Cleveland Indians & Art Deco Icons

Posted on October 28, 2009 by Leslie Sigal Javorek | 1 Comment

Posted by: Leslie Sigal Javorek • Date: Wed, Oct 28, 2009 10:20 pm

This time of year always puts me in a nostalgic mood. Remembering walking to school in the mornings while it still was dark and being spooked by the sounds of the neighborhood waking up; freezing my buns off at the after-school football games because mini-skirts were far more important back then than keeping warm; and going through the roller-coaster emotions wondering whether my city’s home team, the Cleveland Indians, were finally going to make it into the World Series. The latter memory has been a perennial obsession for most of us in northeast Ohio. We want to believe so much in our team but just about every year, the team’s owner’s do their best imitation of Lucy to the fans’ Charlie Brown by stealing our chances away. I’m not a gambler but for those of you who are, here’s a tip. Watch the Cleveland Indians for the first half of the season and whoever is the best player, our best chance of making it to the Big Game, not only can you count on that player being traded away before the season’s over, whichever team they are traded to is a near-perfect predictor of at least one of the teams that will play in the World Series either that year and/or the next. This is not my imagination nor, of course, am I the first to notice this phenomenon. This year, it’s C.C. Sabathia who’s now a Yankee and our old coach, Charlie Manual, who’s brought the Philadelphia Phillies to the Series. I am by no means an expert sport’s analyst, but with a long pattern like this, it’s hard not to wonder whether the Indian’s are in fact not a major league team but rather the world’s best AAA-baseball team rewarded by being allowed to play with the majors but never taken seriously by their owners. As Charlie Brown would say, “AAUGH!”

Well, enough moaning and moping. Tonight I’ve decided to catch up with the rest of my Fox Spokane icon series (copper-toned art deco). If you haven’t already got the previous entries, check them out here and here. Enjoy!

Free Clip-Art / Icons of the Day

The following images are either full or reduced size previews. Simply right-click (or control-click) on the preview to save the image(s) of your choice to your desktop. (Unless otherwise noted, images are 512px X 512px in .png format). As always, usage of any of the images offered in the “Free Clip-Art / Icons of the Day” section are free for your personal use, subject to the limitations of my Creative Commons Non-Commercial – Attribution – No Derivatives – Share Alike- 3.0 license. (See sidebar for Terms of Use) For commercial or any other use, please contact me for directly.

Fox Spokane - pkg 1 Preview - CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

Fox Spokane - pkg 2 - CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

Fox Spokane - Servers - CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

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“Escher Sketch” Redux

Posted on October 23, 2009 by Leslie Sigal Javorek | Leave a comment

Posted by: Leslie Sigal Javorek • Date: Fri, Oct 23, 2009 12:09 am

Back around 1986 when I was playing around with my beloved Mac-Plus (that I had just upgraded to have 4 whole MB of ram!) and a 2400 baud modem (think of “Inch Worm” to get an idea of that connection speed), I came across a website that had some monochrome desktop pictures that could be downloaded for free. This was one of my very first encounters with the generosity of the early software and digital graphics pioneers. Not only were they offering the fruit of their labors for free to anyone stumbling upon their site but they would share with you their tricks and techniques, brainstorm with you on a new concept of your own, and introduce you to others with similar interests who may be of help. While I grew up in a family of extremely successful entrepreneurs going back several generations and consider myself to be a deeply ingrained capitalist at heart, my parents also taught me by example, how important it is to share your knowledge and skills as well as the fruits of your labors with those first starting out and hungry to learn and with those who simply have no where else to turn. So while the sentiment of the early freeware-shareware movement wasn’t foreign to me personally, it was a bit of an anomaly among the rest of the Me Generation when, according to the media, “everyone” was out for themselves and “Greed is Good” was their motto. I think this is one of the major reasons that I am proud to be a Geek. If it were not for this generous community, I would never have had the opportunity to learn as much as I have over the years nor have been encouraged to try my hand at skills that others outside of that online community told me were beyond my ability and that it was ridiculous to even try.

