Ooohhh Bro….I Was Sooo Tarped.

Here’s a fun video I found on Drift this morning. They say necessity is the mother of invention, so I’m thinking these guys must of thought this up when the surf was flat. Looks to be a slight remedy for those sparse summer surf days we have here.

Scribble Junkies!

If you have some time to kill and want a little bit of art education and opinion head on over to Scribble Junkies! It’s a blog by Bill Plympton and Patrick Smith. I’ve been a long time fan of Plympton. I first saw one of his animated shorts on MTV I think almost 20 years ago. The video above is something more recent he did for Weird Al.

Weathered

I love seasons and here in Oregon you get to experience them all. If not in your town, then you are at least a short drive from them. This January was tough. The local newspaper said that it rained 29 out of 31 days. I would add to that, that the two days of sun were a rain/sun mix. December had a lot of rain, and February has had a lot of rain with rain in the seven-day forecast. This amount of rain is even trying on me, who grew up here. Thankfully, I have a lovely wife who’s smile is like sunshine on my soul, and creative endeavors that help me escape mentally, for a bit. I get challenged to face the saturated outdoor reality and find good things about it. Here are a few things I think about: First off, I love the rain in all it’s make the world as mushy and muddy as possible goodness. Second, this amount of rain makes me really appreciate the sun when it shows it’s high-beams. It’s the ultimate laser-light show. Third, we need the rain right now. Believe it or not, there’s been a shortage these past few years, so this is a good thing. Fourth, people moving here from other places are put to a test that’s good for our population control (I know this sounds a little evil, but it mostly weeds out the people who can’t stop talking about where they came from). This area has so much stunning beauty even on the wet overcast days, that when the sun does decide to show, it’s as beautiful as anywhere in the world. Shush…don’t tell anybody though.

Karate and Mutton Chops

Here’s a sketch from some awesome picture I found at some point. It’s not Elvis, and I no longer have the picture so I can’t remember who it is. It was very inspiring and I had to sketch it.

Sketchbook Randomness #2

Here is another page from an old sketchbook. This is a good contrast to the cartoon character posted previously. I really love figure drawing. It’s so challenging. In a landscape painting to a reasonable extent  you can screw up the proportions of a tree or rock and people probably won’t know or care. With figure drawing, unless you’re really purposeful in your figure distortions people will probably catch your mistakes. There are so many amazing artists who distort the figure well. I also see some people who do figure paintings making their subject look like Gumby or something ultra-elastic. For whatever reason this bugs me. I like to feel that there is a substructure beneath the skin and muscles that works in unison together. Figure drawing is one of those practiced skills that I will be working on my whole life to better myself at.

Sketchbook Randomness

Here’s a little something from one of my old sketchbooks. The inspiration for this came from some fitness book I was looking at in the library. The author was saying to do whatever it took to get in shape, because you are the only thing that matters. He said if that means changing jobs, divorcing your wife then do it. The divorcing your wife statement was so ridiculously self-centered it had to be parodied. So I drew a man so pumped up on fitness that he was about to explode from putting himself and his fitness first.

Upcoming Group Show

I’m going to be in a group show coming up soon. I though it would be fun to post a sort of digital comp of what I am going to screen-print. The finished piece will look a lot different than this, drastically different. That’s why I feel comfortable sharing this. It’s a step in the process. The Clash is my favorite all-time band, and it’s due time for me to pay homage to it’s charismatic lead singer, the late Joe Strummer.

TYM-#2

Here’s another This Year’s Model t-shirt design. “What does the shirt mean”, you ask? “Why a monkey with squares and lines?” Well, it’s open for interpretation, and we didn’t create it with one idea in our heads. Here’s a possibility, it’s a screaming gorilla who’s struggling against some sort of synthetic/binary takeover, with the words This Year’s Model slowly entering his ear. Are we in cahoots with “THE MAN”? Are we the bad guys here? Only time will tell. Maybe it will become a sequential series of shirts. That would be fun. Oh, and we are offering free shipping on any purchases.

Life Outside My Window

One thing I enjoy about no longer living in the city is the chance you will look out your window and see some sort of wildlife. We have families of deer walking across our property, osprey that fly overhead and nest down near the river, the occasional cougar siting (that’s a bit scary). Yesterday when I was attempting to do some product shots for my new t-shirts I noticed a big turkey on my neighbor’s fence. These guys aren’t the shyest of creatures and I see them walking regularly up and down the street.

In the second shot, I thought maybe the cat was going to try and attack the bird, but it didn’t. It was smarter than that. I think that turkey would have taught him a lesson. The cat can dream though.

Bohemian Rhapsody-Muppets Style

Oh the memories seeing these characters brings back to me. I was lucky to have grown up when all things Jim Henson were all over the t.v. and in the movies. Animal is still my favorite.