Jozik on Flickr

I've created a Flickr account for Jozik today. I've decided to start taking photographs at all the shows we organize and thought that Flickr would be a good place to share those photographs with the artists who participate as well as others who are interested.

I'm not so good at concert photography yet, but i hope now that i photograph all our shows, i'll improve.

Stockholm

Thought i'd share some nice photos i made on a ferry to Stockholm. We went on a cruise there some time in january. I really liked the mirror ceiling on that ship.

In Stockholm we saw some birds going on a cruise as well. They used blocks of ice instead of a ferry. But it worked, they were moving!

New blog design and circles

I changed the design for my blog a little bit. Basically I just changed the banner, made the blog itself a bit wider and changed some other little things. I also added some more boxes on the right side: there is a little preview of my Flickr photostream as well as a list of links that i called "portfolio" (not sure if it's a good title), and that is where i listed poster and package designs i did. I'll keep adding and there might be some new pages coming up later on.

I decided to change my banner, because i noticed that i've been really into drawing circles recently.

I must say, i am not a very good visual artists when it comes to drawing and painting. But i really enjoy doing it. So all i can draw is some geometric shapes and patterns. But i like experimenting with those shapes, as well as with colors and mediums.

I am usually not very confident about how good they look. I just draw them because i enjoy it. But sometimes nice things come out and then i can use them for posters or record packaging. Or a blog banner :)

Novoe Tsarstvo

This happened a month ago, but for some reason i decided to write about it only now.

In the beginning of February me and Mitya participated in a live show of an improvisation collective led by Ivan of Full of Nothing. The collective is called Novoe Tsarstvo, there's no permanent line up, and this time we got to join it. And it happened to be the collective's first live performance.

It was a great experience for me, because i've never improvised on stage with people i haven't played with before. We also had a recording session with almost the same people (the saxophone player was different). I really enjoyed both of the sessions. Especially playing together with a saxophone was interesting. Even though the technique is completely different from a violin, it felt so easy to follow what they play, much easier than trying to follow guitars or synths.

Birds for my sister

Last week i went to Murmansk again. I took my color paper there to make some origami for my sister.

Her room is very colorful, so i thought they would look very good flying under her ceiling.

She is a biology student, so she started classifying them according to their habitat and choosing a good place for them according to it. Maybe she could even make some kind of a food chain out of them :)

Glina "Spiritual safety"

A new cassette is out on Jozik records. 

Glina from St.Petersburg with their 50-minute album called "spiritual safety". Check Jozik for description and preview and here i will tell you about the design.

In the very beginning we had an idea of making an insert out of white paper with a black and white drawing on it, which would be differently painted with watercolor on each cassette separately. And that's what we actually ended up with, but we also got a nice new experience.

I was taking so long time to come up with a drawing. I kept sketching animals, plants and other things and nothing valuable came out. I am not so good in drawing, really. One day i was checking a blog of one artist i'm following and realized, that this guy's drawings are exactly what i'm looking for. He is an artists from Murmansk, his blog is called Maiorov-DIY, check his drawings and other things he makes, i really like them.

So i contacted him and he was happy to participate, and the next day i got this cute cockroach. The day after i got another drawing with many little cockroaches. I was supposed to choose one, but they were so pretty that i decided to use them both, one on the outer part of the insert and another one inside.

After i got the drawings, i placed them and all the needed text in places, printed the inserts on greyish paper, cut them out and then the most fun part began. I painted each of them differently with watercolor, as we planned. As i already mentioned in previous posts, i love painting with watercolor, so i had lots of fun painting these inserts. I still have a bit less than a half to paint.

This was the first time we collaborated with an artist this way. The previous release was completely done by Diana Vishnevskaya, but this time we worked together, and i really liked it this way.

Thanks to Maiorov and Glina for amazingly looking and sounding release!