Cinco de Mayo Red Bull Posters

Happy Cinco de Mayo!  While I'm finishing up my graduate illustration thesis, I'm eager to get back to making regular blog updates.  But rest assured, I've been busy!  In the meantime, here's a sampling of some illustrated poster commissions for Red Bull.  It's an honor working with them, and a great opportunity to play with some wild color schemes and hand-lettering, which I've been anxious to do more of.  Stay tuned for some other fun commissions!

Sketching Anatomical Reference

Today I made a spontaneous trip to Fort Worth's Amon Carter Museum to collect reference and sketch some of the awesome sculptures and paintings by Remington and Russell. I recently discovered how much I love that place!  With free admission every day, it's quickly becoming my favorite destination in DFW to research illustrations.  It's proven invaluable as I'm starting to really dive into my thesis.

Extinguishing The Museum Tower / Nasher Debacle

'Extinguishing The Nasher Debacle'

Digital, 2012, Semigloss. Mag 

https://www.facebook.com/semigloss.mag

Hot enough to kill the gardens, damage original artwork, and close whole exhibitions, Museum Tower casts its destructive glare onto the Nasher Sculpture Center.  Can Dallas save the day?

I'm excited to say that this piece will grace the pages of the inaugural issue of Semigloss. Magazine, addressing current issues in the Dallas art scene.  I'm also excited because while this illustration isn't exactly the first completed, this is the first public display from my new body of work.

I've started developing what I'm calling 'Pulp Editorials,' which is just my fancy way of saying I'm illustrating topical subjects in my dark and exaggerated comic style.  It's more in line with my natural mode of expression than what I had originally proposed for my graduate thesis, and it's allowing me to be more spontaneous and also more thoroughly entertain myself through the process.  Rather than digging into the deep dark personal hole for subject matter, I'm enjoying being more outwardly focused, scanning the news and current events for ideas worth exploiting.

This is also one of my first works using the new Wacom Cintiq 22HD drawing tablet that is helping to improve my ergonomics and push some new boundaries.  My wrist is much happier now, and I'm loving the process!

Donkey Kong - Custom Sculpey Toy

Here's my final custom Donkey Kong piece for Vinyl Thoughts 2: The Next Level-- video game themed art show in Dallas, March 17th.

Most artists worked on a blank vinyl character base, such as a Munny, but I crazily decided to sculpt mine from scratch.  With little sculpting experience to speak of, it proved a lengthy process for me.  But the challenge was well worth attacking, and so far as I could tell, the piece was well received at the show!

I built up the 11" figure with a wire and foil armature, primarily to save on clay but also to give it a structural core.  To retain a small sense of 'toy' in the piece, I left a bit of the flexible wire armature extending from the body so that the head would be able to reposition and look in different directions.

I used Sculpey Firm polymer clay to build up the surface, and after some debating, I decided to leave the surface smooth rather than giving it a ridged fur surface.  That served both to stay true to the vinyl toy theme of the show, and to allow me to use my signature style of pen and ink shading to give it more detail once I painted it with a brown/grey acrylic base coat.

All in all, the process took me far longer than I expected (and longer than I care to mention), but now that I've attacked a large sculpture project like this I feel more enabled to work with sculpture moving forward.  I'm looking ahead to do some simpler vinyl toy pieces using a preformed base (like a 'Munny') to save time and provide some parameters to the project.  But I'm also looking forward to doing some original sculpts, but keeping them at a more manageable size so I can start to play with detailing the clay itself.  

Here's another shot of the final piece...

ArtHash Open Salon Show

Last night's gallery opening of the ArtHash Open Salon Show at Kettle Art in Deep Ellum was a total blast!  Incredible turnout and so much great art.  Thanks to everyone who came out to say hi, have a drink, and look at everyone's work.  Great to meet so many new friends and fellow Dallas contemporaries.

'Lobotomunny' - Custom Vinyl Munny

I recently took part in my first vinyl toy show, celebrating Atama's 1 year anniversary at Strangeways in Dallas with 'Show Me The Munny 2'.  Being my first first foray into customized vinyl toys, it was a great opportunity to meet some very talented Dallas artists and stretch beyond my usual territory of pen & ink illustration work.  

'Lobotomunny' in context... some serious talent around here!

I had fun working in an unfamiliar medium while retaining the tone of my drawings.  Our challenge was to start with a blank Munny doll and customize it in any way we saw fit, be it through paint, sculpting, deconstructing, or any other wacky method that came to mind.

Somewhere along the lines I decided to crack its head open and sculpt a removable brain using Sculpey polymer clay, followed by sharpie drawing on the head, and finally a custom fabric hospital gown.  I had fun putting together the wooden sawblade base as a final touch.

show flyer with shots of the removable brain and gown

The show was a fun and valuable experiment for me, and I'm now getting involved in Vinyl Thoughts 2: The Next Level, a video game themed toy show this March... in which I'll be sculpting my piece entirely from scratch!

Sealion Gig Poster - Process Diary 4 - The Finish!

And finally, here is the finished gig poster!  I happily took some direction from the band and toned down the font choice to something a little less distracting than the cowboy font I used on the original mockup.  This version lets the image carry more of the weight, and is more legible anyway.


Regarding the drawing itself, In typical form I had moments of sheer terror where I got sloppy and took the values much too dark.  As you could see at the end of my last post, the bottom right of the image was getting a bit too dark for the rest of the composition.  Fortunately, Ampersand's Claybords are extremely forgiving and allow me to scratch away layers of ink to bring white back to the surface.


