The Discarded Instruments Concept

The title for this post doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue does it? Alas, that was my idea for concept #2 for Liz Murray’s album cover. For the first attempt, I tried to convey my ideas over the phone to get approval before starting. For this one, the concept wasn’t much of a concept. All the strength of the image was in the execution and not so much the idea itself. I knew this and decided to work it up before ever mentioning the idea to Liz or her team. Luckily it paid off. She likes it. They like it. All is good with the world.

If you read the previous post, you know why I needed to do a second version. Basically the first one just didn’t compliment Liz’s sound the way it needed to. I think this one does.

I do a lot of photo-manipulation in my advertising gig but normally stick to illustration for most of my freelance work. The reason being is that advertising runs at the speed of money and rarely do I have time to do a proper illustration for a client without that time running head to head with another assignment. Understandably, clients would rather get a good piece on time than a great piece late. Anyway, it was fun doing a photo-illustration without my usual confines. I rarely take on freelance gigs that involve compromise. I figure if the client chose to seek me out, they want my personal spin on the project. Agency work is a bit different since the clients don’t usually know my work personally. Totally getting off topic. Here’s a shot of the cover design, isolated without the text elements:

I know, crows always find their way into my work. I’ve accepted it.

I think the image is peaceful. Might put it on canvas or something. I don’t know. I say that more often that I actually do it. Did you know the T is silent in “often?” Oh, you did? Yea, me too.

Bout to start working on a big piece. Has a gorilla in it. And airplanes. I’ll try to document it as I go. Until then…

The Girl with the Chair

Been a long time since I posted anything. I hit a nice creative stride a few months back; gotta few pieces out of it… but I got winded it would seem. Haven’t been in a fine-art making mood as of late. However, i have had a couple freelance, commercial gigs that have kept the juices flowing. One of which I shall share with you fine people now.

I have been commissioned to do an album cover for local singer, Liz Murray, whose album drops early next year. I’m currently in the middle of  version 2 of said album cover. The first version, while liked, didn’t really convey the vibe of the music. But I like the piece. And I plan on making a small print out of it. So I thought i would show it off here first.

Since it was designed to work as the front and back of a digipack single fold, it’s a long narrow design – and for my own purposes (since it won’t be used for the album anymore), I’ve made it even longer. Panoramic style. See…

The idea of a person, specifically a young girl, alone in this vastness with nothing but a chair was an interesting concept to me. Not sure I can explain why. Initially, that wasn’t supposed to be blood she was walking in – it was supposed to be ladybugs – but while that idea rocked in my head, i couldn’t get it to rock on the screen. So now it’s blood. Whatever. And the chair… I knew from the start i wanted the chair to be very different from everything else – tone, style, execution, etc. – all very different from the color palette and surroundings. Again, this idea was intriguing to me although I cant honestly say what it means.

Here’s a shot of the girl and the chair (which rests dead center) at 100%…

Took a while to draw that darn chair. Thanks go out to my friend, Jenifer Parker, for posing for me. She’s posed for me before. She’s willing, does what i ask, and doesn’t question how she looks or the end result… a perfect subject. Thanks again; sorry they’re not using it but if i get it printed, I’ll definitely show it at the gallery and I’ll get you a copy.

I’ll post version 2 later this week. It’s very different from this one. I like it a lot.

Thanks for reading.

Virus Girl

Newish painting, based on an old painting and an even older illustration. I did the Virus Girl design for a band back in the day – that version was a little different. Then I painted it on an old door that I found; you can find that one on my gutterpark site. That version sold a few years ago and now I’ve resurrected the stencil at the request of a potential buyer for this new version. And it goes a little something like this…

The version on the door has some varnished water drops laid over the top – i like that – might do something similar on this one – better hurry though, the show is tomorrow night. Downtown Gallery Crawl tomorrow night ya’ll. Hope to see all those within driving distance there. I’ll have 8 new pieces on display, including this one. Here’s a another angle:

You can probably tell from the photos that this version is on metal, adhered to wood. 12 X 18 inches. Been signing (stenciling) my work on the back lately – my signature is distracting i think. So… pricing this one for the budget -conscious. Contact me if you’re interested. Thanks for looking.

Butterflies and Wolves

Here’s another illustration without a home. This was initially sketched out for a client. But about half way in, i realized it wasn’t going to work for it’s original purpose – but i finished it anyway. It’s very indicative of my older, stencil-style work – with the black/red color scheme and the use of negative space (not to mention the butterflies).

If anyone has a use for it, let me know.

I’m involved in a group show come November so I started going through some of my digital illustrations to see if anything was worthy of getting reprinted. I came across a design I did about 4 years ago called STRAY – sort of a red riding hood thing. I had to resize it and move some things around for reasons I won’t bore you with, but I ended up using the pose from the illustration above as my new “Red.”

