star kicker

Best. Constellation. Ever.

Illustration Friday- Forgotten

OOPS! She forgot to attach her finger!

i like commie art

so here is a new version of commie art. sort of.

I just saw Speed Racer, and despite the horrible reviews, I totally loved it. "Eye candy" doesn't even begin to describe it. It was more like "visual cortex re-wiring". God, I wish I knew how to do that video/animation combination kind of thing. All I can do is write "THIS GUY IS A JERK" on top of someone's picture, or poorly animate a line drawing in Flash. WOAH someone in their 30s has career reservations? A shock!

For Angie: Finally!

Here it is. This was a combination of doing a drawing, then photographing it, then making a vector thing out of it, plus adding colors and textures. Sorry it took 1000 months, Ang!

THE MUSICAL GUN

This was just a fun thing to do.

Cleaning out the closet

Hi, it's been a while since I posted because I'm working on this thing for my pal Angie that I keep screwing up. So I thought I'd post a couple of pictures from files labeled things like "UHHH" and "what?".

The first one was a design I was going to send in to Threadless, but then I thought it might be too "druggy" or hippie or whatever. (Even though that isn't what I intended- I just read Omnivore's Dilemma and was thrilled with the mushroom hunting part of it.) I'm not happy at all with the composition, but unhappiness does not make me draw better so here you go.

The next one is of a rock guy playing guitar. Behold the lens flare! Even though that's kind of a cheesy-newbie tool, I totally love it. God help me.

Last Chance

Hi there! I was just playing around with some features on Illustrator. I found the textures pallate. Man I love it! It really has a way of lending some interest to the backgrounds without going all crazy.I don't really have an idea about what this is about, but it was fun to do.

Do you think the text looks odd? I do too, but II copied it from (yet another) old book jacket i saw somewhere.

70s style book graphics

So, this is an obvious rip-off of the "What is the What" book cover (David Foster Wallace). Great book. But that cover is a rip-off of certain afro-american books like "The Mis-education of the Negro" by W.E.B. DuBois, and well, if you haunt used book shops, you know this style of book design. I love, love, love that style- it's "modern" without being cutsie. I didn't do it enough justice but you get the idea.

I think book covers are brilliant: they have the zietgiest thing, but in a wierd way they tend to push fine-art limits... much the way album covers do, knowwhudimean?

CUTE-O-METER

This is a scientific evaluation of my cat and his cuteness. Is this inane? Welcome to the internet.

whispers in the middle of the night

because I am tired right now and this is what I got. On my way to Pandora 's party tonight at historic Sweet's Ballroom! Yaaaay!

St. Francis

I'm reading In the Name of the Rose right now and that's the inspiration for today's picture. I have yet to see a cover of that book that isn't completely corny.

Denver, the mile high city

The challenge from Sam A was to make a logo/ text thingie for each town I lived in. I don't know if I can do that, because I'll probably get all fried by it after a while. It's hard to strike a balance between total love and a objective opinion and writing *like that* (the above) is. Seriously, I got a little worried that Denver, the actual Self of Denver would get angry at me (not the individuals/friends/teaches who live there, none of whom I would ever want to offend but probably understand where I'm coming from).

Anyway, behold the grid! The brown/black/white color scheme! HEXAGONS! The Star Warsish font! To be truthful, most of these elements are fragmented from my early kid-hood in Minneapolis, not Denver. But Denver really seemed to hit it's stride in that 70s post-oil crisis era, and believe you me, you can totally see it from the architecture. Don't get me wrong- downtown looks more like a City of the Future than anywhere I've ever been; there's nary a building more than 20 years old that shows up on the city-scape... downtown. But when you get out towards some subdevelopments in the foothills you can really get a sense of when the economy spiked. Slanty wood sidings, smoked glass, etc. I encourage any and all illustrators to mine their own past and memories of powerful commercial art and design rather than depend on a Google search for era-specific art, because I stayed up until 3 AM last night trying to find a certain "look" from the above described era, and it was pretty fruitless.

(Google> search> HEXAGONS SCI-FI 70s GRAPHICS COME ON SHOW ME IT)

SILICON VALLEY LOGOS LOOK REALLY 90S

So... seriously, what is the deal with the multi-colored letters making up a logo? Is that really what Google/ EBay/ want everybody in the whole wide world seeing every day? I know, maybe I'm being unfair- I mean they did get started in the early 90s. But you would think around '98 or so they'd be all "hmm, maybe we should try harder?".

Even YouTube seems to have lifted from the "As Seen on TV" logo- you know the one that hasn't changed since the late 70s? And although I like the new Adobe creative suite look, the old versions with the Photoshop eye and the Illustrator Boticelli chick makes it seem like my mom designed it. Thank you for changing your logos, Adobe! Now: Google, EBay, dont you want to be like your brother?

Train ad

I don't know what this is all about, sorry. It's from a combination of this deck of Burlington Northen playing cards we used to have and... uh, I guess a dream train line that I would like to exist. Stylisticly, I tried to get that 2-color printing effect, complete with the poorly offset printing and the kind of ink that bleeds and fades into total awesomness in like 12 years.

The F Bomb

Ok, this one is just plain silly. It was inspired by my cousin-in-law who only says the f-bomb on vacation.

I won't be doing stuff like this all the time- I have a big idea about what to do next, but it will take a loooong time to draw and I just wanted to get this out of the way before I forgot about it.

dusty

Dusty Springfield? Dusty blue? I don't know. The streets are from downtown Denver, if that makes you feel anything. This one was kind of a conglomeration of failed experiments. YAY

I forgot to mention the one below (peanut butter embryo) is an idea that Sam Aranda came up with. We have a ton of 'em- we spent a summer at a bar called the Longhorn (RIP) and totally did a ton of really strange cartoons. Did I mention this was at a bar?

Anyway, here are a couple more: SQUID DRESS is just a slice of life. Don't you have an anorexic friend who looks exactly like you, and you put on the same squid outfit and go to a club that has 70s game show backgrounds? That happens to me all the time.

The other one, Christmas Cat, is a technique I'm playing with- making a drawing and then photographing it and then doing ILLUSTRATOR MAGIC to give it color.

first one

Hi and hello! I am using this to post some art and graphic design and whatever else I feel like. I might say stuff about my life, but mostly it's gonna be easily digested pictures. Mmmm, yum.