Day 73: Artists Rendering of My ACL Experience

I drew this at around 11:30pm after getting home from the last day of ACL. This is pretty much how I was feeling at that point. The festival was awesome and we had a great time, but it was exhausting. I won't go into a full retelling of all three days, but I will post a few highlights.

Here are all the acts we watched at least a little bit of:

• Delta Spirit
• Big Boi (from Outkast)
• Bright Eyes
• Sara Bareilles
• Kanye West
• The Warrior Gospel Band
• The Antlers
• Young the Giant
• City and Colour
• Iron & Wine
• Skrillex
• Cee Lo Green
• Stevie Wonder
• MilkDrive
• WAX
• Mariachi El Bronx
• The Head and the Heart
• AWOLNATION
• Death From Above 1979
• Fleet Foxes
• Arcade Fire

First I have to mention that my flag was hugely popular. All day long I constantly got compliments on it and people approached me asking for pictures. It was pretty awesome and it made me feel pretty proud of my flag.

The first day was pretty nice as far as the weather was concerned. It rained on us walking in and stayed pretty cool and cloudy all day. The highlight of the first day (and of the whole festival as far as I'm concenred) was Bright Eyes. We've seen Connor Oberst perform probably five or six times now and I was kind of telling myself I wasn't all that excited because I've seen him so many times, but as soon as the show started I got sucked into it energy of it. Bright Eyes is always a good show and this was no different. Later that night we chose to watch Kanye West over Coldplay and I'm glad we did. Whether you like his music or not Kanye is definitely a showman.

The second day rained pretty heavily for a little bit, and then continued to drizzle for a few hours. The weather was nice and cool again and we got to see a lot of great sets. Cee Lo Green was pretty entertaining, but the highlight of day two was definitely Stevie Wonder's two hour set. I'm not a big Stevie Wonder fan, but you can't help but dance and sing along when he's on stage.

Day three was hot. Maybe not as hot as it has been in past years, but compared to the first two days it was terrible. We started the day with an awesome punk/mariachi band from LA and then watched a bit of The Head and the Heart before deciding to go relax at one of our favorite restaurants, Shady Grove. My brother, my wife and I walked down and enjoyed some nachos and air conditioning. After we went back to festival the wife and I laid out our blanket in the covered sand pit and took a bit of a nap. When we woke up we watched Death From Above 1979 which was maybe the only legitimate heavy rock band at the festival. We watched a few songs and then headed over to watch Fleet Foxes and then made our way through the crowd to get a good spot for Arcade Fire. I like Arcade Fire, but wasn't particularly excited for them. My wife on the other hand has been looking forward to seeing them for months. They put on an excellent show and it was a lot of fun to be in the crowd for.

After all three days we were all feeling pretty run down, but it was a lot of fun and I'd go every year if I could.

Day 72: Donatello at the Austin City Limits Festival

I drew this picture the morning before the second day of ACL. We were rushing to get ready and leave for the day so I didn't have time to put a whole lot of effort into this one.

Day 71: Donatello Makes a Flag

Here it is, my secret project that I've been neglecting posting updates to work on.

Now, you may be wondering why I would be so inclined as to spend my time and money making a Donatello flag? To that I say, "Why wouldn't I?" But there is a reason I decided to make one this week. For the next three days the wife and I (along with some other friends) will be attending the Austin City Limits Music Festival. It's one of the biggest organized events held in this city every year and this year we're going.

This will be our second time at the festival, our first being three years ago. On the first day of the festival almost immediately we noticed all of the flags people had. At first it didn't really make sense to us, and even when our friends explained that the flags make finding your friends easier we thought, "That's stupid, we have cell phones, just call or text." After a day of texting, "We're by that one merch booth with the guy in the black T-shirt," or not being able to get through at all because of overloaded circuits we began to understand the importance of having a flag if you're with a group of people. So after an exhausting first day we made a Team Zissou flag using materials we had at the house and held it together with Stitch Witchery. It served us well for the next two days and now hangs in a place of honor in our apartment.

This year we had time to plan and we wanted to make our flag memorable. We discussed several design ideas, the focus being to keep it simple but recognizable. It may seem like the natural choice to do a TMNT flag, but the Donatello design only barely beat out the Ghostbusters flag idea. While we collaborated on the concept I actually made the flag myself because my wife has been so busy with rehearsals lately, plus I enjoy sewing and creating something so awesome out of nothing. It may not look too complicated, but I sewed the entire thing by hand. I could have used my wife's sewing machine and done it in way less time, but I don't know how to use it and I prefer hand sewing when I can; it makes me feel like I've put more effort into the creation. It took me somewhere between 9.5 and 11 hours over three days as near as I can figure.

Here are a few pictures I took along the way so you can see the process. For reference the flag itself is roughly 48" x 31" and the Ninja Turtle head is about 21" tall. The first image is the plain flag with the pattern laid on top for spacing. I created the pattern by taking a picture of my pajama pants with my wife's nice camera and then blowing it up, printing it out on 9 sheets of paper, then cutting and taping it together. The second picture is with just the green face backing finished. The Last picture is the completed product after assembling the mask/eyes and mouth and then attaching them to the flag.

 I won't be posting anything for the next couple of days since we'll be at the festival, but I'll get back to it soon enough and I'll wrap up my meme-parade with one more celebrity meme inspired picture.