i bought Builders of the Pacific Coast during the holiday insanity, it promptly got lost in a pile of stuff, and i just re-found it today. oh man, what a find! both times!

[you can click on any of these images to see them much larger, which is why they're displaying disappointingly smaller than usual on my blog.]

basically, it showcases a bunch of hippie houses built along the pacific coast, most without permits and all that other big brother stuff.

some of them are too cluttered or haphazard for my taste, but others hit the right balance of innovation, design and creativity that appeals to my rustic modern leanings.

i saw Wood Houses at the book store and i just had to get it! wood + houses are two of my favorite things right now!

how amazing is that double row of beds in the vacation house above?! i love the idea of a “sleeping cupboard” rather than a separate room for my bed.

i’ve always loved freeform wood shingle houses. this one is extra-special because that part that sticks out is “expandable.” you’ll have to track down this book and see for yourself!

amazing suspended stairs!!!

i love the idea of this house: public spaces on the ground floor made transparent by walls of glass, and private spaces upstairs with more walls.

if you’re similarly smitten with rustic modern spaces, the my scandinavian retreat blog will fuel your obsession!

i’ve had quite a few people ask if i’ll ever make the anima poster prints with white backgrounds to match the original artwork. my answer: sorry, no. the anima poster prints will always have the strong color backgrounds to differentiate them from the original drawings.

BUT, if you’re handy with an exacto knife here’s a tip to achieve a white background for yours: the figures on each of the anima poster prints have a slight white outline, so you could cut them out and re-mount them on a white background before framing. tedious, i know. but it is a valid solution!

i took the afternoon off to poke around the internet some and noticed lots of places are doing special fundraisers for haiti.

i don’t have time to come up with something clever, and don’t see the point of enticing you to buy something i’ve made in order to help someone else who’s lost so much, so i thought i’d let you know i’ve donated a nice sum of money instead. and, if you haven’t already, i encourage you to do the same! you know the saying “there but for the grace of god…”

above are just a few places you can donate to, pick one!

ok, these are kind of a cross between shoes and architecture, aren’t they?

i’d never wear something like these, but they’re an amazing piece of design.

you can see more here.

strolling through the dwell magazine site, i stumbled upon terunobu fujimori’s work again. i’d seen pictures of the house above and below several years ago, and it’s always stuck in my mind. but, my mind being what it is [terrible at remembering names], i couldn’t remember the name of the architect.

so i was super happy to find it!

man, someone needs to publish a book of his work!

one of the perks of what i do is that sometimes i’m interviewed about it, which makes me articulate things i wouldn’t articulate otherwise. it’s like free therapy! here’s something i discovered while filling out a bunch of questions in preparation for a chronicle books press junket for later in the year…

Q: How do [your favorite artists] shape your work?
A: I’m attracted to and inspired by people that are such total nerds about what they do for a living that it permeates all of their consciousness. That it affects everything they do, say, think and create. That’s what being alive should be about, right?

this was after three hours of teaching my psu class this morning, in which the students were initially gripey about me making them draw an apple for 3 hours, after they’d already spent a whole week photographing said apple.

so i had to get all nerdy on their asses and read them inspirational quotes and stories while they were drawing, to get them to understand the importance of extreme nerdiness. this article about malcolm gladwell’s outliers book was a great find to read to them.

i also drew on the dry erase board to illustrate just how many marks they could get out of a simple pen [photo above].

an hour in, and they couldn’t stop drawing even when i told them it was break time, or 3 hours later when class was over! YEAH!

so, there’s a neato new website, uncommon, where you can make your own i-phone 3g cover using custom art – either your own, or choose from a selection of artists who have uploaded their artwork.

the best part is, you can crop, scale, rotate to truly customize your design! above is the online design center where i was previewing my redwoods artwork on a phone cover. when you’re happy with the results, you pay for it, and then the finished case comes in the mail a week later!

ultimately i chose a section of my moss tangle artwork… neato!

i’m terribly sick courtesy of student germs, and unable to critique and grade projects which was supposed to be my day. instead, i spent a delirous fever day in bed, trying to sleep this thing off.

it took me the whole day to get through encounters at the end of the world, a “watch instantly movie” on netflix. “filmmaker werner herzog takes you on a journey to the south pole. with a keen eye for the wonders and sometimes hilarious peculiarities of this icy land’s animal and human inhabitants, herzog offers an astounding look at the world’s most inhospitable landscape.”

no matter their job down at the base, every person featured in the film seems to be an artist, poet, and/or philosopher. how could you not be in such stark, harsh and subtly beautiful surroundings?

among many of the visual and philosophical gems: one of the divers talks about how the underwater world there is teeming with miniature, violent life; that it’s a good thing humans are so much larger so that we avoid the violence of “eat or be eaten” and only see the beauty.

i’m glad there are people in this world willing to adventure to such extreme places and bring back images for all of us to enjoy. but, boy, you couldn’t pay me enough to go myself! people don’t belong there.

i downloaded images from my camera today in anticipation of updating my online shop tomorrow [more anima art posters and cards! ... and more!] and found these photos as well.

the other night i and a few friends found ourselves in a huge warehouse full of people dancing, playing music, and hula-hooping. cirque du soleil meets burning man.

my favorite was the fabric rope dance finale [above]. the dancers would climb and wrap themselves in prettily-colored hanging fabric “ropes” while doing insane gymnast moves high in the air. neat!