Yeah, No.

Having made my first illustration for use in a textile design the best advice I can think to offer is to MAKE SURE YOU CUT STRAIGHT LINES! when you dissect your image.  This a collaborative project I'm working on with artist/designer/speed reader/computer nerd/regular nerd Kati Driscoll for this show to benefit the World Wildlife Fund.  Basically you have to cut your drawing into quarters when you get to a certain stage so that you can fill in the edges of the drawing in order for everything to meet up evenly on each side of the image.  This way your image becomes a repeating pattern.  It seems like a weird magic trick and it's really cool and pretty fun to do.  BUT! make sure make sure make sure you cut straight bloody lines or you're in for some photoshop nightmares.  Anyway, it was tough the first time around and I'm sure if I had a wacom tablet then it would have been much easier to correct my mistakes.  The above images show what the final piece looks like repeated as it would on a large piece of fabric, the letter design that Kati contributed to the piece, a close up of all the dumb gaps I made and had to fix, and an overlay that I had to do on a transparency sheet (complete with dust and cat hair, damn you Stilgar) over the original drawing so that I could fill in areas around the letters that were a little bare. Before I started I found a really helpful artical at Design Sponge, here is how I learned to stop worrying and love making repeating patterns.  I'm also working on a comic book for the show and this is why my next installment of Ovoyyamar will most likely be posted next week instead of this week.  It's weird and disorienting when you've been working all day at your computer only to look up several hours later to realize you're sitting in the dark.

In the Shadows of the Sunlit World

Part 2 of Ovoyyamar is lurking out in the shadows...

Until it strikes I highly recommend staring into the abyss that is Luminism.  There are a lot of amazing 19th century American landscape artists and their works that I have found very inspiring while working on this comic.  I could stare into John Frederick Kensett's 'Lake George' forever I think.  One random day someone will say "Hey, where did Alan go?" Then they'd look into the painting and see me floating off to the far shore before disappearing into the mysterious mountains.  To my mind there is something very quietly ominous concealed in a lot of those paintings.  This is basically what is happening in my head whenever I look at this stuff.  You'll find what you feel I guess.  That's art for you.

OVOYYAMAR: Part One

I've been working hard on my comic and have finally begun to post it! You can check out the first part here: Ovoyyamar.  

G.I. Joe-a-Day

In March I took on another Fun-a-Day project along with Alien-a-Day because I figure why not make things harder for myself. I fell way behind on these guys but finally finished them (does it count as fun-a-day if i did like 15 in one day?)

When I was a kid, going grocery shopping with my mom meant that we might also get to go to Woolworth's (when they were still around), K-mart, or Hera help me, KB Toys. That is if we didn't act up. I tried my best not to because I desperately needed to have a new G.I. Joe toy whenever I would come within 50 feet of a purveyor of the little, plastic soldiers. I would brake out in a sweat and probably drag my mom forward the way my dog pulls me along when he has to go O-U-T.

Toys are great and I was a very lucky kid to be able to have so many (did I appreciate them then?). My brother and I would wake up Christmas mornings when our parents were still together to find He-Man and Skeletor mid battle around Castle Grey Skull. Look over to the left and you'd find Luke Skywalker hanging out of the bottom of an AT-AT Imperial Walker surround by Storm Troopers. My dad had taken all the toys out of their packaging and set them up all around so that it looked like a bunch of toys broke into the house and decided to reenact the Battle of Waterloo on our living room carpet. Dad would go to a dozen stores to make sure he found every single character known to be part of the set as indicated on the back of each figures cardboard packaging. When the smoke cleared and all the toys were put away (which rarely happened), my favorite, hands down, is definitely G.I. Joe. They were just the right size to manipulate with my little kid hands and also stuff into the G.I. Joe fanny pack I wore at all times. They came with me to get pizza, they came with me in the car ride to my grandmom's house, I took them to the dentist office, the beach, the woods, everywhere. I kept them all neatly arranged in a big fishing tackle box. Knives and small arms on the first level, heavy machine guns, special weapons, and helmets on the next, the bottom compartment was filled with Joes and backpacks. I even had little plastic containers, about the size of a roll of quarters (i think they original were some kind of M&M candy pack), that had extra rubber bands, screws, and hip joints, in case I needed to perform any medical triage on the casualties of play. In short, I had a problem.

