Framing!

Man, I hate framing. I've done all the mats my self, assembled many frames, and not had one custom frame made, and still I've spent about $400. Not even close to done either. fuuuuck. From now on no more wacky ass sizes, fuck that. I'm going to paint everything so it can easily be put into a pre-made frame. What a mess. I have to have mats on almost all of my paintings because they're not made to be shown, they're illustrations, and they have loads of unsightly bleed space. Is that his art studio you might be asking? That's my fucking house, the whole thing. I live in a studio apartment, but really it's more like an art studio with a bed in it. Only in this studio, people get pissed if you're stretching paper with a staple gun in the middle of the night. I'm getting things ready for a show at my job (Goodby, Silverstein, and partners). I hate framing things, and I really hate cutting mats. I have to say that they look a lot nicer though, and a bunch of my painting have been getting beaten up so it's better that I frame them. I included a picture of what I look like after a day of framing. On a side note, I've been really miserable lately, so my art is doing great! I guess that's how it works for me, if I'm miserable, I make things.

Oh yes! Also here you can see a little bit about how I work since I'm sure someone I curious about this. You might have noticed my desk. You might also have noticed that it actually ISN'T a desk. I didn't have room for a drafting table in my apartment, partly because of this giant door that covers the storage space under my bathroom (yeah, the ceiling in my bathroom is only a few inches above my head). So I couldn't put any furniture near this door or I wouldn't be able to open it, then one day I realized that the door itself was a perfect desk, perfect size, perfect height. I built some little legs for it and that was it. Some have suggested that I take the door with me if I move.

I need a rep!

Please help! I'm looking for someone who works with music based clients especially. It's hard to sort through all the reps out there. If you have any suggestions please send them to me.

Recent good news

I've never posted these kinds of things on my blog before, but they're good to share. Hopefully I'm not being too self-absorbed. I used to keep a list of sites that had featured me or blogs about my art, but it got way out of hand and I gave up. If you have a website, definitely put some tracker code in it, it's good to know where people are linking to you, and what they're saying. I was using stat counter, but I changed to google analytics. Anyway, this was some nice stuff. I'm always surprised and somewhat delighted when my site is featured for its design and not for the illustrations. In this case my first reaction was "well, yeah, obviously they liked my site, look at all the pink", but they got it off this other, less popular site called the daily slurp, which does not share my color preferences. Cool stuff. Once again, got the creepy comment. I don't know if I'll ever be able to take the dark edge off my art, especially since I don't see it. Maybe I don't need to. People like it, that's what matters.

Panther Attack

One of the guys from born anchors asked me to do a poster for this show. I said yes, even though I'm busy, just because I really wanted to draw panthers. In my mind, this was going to be much lighter, almost cute, but then in drawing it, it became scary. An ongoing problem for me. I like it a lot though, so that's all that matters. Client needs, whatever. I thought it would be fun to mix something scary like zombies, with something cute, like the panthers I drew in my sketchbook, very much having Deth P. Sun in mind. Then I drew them and they just looked terrifying. Oh well, I'm working on getting away from that. Baby steps. I might be doing an album cover for Panther Attack in the future, so be on the lookout for that. The ink drawing was really tight, using a refillable Japanese brush pen that didn't belong to me, and now I really wish it did. I have my brother looking out or one because he's living in Japan. I have a feeling I'm going to be sending him on a lot of missions to find technical pens, brushes, prints, etc. for me to nerd the fuck out over. He likes to draw, so it's not all bad for him, and I encourage him to do so because he really does have talent, but I think he feels overshadowed by me.

A lot of photoshop effects in this one, maybe too much, opinions?

Panthers

I'm doing a poster/flyer for a band called panther attack, so I did a google image search on panthers. I was a little bothered by these images. I don't understand why this is such a popular image that it needed to be ripped off over and over. Is this seriously such a high selling poster that it needed to be bootlegged? Are thousands of people hunting the internet looking for paintings of carnivores to buy solely based on their level of "bad-ass"? What's going on?

The Prosthetics Shirt

They had a couple ideas. The other one was venus fly traps tearing people apart. I would have liked to draw them, but I couldn't make it work in my mind without looking like a gorey death metal album cover.

Ed Gein vinyl

I saw this on Ed Gein's myspace blog and I thought I'd share it.

"Judas Goats & Dieseleaters on VINYL!!!!

The vinyl for Judas Goats & Dieseleaters is FINALLY out!

After over a year of ridiculous artwork bullshit (the details of which I won't get into) we finally got someone awesome to do the artwork. That someone's name is Jeremy Forson. He did an amazing job with the artwork and layout for these puppies. They finally arrived yesterday and they look kick ass! We are totally stoked on them!

Head over to the Hex Records site at www.hanginghex.com to check them out and order one up!

Also go to www.jeremyforson.com and take a gander at his artwork because his shit rules!"

I love getting reactions like that from the bands I work for. It's good to know I hit the mark.