Worked out pretty good. I’m having it giclee printed on gallery-wrapped canvas – painting the sides gold. I think the final piece will be 15 X 30 inches. Here’s some detail shots.

Next week, I’ll post a small painting that I just completed as well as shots from the upcoming “Gallery Crawl.” Thanks for looking.

Specimens

Alrighty. I did the following illustration for a client. They aren’t going with it. It wasn’t on target, admittedly. Alas, thought i would show it off. I call it “specimens.”

I put it up on threadless just in case anyone gets the urge to vote,  – I’m honestly not sure it makes that good of a shirt but hey, I didn’t have anything else to do with it. Plus, threadless gets a lot of traffic. Exposure is good.

Here’s a couple detail shots:

That’s me breaking the jar with my head – see:

Photo credit goes to the wife. Look how long my jeans are. That’s not right.

I’m going to post another vector illustration tomorrow  – another failed attempt for a client. Maybe I should consider another line of work. So, thanks for all those that read this and double thanks for all those that bother to vote at threadless. Highly unlikely this will make it as a shirt but it makes me feel better when my submissions get some attention. Abandonment issues.

 

Served Fresh

So… new painting. I don’t really have all that much to say about it; I’m not sure if it’s my mood or if maybe I feel that the painting should just speak for itself. The latter seems like a cop out. I will say that it was inspired by lyrics of the song, “By Your Side” by Cocorosie. They’re an odd twosome. Not a bad thing. Oddness, I mean. My son sometimes asks me if he’s normal. Not sure how to answer him just yet. If he’s anything like his dad…  I’m getting off point. Here’s the painting:

It’s 24 X 24 inches – on wood. Several different applications/mediums here. Spraypaint, water-color, ink, wood-stain, even paint-thinner. I designed this in the computer first – I do that a lot – and the cleanliness of the pink area looked great on the monitor. In person, cleanliness just looks boring and unfinished. So I “aged” it. Muddied it up is what I did.

There was still something missing though. Earlier in the week I convinced my mother-in-law to let me have this old school workbook (that i think belonged to my wife at some point). Took some coercing – especially after i told her my plan was to cut it all up. But I knew I had to have Jack & Jill. They were too great. Looking at them for the first time, I knew they could be used in virtually any setting but that their meaning could be altered significantly depending on that setting. Little did I know I would find the perfect place for them just a couple days later.

And as for that “meaning,” could be anyone’s guess. But I think they add a bit of levity to the painting and a needed splash of color. Did I just type “splash of color?”

After drawing the bottom, i just wasn’t feeling it. Originally, I wanted it to be more detailed but most of my pens fail me when i try to use them on these weird surfaces I create thought layer after layer of paints and chemicals. Luckily that steel-tipped KRINK pen will write on anything. Unfortunately, one can get the thinnest of lines from it (or at least I can’t). So there went my detail. But the water-colors saved it I think/hope. I like working with water-colors. Need to do more of that.

So… This is the last in my current series. Or it could be the first of my next since I’m thinking about doing something with song lyrics. I don’t know. I don’t think out this art-thing too far in advance. As usual, this monkey will be on the back of UPSTAIRS at the October Gallery Crawl which is October 6th. Speaking of this upcoming crawl, we’ll have a large presence of street-inspired work up there so if you’re in the area and a fan of that particular scene, come out.

Thanks for looking. Contact me for purchasing information.

Rockin’ Catering Co.

I designed a logo recently for local legend, Toby Traylor; he of guitar-pickin’ fame and pie-pusher at Lea’s. This is not the first time we’ve worked together. I designed this for his band a while back. He’s also been generous with his talents in the past and provided UPSTAIRS with a bit of class via his magic fingers. Now the man is delving further into the realms of food service with his own catering company. And if Lea’s is any indication – should be yum-worthy.

His request was that the logo mix a bit of House of Blues with more than a hint of Indian style… dots not feathers ya’ll. So I did a small handful. One catered more to the House of Blues thing, one leaned on the Indian thing and I did one that was far removed from anything he asked for. A wild card if you will. Not entirely sure why I’m mentioning all these logos since I’m only showing the one he chose. The best one I think. We went Indian. Check it:

Now that i’m looking at it again, I remember his other request. He wanted a dobro in it. For all those not in the know, a dobro is a type of acoustic guitar with a metal disk on it (at least that’s what my widget dictionary says).

