False Starts : Gōds

I've always been interested in the Greek Gods of the Pantheon ever since seeing the movie Clash of the Titans as a kid. To me they were like super heroes and I'm sure a case can be made that there's parallels between DC comics characters, but that's for another time. But at one point in 2009 I was batting around ideas for some new promo postcards. A lot of time I'll get ideas and they'll snowball and snowball to a point where I'm either forced to reel them in or I get intimidated and just scrap them altogether. Growing up I also collected baseball cards and I loved the checklist cards and I also liked when fast food places offered collectible items on a time released basis or had different ones at different establishments. I think the Great Muppet Caper glasses were like that and I found it exciting when a new one came out, because it was exactly that, NEW. Im sure at some point before a new glass was released I had seen each one on an ad or poster, but it was a whole other thing when it was physically in front of you.

But for my promo idea I wanted to pick a small group (mostly because this would get super costly) of companies and art directors I REALLY REALLY wanted to work for and over the course of a year - one every month for 12 months, send them a postcard depicting a different God of the Greek Pantheon. The first one would be oversized and have a checklist. There was a couple reasons behind this, first because as stated above I liked checklists for trading cards and the idea of collectibitity , and second because I hoped it would indicate to the art director that more were to come and not to throw it away. The plan was to send them in alphabetical order, although maybe over the time I would mix it up....and I really hoped that the art directors would look forward to getting new ones...my devious side even toyed with the idea of withholding a new card one of the months with the hope it would bum them out and then they would feel relief when they started showing up again....but that was probably giving myself too much credit... So first up would be Aphrodite

Knowing if other work came in I might get overwhelmed I set out to get as many final pieces done as I could before getting them printed. This is where the intimidation began to creep in because I knew if for some reason I burned out it would make me look really bad....but over time I sketched ideas for the different characters and worked on finals...

One of my favorites was Poseidon and I also worked out how I would deal with the back of the cards - a little history about him, kind of like the bio cards on the back of G.I. Joe and Transformers toys.

Who knows maybe I'll revisit this idea - always thought it would be cool to do a series of art prints as well.....

Focus

I think as a still struggling freelance illustrator, I have a tendency to focus on the worst aspects of the life as an artist - the slow times, frequent rejection looking for new work, and some of the frustration that goes along with having to compromise on your vision during the process. But I think I'm going to try focusing on some of the really great clients I've worked with over the years and showcase some of the work I've done for them. First up - Joe's Barbershop Chicago. I began doing work for them in 2011, when a mutual friend suggested me for posters advertising their yearly Hangover Shave Sunday events. For the past 4+ years in addition to creating posters for HSS events, I've also created posters for other shop sponsored events, as well as t-shirts, various sticker designs, and odds and ends. Kind of like the Giant Peach stuff work, it becomes a challenge coming up with new ideas for what is essentially the same event/same subject matter but between Joe and I we can usually come up with something. Personally, I still really love this first poster I did.

Here's a little sampling of the many posters I've done over the years for Joe's Barbershop as well as a little video I put together.....

Be sure and check out the Joe's Barbershop Chicago website to find out more about this great family owned business as well as pics from the various event they host......