted many of my cartoons. Some of them were funnier at the time they were drawn (at least that's what I'm telling myself), but I will let you be the judge. I was trying to dabble in pseudo-editorial cartoons which required keeping up with current events - who was I trying to kid?

 

 

Sausagefest 2010

There was some controversy over the artwork for the Indianapolis St. Thomas Aquinas Parish Sausagefest this year, which was titled Ascension Sausage.  But it was all good humored fun and I must say I think it came out quite well. This was my third straight year of providing the art for the event. Each year the event is getting larger and I'm sure it is due my professional drawings and unbelievable artistic concepts. The beer truck, grilled sausages of every flavor, live music, gambling, and kids games, I am sure have nothing to do with it.  There are already ideas in the works on how to top this year, and if an idea is too controversial there is even talk of black-marketing unruly Sausagefest shirts outside the festival grounds. But that is only a contingency plan at this point.

Join us next year.

Micro Thumbs

This cartoon will be issued in the July Business Leader magazines in the donut counties around Indy. It's a recent persnal favorite. Of course you know what they say about men with small thumbs?

Sausagefest 2009

shirt front above, shirt back below

I'm sure everyone has been wondering why I haven't posted in awhile. Probably not though - since this site hasn't really been shared with anyone yet.

Anyways Sausagefest 2009 is this August and they asked me to once again do the artwork for the shirts they will be selling. I thought I would give everyone a preview. Let me know if you like them. If you want to know more about Sausagefest and find out where you can personally go to acquire suchstriking apparel - see the link below:

http://www.staindy.org/

Plainfield presentation

I will be speaking Thursday November 13 at the Plainfield/Guilford Township Library at 7:00 (p.m.) The title of my presentation is 4000 years of architecture in 20 minutes (or so). It is a brief architectural history lesson with sprinklings of humor from my books. A book signing will follow Perfect timing for the holidays - and who wouldn't love to find one of my books in their stocking?

November toons

Enjoy.

October toons

Cartoon #1 - Irridiculous

It's always been a pet peeve of mine when people say irregardless. Irregardless is not a real word, although many heathens out there have continued to abuse the term and it has achieved a general acceptance. www.dictionary.com defines it as follows:

Usage Note: Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.

Websters defines it as follows:

Main Entry:
ir·re·gard·less
Pronunciation:
\ˌir-i-ˈgärd-ləs\
Function:
adverb
Etymology:
probably blend of irrespective and regardless
Date:
circa 1912
nonstandard : regardless
usage Irregardless originated in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its fairly widespread use in speech called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that “there is no such word.” There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose. Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead.

So, even though they acknowledge it's existence they also note that many don't accept it and I am one of those who choose not to accept it. If you happen to be one of the intellectual dwarfs that practice using this term, I apologize to you, because you likely see no humor in my comic. But for the majority of us, I hope you enjoy this illustration picking on a common language error.

Cartoon #2: You're no HC

Obviously, it's campaign season, so I tried a cartoon relating to debates. The most famous debate line I could think of was the You're no Jack Kennedy line from the Dan Quayle VP debate. I know there has to be a better caption available, but this is where it ended up. If you have a better caption for it let me know, I'm easy going.

Look for these cartoons in the October issues of Hendricks County ICON, and the October Business Leader magazines (Hendricks County, Hamilton county, Johnson County). More to come soon.

That's it.

AIA golf outings

Tomorrow is the annual AIA Indianapolis Chapter Memorial golf outing. I have been involved with these golf outings for at least the last ten years. "Doing what?" you ask - well I have been the person responsible for designing the T-shirts (Whoa - I almost left the "r" out of the word shirt, hopefully it was not a subliminal message someone was trying to push into my brain).

When I started the golf outing shirts, I was doing cartoons for the AIA and thought it would be a great opportunity to get more exposure. So I did some cartoons that tried to bridge the gap between golfing and architecture - using my Oblique View comic format. Looking back - the cartoons weren't that great - but it was good experience and people enjoyed them (I think). I believed they enjoyed them because; 1. they were different than the previous, mundane golf shirt designs, which were merely plan views of the golf course, and 2. many people didn't realize that the creator of Oblique View, which brought them hours, if not days, of enjoyable water cooler conversation every month, was a fellow Indianapolisosian (how do you like that word?)

The outings back then were called the Frank Lloyd Wright Memorial golf outing - however they never were really associated with FLW. One year, I had a great illustration idea I wanted to explore for LeCorbusier's Modulor man.

So I suggested to the golf committee chairman that we make it a rotating memorial each year. He agreed, naturally, and the rest is history (pun intended). I then became responsible every year for determining which dead architect to honor. This was easy for me to relate to, as I was working in the by Famous Architects books at the time. Since then we have honored the following great architects:

• LeCorbusier
• Mies van der Rohe
• Louis Kahn
• Phillip Johnson
• E. Fay Jones
• Eero Saarinen
• and this year it's Walter Netsch

Walter Netsch is probably the least famous of the group - in fact many architects have never heard of him. But they would all likely recognize his most famous structure - the Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel. His death this year makes him the most famous architect to die in 2008 (so far, anyway). However his obscurity to the general architect population has left me questioning where to go next year - shouldn't the architect have some relavence to Indiana? or shouldn't he be an architect who has had an impact on what we have learned about architecture? These are questions I'm sure you are asking yourself and will likely keep you awake for a couple of weeks. But the truth is - it's just a golf outing, a once a year event for the architects of Indianapolis to get together and enjoy hacking up manicured lawns and guzzle some beer. Next year's architect to be remembered, will be decided next year.

Welcome

Hello, and welcome to my first post on Blogahead. I have been considering doing this for about a year now, which seems to be the average time it takes for ideas to come to fruition for me. Anyway, I decided to start this blog for two reasons; 1. My website Dipahead.com has not been updated in 2 years (maybe more) and I thought this may be simpler than messing with Frontpage to modify it, and 2. I have an idea for a more serious blog devoted to architecture that I want to start, and this is kind of a testing ground for me.

Actually there is a third reason, I needed to find a way to communicate my cartoon work and other side ventures to you. I am currently doing cartoons for 2 magazines in central Indiana (The Business Leader(s) - visit http://www.businessleader.bz/ - and Hendricks County ICON). These cartoon efforts are more along the editorial cartoon line than my typical obtuse humor line, and I'm not fully comfortable with this style yet. I am used to drawing things that are fresh on my mind as humorous, not necessarily hot news items. Below are the cartoons for the September issues - please feel free to give me your comments.

Well - I am not sure how often I will be posting. I would like to think it will be at least once a week - but we'll see. Consider yourself a lucky reader - this might be the only post ever made. I hope you've enjoyed it and will return for more. I may even update http://www.dipahead.com/ to try to keep up with this yearly event.