A lot of artists make tactical use of these un-inked scratchboards by laying down black areas selectively and then scraping back into it for texture and pattern.  But for me it's worth the price of admission purely for the flexibility to draw like normal and then sculpt my values until everything feels balanced.  In the end I was able to save the image, and I'm really happy with how it turned out!


Here's the final drawing in solo form.

I loved the process of developing such a large piece, and ultimately seeing it hang on the wall gallery style (the 12"x24" board came cradled with a 2" wood backing, resembling a thick canvas).  I'm also thrilled to be working with the tight knit community of local musicians who were hiding right here in Dallas.

I'm looking forward to doing more pieces at this scale for both gallery display and for use on gig posters, and I'm excited to have rounded a new milestone.  It will be pretty awesome to see it pop up around town!  To anyone who'll be at the show on the 20th, we'll be selling 11x17 prints on the cheap.  Again, check out Sealion's new CD for free streaming and pay-what-you-want download at their Bandcamp page.

Thanks for reading along!

Sealion Gig Poster - Process Diary 3

Alright!  On to transferring the drawing to Claybord!  I'm going to include Blick Art Supply links along the way here so you can look further into any of these materials, should you be curious.  Feel free to write me if you have questions beyond that.

Once the Ampersand Claybord arrived at my door, I was ready to roll with finalized pencil outlines on newsprint.  Fortunately, my roll if Saral graphite transfer paper was 12" wide, exactly the right size for the claybord.  So I laid it down quick without needing to trim anything, facedown, with my newsprint drawing over it facing up.  I then layered some tracing paper over that, which is totally unnecessary, but does help to identify if you've missed any spots while tracing.  With some strips of masking tape to hold everything firmly the the board, I was ready to start.

Any hard tipped writing utensil will work here, but I used my favorite ballpoint pen, a uniball vision micro... these are the darker grey barreled pens that you can get at any office supply store.  They're super fine, cheap, and totally reliable in my experience.  They lay down great on bristol board or any paper for that matter, but unfortunately, they don't lay down quite so well on smooth hard surfaces.  


My claybord inking is done with handful of Micron pens.  A lot of people prefer the super fine tips (005 or 01), but I'm most happy with the 03 generally.  I also have some 05 and 08 sizes for doing fatter outlines, but I find I'm happiest just going to town with the 03s.

finished tracing the original pencil drawing

At this point, I'm basically just tracing the drawing as closely as I can.  I might make tiny adjustments here and there, but for the most part I fixed the stuff that was bothering me in the pencil stage.  Once everything's been traced, I can tear that sucker off, check my transfer, and start tracing THOSE lines with my micron pens.

starting to ink on the actual board

After all of the outlines have been inked, I start shading the forms directionally with hatch lines... which means short strokes in the direction of the form (around curves, across flat shapes, etc).  From the minute I got home yesterday at 5, all the way to midnight, I was constantly tracing and shading.  All in all, the inking process here has taken me about 15 hours.  


Here's a sneak peak of the almost finished drawing.... it got a little dark in the bottom right, which I subsequently fixed.  But more on that later...





Next Post: refining outlines, balancing values, and tweaking the poster design,

Sealion Gig Poster - Process Diary 2

After toying with compositional thumbnail sketches to my general comfort, I cut large sheets of newsprint to the exact size of the final drawing and began roughing in the shapes. Because I normally work between 5x7 and 8x10, I would typically scan my thumbnail drawings, tweak them in photoshop, and the print out a copy to transfer directly to an Ampersand Claybord. But given the oversized scale of this piece, I went at it freehand for a change.  This was a challenge, and the lack of control caused (allowed?) me to modify the composition from it's original form.  

Call me neurotic, but I'm now on a 3rd pencil tracing of the full-scale image (1x2 feet) on newsprint.  As I continue to make adjustments to various details, such a hand poses, angles of the background elements, size and texture of the crumbling concrete, etc, I've found it necessary to continue transferring to a new sheet in order to retain the paper's fidelity and most importantly, so I can see the image as closely as possible as it will be when I finally transfer it to the claybord.  In all honesty, had the board already arrived at my apartment, I surely would have started transferring it by now.  But it's a blessing in disguise, because I continue to make improvements on the image that will be worth the delay.

Lastly, here's a rough mockup of the poster with text.  This is more about testing the composition than it is getting the values correct.  But ultimately, I'm enjoying the monochromatic presentation, and imagine I'll be doing something similar to this in the end.


By the way, you owe yourself a visit to SealionSounds.BandCamp.com to stream the new album "Keep The Camera Rolling", or pay-what-you-want download.






Next Entry... transferring & inking...

Sealion Gig Poster - Process Diary 1

I was thrilled to be asked by Sealion, the skyrocketing Dallas indie/surf/punk band, to design a gig-poster for their CD release show on August 20th, 2011.  Being friends with them for years and having played fill-in bass recently, I have a strong investment in their music.  That said, by the time they came to me for help, I already had a concept and early rough sketch on the back-burner ready to go.

As Sealion is a surf-rock band, but hundreds of miles from the coast, it only seemed fitting to illustrate a hipster wiping out on a wave of crumbling concrete with the Dallas skyline looming behind.

I've been itching to challenge myself with a larger piece for awhile now, so I ordered a 12"x24" claybord, which more than doubles the size I'm accustomed to working at.  Consequently, I'm devoting a remarkable amount of time getting the details worked out before even touching the final board.


I've spent 6 to 8 hours in preparatory pencil stages, sketching compositional variations, figure poses, and texture studies.  The inking stage could easily take an additional 10 hours, but I'm psyched to get down to work and would like the final piece will be a crucial addition to my portfolio and something I'll be proud to show for years to come.

Next Post:  refining and full-size pencil roughs...