So the elephant – that’s Ganesha – and Indian deity that i think has something to do with success. I don’t know. I only do enough research to help me with the visual, this ain’t school. So I figured Ganesha was born to rock and I threw a little dobro love his way. Used an indian style font for “catering” to finish ‘er up. Here are a couple variations:

Alright, that’s that. I’ll post a new painting later this week that I’m sure will cause some to question my sensibilities. Until then…

POW

I don’t know if three letters making a single word should qualify as a new entry in my text series – alas, I’m grading on a curve here. This piece was fun to do, simply because i abandoned my plan when i realized it wasn’t working and just went bananas with the paint. It quickly turned into a graffiti piece as I just toyed with it, adding layers of whatever struck me. Listening to my instincts instead of my brain has always served me well. Although, with that said, this is one of those pieces that I’ll most certainly paint over if it doesn’t sell; not because I don’t like it, I just don’t have the space to collect my own work – so if no one finds the genius within the drips and crossbones, so be it – move on to phase 2. No looking back. Here’s my ode to gangstas, POW:

So I found this picture online ( i think on the photo-blog, lumberjack special, maybe) that I thought was super cool. Am i wrong?

Right? So then I thought, “gottsta make a stencil out of that, yo.” I really talk like that. So I did:

Now that the image is buried under a bunch of other crap, I’m almost disappointed i went through the trouble of designing it and cutting it out. Almost. I’m sure it will surface again somewhere. That might have been foreshadowing, depends on how lazy I am. Or if there are any stencil artists out there who want it, shoot me an email, I’ll send you the vector file.  Here’s some detail shots of the painting:

Thanks for looking. Thanks for reading. All that gangsta shizz.

Look Away (again)

Alrighty – a few weeks ago I posted a painting that I called “Look Away.” I called it that because I intended those words to make it into the final design even though they didn’t (it looked good without the words and part of the process of being a competent artist is knowing when to stop). But although I liked the painting, I still had an inner-nagging thing telling me that I had yet to complete my task. Who gave me the task is anyone’s guess. I have a lot of ideas that never materialize but I couldn’t let this one go. So without further adieu…

Gets to the point, no? Unlike many (most) of my paintings, I had a pretty clear vision of how I wanted this one to look. Leaving the background untouched was a decision that I went back and forth on… the wood was just too pretty to cover up. And i think it brings an element of menace to the imagery that I wouldn’t have gotten had the crow and words rested on more paint. Here’s a detail. I think it’s a little bigger than actual size.

The piece is 24 X 24 inches. The board is nailed to a frame so that it stands apart from the wall. The grey and red are spraypaint, done with a stencil. The black was hand-drawn with one of them badboy, KRINK, steel-tipped paint markers. I did a graffiti-style piece recently using several Krink products, becoming a big fan. I’ll post that piece next week.

All the paintings mentioned will be on display at UPSTAIRS during the next gallery crawl on Oct 6. If you can’t wait, and are in the area (and in a serious need for new art), hit me up and I’ll give you a private tour. Prices available upon request. Thanks for looking.

Martin

So… I’m not really going to be able to explain how this painting came to be. Not that I couldn’t, it’s just a complicated and rather boring explanation that I would rather not type about (particularly this morning when i’m on only 5 hours sleep). I will say that, like a lot of my work, a series of happy, semi-controlled accidents led to it. The one accident, Mr. King, was something that I felt I probably wouldn’t keep… something that I would paint over once i returned to the studio and realized that it wasn’t working. Thing is, I think it did work.

As I was saying, there is an explanation for the letters and even Mr. King, himself. But I implore you fine people just to enjoy the mystery of it. Martin is an admirable man, let us not overthink it. Or if that’s not good enough, feel free to ask me in person, I’ll tell ya.

This piece is 24 X 36 inches I think. I always say “I think.” I need to start measuring this stuff before i start blogging. Anyhoo… The left side is a combination of methods to capture that weathered look. Wood stain, acrylic paints, metallic powder, spraypaint… creative use of a sponge (not to be confused with THE sponge). The right side, the illustration, was done by scratching into wet paint to reveal the surface underneath. Had I known that I was going to draw Martin there, I probably wouldn’t have scratched the horizontal lines at the bottom, but it looks okay. Serendipity. All that. Here’s a detail:

Bit of my trademark glare on the photo.

After I returned to my studio the following day, fully thinking that I was going to paint over the whole thing or at least Martin, I found myself really liking it. The aged/weathered vibe was so right that I decided to rough up Martin a bit – which I did by dragging metal chains (which we use in our gallery to hang paintings from) all over him. I also finished out the words (again) since I had covered half with the light blue, using spraymount and dirt. It’s subtle. Looks like someone removed a sticker and the residue left behind has picked up dirt over the years. Last night I attempted to put some floral elements in the foreground – don’t ask – didn’t work anyway. So I’m done. That’s art, baby.

Thanks for reading. Price available on request.