Sprinkle a little sunshine.

A local farmer’s market merchant needed a logo for her seed and nut mixture called Susie’s Sprinkles. Sue brought a lot of ideas to the table when we met. We brainstormed for a while, looking at various designs styles, typefaces, and color combinations. Then I went to work and created three unique looks for her company. She was particularly interested in the one that used the big monogram S, so that’s what we went with. After some back-and-forth with changes in color and details, here’s the result.

You can find Susie’s Sprinkles on Facebook.

I love graphite — come matt or shine.

A complaint I often hear about graphite is that you can’t get really dark darks without also getting shine. So I was eager to try the new Faber Castell matt graphite pencils.

I ordered the set of 12 (though I see now all Amazon has is a set of 6) which had from HB through 14B. The 14B got plenty dark, and there really ISN’T much of a shine. As the pencils progress in darkness, they increase in carbon content, rather than graphite. The carbon keeps them from producing a shine. You can see in my drawing of the leaves that the shadows are pretty dark, and there’s no shine. It also lifts up well with a kneaded eraser, as long as you haven’t been too heavy-handed when laying down the shadows. 

I’ve read mixed reviews from other people. To me, they handled a lot like Prismacolor pencils. Not a bad thing, but different from regular graphite.