I still have a bunch of Joes. I don't really do much with them but I think about them a lot. As an artist I really appreciate the character design of my favorite guys and gals. Some designs were rubbish, especially as the toys neared the 1990's, but when they were good, in my opinion I think they were pretty great.

This is a set of 31 G.I. Joe action figure portraits painted from my little collection (4 or 5 of these I actually don't have but were some of my favorites so I included them). Let's start off strong with:

STORM SHADOW - Cobra - Ninja Assassin/Intelligence - 1984

WET SUIT - G.I. Joe - SEAL - 1986

NUNCHUK - G.I. Joe - Nunchaku Ninja - 1992

BIG BEN - G.I. Joe - SAS Trooper - 1991

SNAKE EYES - G.I. Joe - Commando/Hand to Hand Combat Instructor - 1985

SNAKE EYES - G.I. Joe - Commando/Hand to Hand Combat Instructor - 1982

FOOTLOOSE - G.I. Joe - Infantry Trooper - 1985

BUDO - G.I. Joe - Samurai - 1988

SPIRIT - G.I. Joe - Tracker - 1984

FIREFLY - Cobra - Saboteur - 1984

SHOCKWAVE - G.I. Joe - S.W.A.T. Specialist - 1988

FALCON - G.I. Joe - Green Beret/Medic - 1987

STORM SHADOW - G.I. Joe - Ninja - 1988

BEACH HEAD - G.I. Joe - Ranger - 1986

AIRTIGHT - G.I. Joe - Hostile Environment Specialist - 1985

NIGHT VIPER - Cobra - Night Fighter - 1988

La Résistance

Today I watched a film I'd never seen, "The Day of the Jackal". The film begins with the image of what I later (after the movie) learned is called the Cross of Lorraine. Chosen in response to the Nazi swastika, during World War II It became the emblem of the Forces Françaises Libres who wore them on armbands which featured the cross in the center of the French flag.

Anyway, I really liked the movie. Inspired by the film and the new things I learned about French resistance fighters i came to paint this owl. (makes sense) I painted a sort of cutesy owl the other day. I liked it but i was struggling with new ideas for greeting cards and was disappointed that all i could come up with was ANOTHER OWL! I decided to put a dead mouse in it's mouth so it would be a little harsher, a little uglier, what the Mac English to French computer translation program would call "plus laid". I just didn't want to paint another owl for people who like owls. owl people. I like owl people but owls don't. Owls want to kill things and eat them. And yes, sometimes owls want to liberate there forests, like my fellow featured here. They are tired of my crappy-cute owls.

Holiday of the Kreepz

I'm glad I was fortunate enough to learn of Krampus as a young adult. Believing that one of these lovelies would come into my house as the holidays neared for talking back to my mom because I refused to drink the disgusting warm milk that had been poured and left out an hour before dinner would've been too frightening for a kid who was already certain there were monsters who were more than willing to grab my feet as they dangled off the side of my bed any night of the year. A monster that is only going to show up for the holidays is bound to give you something special in the terror department. No thanks Krampus. No thanks.

This is from a set of hand painted post cards Kati and I are working on for our shop and for Punk Rock Flea Market in Philly 12.11.11: http://www.r5productions.com/event/70315/

Night of the Kreepz!

I'd been watching any movie with "the Living Dead" or "of the Dead" in the title. I guess that's part of what inspired these folks. So many freebies on the Youtubes to have in the background as I paint! I just realized that the title of this post is a little peculiar if you take into account that I've never seen "Night of the Creeps". I just don't think of this lot as zombies, they ARE kreepz!

There has got to be a band with the name "Headhunters". After brainstorming fake metal band names for about 30 minutes this was the best my poor streamed-video frizzled brain could muster. Note for bands: replace your S's with Z's to make it official!

These should be available soon (originals and prints) on my Etsy shop!