Bizzness Cards

Probably not really anything postworthy but I just got some new business cards yesterday...these are actually the first cards I've gotten done in almost ten years...I know I know I'm horrible at self promotion. Anyway, with Artfest coming up on the 18th of September I figured it was finally time....

Time to Die

People that know me well, know that Blade Runner is my all time favorite movie. It wasn't always that way. In fact up until a few years ago I always told people Empire Strikes Back was my favorite movie, but as I've gotten older my appreciation for Blade Runner has grown the more I've watched it. Like do you ever see a movie and you're like "I want to go there."? That's how it is for me and that movie. Even though it's overcrowded, smog filled, and full of acid rain, the city of Los Angeles in 2019 seems like a place I'd like to live. Plus they have cool umbrellas. Anyway, here's a new piece I just finished titled "Rick Deckard Witnesses Roy Batty's Soul Rising to Heaven". A few years back there was an exhibition of medievel art at the Dayton Art Institute that got my neurons firing as far as imagery and history. It occurred to me that it would be funny if some far off future civilization or maybe an interstellar visitor came across some of the pop culture art of recent times and how they might confuse that for our actual history. And with the recent mash-up art there might even be further confusion i.e. Star Wars stuff mixed with Lord of the Rings, etc. but thats a whole other discussion. So I started thinking about some of my favorite movies and how to interpret by way of medieval religious art and in some cases how despite what really happened, the depiction doesn't necessarily show the correct or whole story. The first one I did was inspired by a statue I saw in the exhibit of St. Michael slaying the devil, but in this case Darh Vader defeating Obi-Wan Kenobi titled "Lord Vader vanquishes the Rebel Terrorist Obi-Wan Kenobi". It just struck me that Darth Vader wouldn't want his fight with his old master to be depicted the way it really happened with Obi-Wan basically allowing himself to be destroyed, so instead I portrayed him as physically having Obi-Wan under his boot defeated. I ended up doing the final on a Darth Vader blank cover.

I sketched up a few more ideas including a Taxi Driver one and this one that I FINALLY completed of one of my favorite scenes from Bladerunner.

Art Fest / Infusion Art t-shirt design

Next month I will be participating in the first annual Infusion Art Artfest in Beavercreek, Ohio where I will be showing off some of my artwork and peddling my wares. I also just wrapped up a t-shirt design for an art endowment called Infusion Art to be sold at the event. While brainstorming ideas I started doing research on art goddesses and came across a wikipedia entry for a Benzaiten and thought it would be a perfect visual way to not only represent an artist but depict various different art techniques and tools.

Ghostbusters sketch cards!

Been awhile and wanted to get back in the habit of posting to my blog about stuff I'm working on / have worked on. Earlier last year I was asked to contribute sketch cards for a Ghostbusters set being released by Cryptozoic that would be coming out around the time of the new movie that just opened this past weekend. So here's what I came up with....I had a lot of fun with these and they were more challenging then the Star Wars stuff because there wasn't as many characters to choose from...as you can tell I liked Slimer a lot as a kid as well as the Terror Dogs. It was always the ghosts and their designs that stood out for me....

Raging Nathans / Nobodys split 7'' art PART 2

OK, now for the other side of the Raging Nathans / Nobody split 7" I created art for. This is for the Nobodys side and for a song based on a local Dayton celebrity named the Brown St. Pimp. He even has his own facebook page. HA.

Final line art was done with a Sharpie fine pen on marker paper to prevent bleeding. Line art was then scanned and autotraced in Illustrator to clean up. Then I could dive into the colors....I double teamed both pieces at the same time so I could have some similar colors and they would work well together.....

Eventually we had to start thinking about the art for the center label. Here's some of the sketches for that....

And the final piece along with the label sticker.....

Anyway, I had a blast working on the art for this split. Radgirlfriend records is taking preorders right now.

Raging Nathans / Nobodys split 7'' art PART 1

Earlier this year I was contacted by Josh Goldman of Rad Girlfriend Records to work on art for an upcoming Raging Nathans / Nobodys split 7". It was great timing because I had been wanting to work on some album art again and had worked with RGR before on previous album art for the Raging Nathans and also another band, robthebank.

Josh came to me with two fully formed ideas of what he wanted, so I could immediately dive in. Here's the two sides in various stages starting off with the Raging Nathans side. Here's my initial sketch based off Josh's idea and direction.

At one point I thought about painting the one side and going the Photoshop route on the other side to really differentiate the two, but Josh and I both agreed the painting just didnt have the right look plus my painting style tends to be looser and I really wanted to pack the details into this piece...

So, I switched my approach, starting off with getting some tight line art inked to color on the computer.....for inking I used a Sharpie fine point pen on marker paper to trace an earlier tighter sketch. Also I had a previous value study from when I was planning to paint the final piece (below). It's good to have this as reference when you are coloring on the computer, since you find yourself zooming in so much and can get lost. So it's almost like a road map for you. Also, as you can see, at this point the background was different with framed artwork on the walls and I hadn't even figured out how to handle the lettering on it.

After scanning my lineart, I opened it up in Illustrator and autotraced it to make it a smoother vector...this isn't completely fool proof and I still spend a lot of time cleaning my lines up in Photoshop, but it at least separates my lines from the background kind of like panes on a window. Then I saved my lineart as an EPS file and opened it up in Photoshop for coloring. Here's a screenshot early on of the coloring process and the final piece including a label for the actual record....

Next time I'll show the process for the Nobodys side. STAY TUNED

Sketches

A lot of the times, people only see the last step in a job - the final piece. But the hours and hours of sketching, false starts, just kind of get lost along the way and left in sketchbooks and stuffed in drawers. You'll notice that for the most part I sketch using non-photo blue and indigo blue pencils - Prismacolor Berol Verithins. Here's a little sampling of some from over the years.....

New Joe's Barbershop Chicago Hangover Shave Sundays poster

Well, my last post was about my first freelance job and this one is about my latest. As I talked about in an earlier post, since 2011 I've been creating posters for Joe's Barbershop Chicago for various events they put on. Every year he has dates for Hangover Shaves Sundays which includes either a haircut or shave, food, beer, and music. Here's the sketch I came up with after brainstorming with Joe and also the final piece.