Graf Orlock Kali shirt

So a little while ago, I saw Blues when they were here, and they here about to do a few dates with Graf Orlock, I told Jeremy (from Blues) to tell them that I'd like to do a shirt, and it happened! I love that. I've long admired their package designs and shirts, so I was really glad to be able to work with them. Stephen from Greyskull is now playing with them (now Sven), so I'm sure that helped as well. Sven told me about what they wanted, and I was stoked to draw it. It's Temple of Doom themed, Kali standing on Indiana, holding the head of short round. I think Hindu imagery and mythology is fascinating. Really fun project. It was nice to be able to design a 4 color shirt as well, I'm always pleading with bands to use more colors, because they always look better, but most shy away due to the rise in cost. I did a ton of variations in color, and I really don't know what it will end up looking like, especially since once I gave them the PSD, they can really do whatever they want with it.

Dead Stare logo

Logo for the band Dead Stare from Tacoma. I started out with they font Interstate, I wanted something very bold, because that's usually the way hardcore logos look, then messed it up with an inky toothbrush, then sprayed it with black and white spraypaint, only slightly pushing the nozzle so that it came out in large drops. Then I cute them out and arranged them so. At this point it was illegible, so I cleaned it up with a white-out pen until you could pretty much read it. Graphic designers hate this kind of type, so difficult to read, but illustrators tend to care more about what it looks like than how readable it is. Finally, I scanned it and ran it through a stamp filter. I don't advocate photoshop filters in general, but I found that the stamp filter does a good job of making things looks like they've been photocopied 10 times. I'm really happy with this, I think it suits the band's brutal sound perfectly.

Prosthetics Towers Shirt

The Prosthetics hired me to do another shirt design for them. This was the request "Hey, our idea is to have four or five men in business suits, each smoking a cigar. The smoke from the cigars would rise above them and form the twin towers. The heads of each of the men would be the heads of pigs." Also, red shirts. This is what I came up with, I couldn't make it work with small business men. So now I've got business men with truck heads, goat skull heads, and pig heads; none of them my idea haha. I'm going to start to be known for these. Come to think of it, a long time ago I did an ant headed business man. This idea is common I'd say. So this design is very different from the last one I did for them, or any of my other shirt designs. I was looking at Jake Bannon's designs www.convergecult.com/, and I thought they were much better than mine, then this came out. As an artist you're not supposed to point out who you're influenced by, but I'm not ashamed, art doesn't just come out of a vacuum you know? The pig head reminds me of pageninetynine as well, also some of my favorite art ever. This shirt is probably one of my strongest, and that sucks because I didn't really draw it, it's more of a collage.

There's something about this gritty style that works so well for hardcore bands. It's like a direct visual parallel to the music. The sprays, scratches, and photocopy artifacts give it a grimy look that suits the heavy distortion perfectly. They also make it somewhat hard to read or understand, like the unintelligible lyrics.

Post zombie show reflection

So I had my show at the Space gallery last night, all zombie art. I had fun, but I didn't get to meet as many people as I would have liked to. Thanks to those of you who came out. I met an artist named David Young V who's work was my favorite out of the show, so I was glad to meet him. Also a well inked metal girl who was showing under the name Gorwhor. I only talked to her briefly, but she seemed very nice. When I told her which piece was mine and she gave me a back-handed slug to the chest saying "DUDE!" I thought "This girl should be my new best friend." I also met the artist C3 very briefly, but I thought his painting had some cool stuff going on. That was it unfortunately, it was hard to tell who the other artists were. Next time I'll have to try harder to make acquaintances. I would like to have more gallery shows soon, it would seem that I caught a bit of a gallery bug, so if you know of any galleries looking for submissions, please let me know.

The artwork: Well, Rob Zombie's piece was really more like an autograph, and I have to say that I found that disappointing because I know that he can draw. I think the only thing that wasn't rock star about it was that it was selling for only $6.66. There were some very well painted zombie portraits, some art that wouldn't even be good in a high school art class, and some that I wondered if they were part of the show, or just something that was permanently there because I couldn't see how they fit the theme. Better crowd than I was expecting I have to say, people seemed nice.

Born Anchors Flyer

I understand that the tiny parts that make up cells were all formally small independent organisms that formed symbiotic relationships with each-other. This means that large animals like you and I are made up of an inconceivable amount of small animals. This idea just blows my mind. I've been meaning to make a piece about it for some time, and I thought it would fit well for this project. I thought it would be cool to think of it as larger animals. Here I'm also showing my love of scientific illustration, only I gave it a more edgy style (it's for a rock band after all). I'm CRAZY about illustrations of cells, skin layers, and other microscopic things. I think they're just fantastic so I do things like this from time to time. Acrylic on wood, 8x10

Spectrum 14 came...

All artists published in Spectrum get a hard bound edition of the book, and I have to say that I was impressed with how nice it is. I thumbed through the pages tonight. As I was looking through it, I started to get the feeling that I was really lucky to have gotten in the book. Most of the paintings are true finishes, finely rendered and laboriously painted. Talent by the tons. By the time I got to my page, I have to say I was disappointed with how my painting reproduced, and I'm sure that it's my fault. Not sure what happened, but it looks terrible. I saw my painting for what it is after seeing so many professional fantasy art-works: A school painting I banged out with very little preliminary work, a quick read, and ultimately not even up to my own standards. Gotta get my shit together. I know I can do so much better, I have, I will.

Zombie Painting

This is a painting that I submitted to a zombie show at the Space gallery. I hope that the image is good enough to be accepted into the show. The actual painting looks much better. I think it didn't scan very well because there was no ground. I painted directly on the wood. All the faces are thumb print sized, so i had to really get in there with little details, therefor I used gouache. This also did not scan well. I've had lots of problems with the way it scans and should probably stop using it. In the actual painting you can see the wood grain, little details, and subtle color shifts and it looks really neat. I'm glad that this is for a gallery show because it doesn't look good unless you see it in person. Also, didn't really pull the punch on this one. Zombie Christian hoard, I don't need to spell it out. I'm terrified of zombies and Christians, and I've been listening to the Thermals a lot, so there you go. I got that pink in there without even thinking about it, god damn I've been using a lot of pink lately. Was brown and nasty green, moved to pink. I love the contrast in my work though. Right now it's my only method for balancing out the generally creepy nature of my art. I think in this painting the way the sky is nice and pink, and ground level is a crowd horrible monsters makes for a nice pictorial space. It says escape to me.

P.S. IDW, call me, lol.