Home sweet home and into the great unknown...

Finally after two and a half months up in Wisconsin, my brother and I returned home to Cincinnati without a clue of what to do next. It is great being back home, but I am constantly left wondering what is next. Do I go back to school? Where do I find a job? Can I find a job? the list goes on, and on. Despite my lack of foresight, I am optimistic that something will happen. Maybe later than sooner, but I have a little time to wait and see what happens. In the mean time, The Ordinance is still forging ahead in the studio and on the stage. Tomorrow we are heading to Athens for a little band practice, the first all summer! And this weekend Mike will be heading back to work on some vocals. We just finished all of the instrument tracks last week and are going to be touching up all of the vocals for the next few weeks, and then cleaning everything up. We are really excited and cannot wait to hear the final products!

While we are working on finishing the album, I am going to be working on revamping the website and myspace pages, as well as getting together some sweet merch (buttons, stickers, shirts etc) and working on the album artwork. Right now we are in the brainstorming faze with some great ideas being thrown around. As we get ideas more finalized I will try and post some drafts so that you guys can see whats going to be happening. That's all for now, but I will leave you with a few other inks from this years Pineneedle. The first are a couple of cartoon braves, following that is a sketch of one of the brand new totem polls at the entrance to Kawaga. The totem polls are absolutely massive, if I can find a picture of them I will post them so you can see them. Following camps totem polls, is a totem poll that I made up for the Pineneedle staff, it is composed of a box of paper, a box of MacDonald's french fries because that was our late night snack, a printer/scanner, my laptop, followed by Jays laptop and a cup of coffee. And lastly is a sketch I did of a native American warrior with a spear.

Ski gear

Since we got the ski staff gear today, I thought it would be a good time to post it up for you guys to see. It turned out really well despite the ridiculousness it took to get the design finalized and printed up. This is the design for the ski gear. This went on the t-shirt (American Apparel super comfortable). We then took the left side with the braves head and skier and placed that on the back of a hooded sweatshirt, ball cap, and beanie. I'll post some of those images when I get them.


This second image is what I created for the 36th Annual Kawaga Ski Tournament. I really like the design, and the shirt turned out awesome as well. Unfortunately though, the tournament was canceled due to a flu bug that was going around camp. I have some more shirt designs from other things around camp, and hopefully I'll have those images up shortly.

Every summer at Camp Kawaga, they have a color war competition in which they break up the camp into 2 teams and compete against each other for a few days. This year I had the priveledge to design the t-shirts that each team will be wearing over the next few days for the annual Blue/Gold Cup. I have been waiting until the kids were revealed the shirts so that nobody would see the final product before them. So yesterday, we began the competition by announcing coaches and dividing the teams and giving them their shirts. From what I can tell, everyone seems to like them, hopefully they aren't just being nice.

I have some other designs that I have done for the Blue/Gold cup but I am waiting because the kids still haven't seen the designs (not that any of them would be able to see them while at camp...lets just call it superstition). I have some more gear designs that I am going to be showing you guys in the future. I also have a lot of artwork that I will be posting from the annual Pineneedle real soon...stay tuned!

Oh and here is the black and white logo I whipped up for the Annual Pineneedle's Blue/Gold page.

At Kawaga they have Indian tribes that the kids strive for by performing different activities around camp; somewhat similar to badges in boy scouts. The two tribes are Mawanda and Sachem, and each year a plaque is made to celebrate the kids initiation into each tribe. After being initiated into the tribe of Sachem for the first time you are given an indian name (mine being Loyal Scout). The plaque contains all of the kids who have made it into either tribe during that camping season. This year I had the honor to design the plaque that would be around for years to come; camp has plaques dating as far back as the 1920's and a few before that! This first image is my design for the Mawanda Sachem plaque of 2009, my sketch has been sent to one of the fathers of the counselors at Mercury Plastics and it is going to be machined out of a plank of wood. I can't wait to see the finished product!