So, back to that first website I mentioned. It was one of those hosted by CompuServe(one of the earliest portals for us mere mortals with personal computers and not mainframes) and there was a desktop picture I came across that I thought was the most creative, clever concepts ever that was an Art Parody which merged the work of M.C. Escher and the popular toy by Ohio Art, the Etch-A-Sketch. While it was executed quite expertly, because of the state of the technology I owned at that time (limited to 2-bit graphics) it was incredibly crude compared to what can be done these days with 32 or even 64-bit graphics and millions of colors. Unfortunately, I cannot recall who had originated the concept of the “Escher-Sketch” to give him or her their proper due (if any of you knows, please put it in a comment to this post!). In honor of that anonymous wizard, I’ve created an updated version which makes a perfect backdrop for my Chiquita Series of icons. So without further ado, here’s tonight’s late night snack,..

Free Clip-Art / Icons of the Day

The following images are either full or reduced size previews. Simply right-click (or control-click) on the preview to save the image(s) of your choice to your desktop. (Unless otherwise noted, downloads are 512px X 512px in .png format). As always, usage of any of the images offered in the “Free Clip-Art / Icons of the Day” section are free for your personal use, subject to the limitations of my Creative Commons Non-Commercial – Attribution – No Derivatives – Share Alike- 3.0 license. (See sidebar for Terms of Use) For commercial or any other use, please contact me for directly.

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Escher Sketch Desktop (Resolution: 1600px X 1200px)

Escher Sketch Desktop (Resolution: 1920px X 1200px)

Declaration of Principles & Russet Icons

Posted on October 19, 2009 by Leslie Sigal Javorek | 1 Comment

Posted by: Leslie Sigal Javorek • Date: Mon, Oct 19, 2009 1:58 am

The main difference between having my blog vs. uploading my icons and clip art to websites which host digital galleries and downloads is the opportunity to share a bit of the inspiration behind my art. I do this, first, to make it a little more interesting and to widen the scope of the potential viewers, and secondly, to hopefully get some dialog going or at least people thinking about subjects or points of view they may not have considered before or done anything about.

If I have any specific agenda at all to proselytize, it is to keep an open-mind; that honesty and integrity are the most valuable assets anyone can strive for (and the ONLY assets that anyone can actually “own”) and that each and every human being has the ability and responsibility to make a positive difference with their lives that goes beyond their purely personal interests.

That message is simultaneously ridiculously simple and impossible to quantify, impossible to define for somebody else. Yet, I truly believe that if we each live our lives with these goals at the forefront, we’ll recognize the opportunities to prove (not just say) what we stand for and substantiate the value of our lives. Whether you’ll be the one to invent a life-saving device on the level of a lightning-rod or be the one person who took the time to be kind to the kid everyone makes fun of, it all adds to a better world that would not have had a chance if you hadn’t looked outside of yourself, seen a need, asked yourself, first, “What if that were me?” and then “How can I help?”.

Ironically, this lovely, grand-sounding “Declaration of Principles” started out as an admission that the set of icons that I’m introducing tonight actually have no deep inspirational or even slightly interesting story behind them – merely a color and texture theme that I started to play with. I tried to retroactively come up with a pseudo-inspiration by doing a web-search on the name of both the color and series, “Russet”, which lead me to a number of both surprising and interesting topics (ranging from a hot copyright controversy about “Russet Noon”; a new iPhone App to read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short-story “The Russet Witch” (which strikes me as a fodder for a Coen Brothers movie); a bizarre interview with Paula Abdul conducted by a Russet Potato and the methods for making russet fabric for uniforms during the Civil War). But as I’ve already confessed, there were no lofty thoughts behind this series, just a color that I find peaceful and reassuring.

Free Icons of the Day

The following images are either full or reduced size previews. Simply right-click (or control-click) on the preview to save the image(s) of your choice to your desktop. (Unless otherwise noted, downloads are 512px X 512px in .png format). As always, usage of any of the images offered on this blog are free for your personal use while subject to the limitations of my Creative Commons Non-Commercial – Attribution – No Derivatives – Share Alike- 3.0 license. (See sidebar for details)