©POPpor2nity

I have three illustrations at ©POP's "©POPpor2nity" this Saturday. Looks like I'll see Buckenberger there, too!

Tequila

If you've ever wondered what your illustrations would like like as a 1800 Tequila label, you can now find out.

happy halloween

Here's a Halloween illustration, although it really wasn't supposed to be when I started it. Would it not look so Halloweeny if it weren't Halloween? Or did Halloween, grinning all along at the end of the month, slowly shape it in its image? Whatever the case, Happy Halloween.
Also, I have a profile up at CMYK now.

Shadow Art Fair

This is my entry for Ypsilanti's biannual Shadow Art Fair poster contest. Limited with a two-color screen print, I thought it'd be fun to try an effect out. My idea is it would be have a coat of matte black with a glossy, slightly lighter black for the art over the top, my hope being that the result would be sort of subtle, kind of creep out at you. This is only a digital version, so I would like to try it out as a screen print regardless.

Kwame Antoinette

Marie Antoinette and Kwame Kilpatrick: what could the Queen of France and the mayor of Detroit possibly have in common? Both had reputations for being frivolous despite hard economic times– Antoinette gambled and bought an extravagant country house, while Kilpatrick splurged on a luxurious Lincoln Navigator and took a Californian vacation. Both are the subjects of biting urban legends, with Antoinette supposedly uttering "Let them eat cake" when faced with the plight of the poor and Kilpatrick hosting a party with strippers at the Manoogian Mansion. And both were put on trial to be ousted.

Would the backlash against mayor Kwame Kilpatrick would be so bad if Detroit wasn't doing so poorly economically? Marie Antoinette was eventually executed at the hands of the Revolutionaries– and in a similar sense, to a certain extent at least, I feel Kilpatrick is being made a scapegoat by a struggling city and state.

So while we wait for the mayor to get ousted, here's an illustration of Kwame in French aristocratic garb awaiting his fate. The inspiration for the bright colors comes from Sofia Coppola's sympathy film Marie Antoinette, as do the blatant anachronisms like the cell phone (the movie's soundtrack had rock n' roll and a pair of Converse sneakers made an appearance as if to connect the story to our time).

Self-Portrait

Here's a self-portrait I've been working on in my spare time. I liked how Roy Lichtenstein drew from the style of early comics and made it something else, but what I realized was that the original tiny panels he was ripping off are marvelous on their own without needing to be elevated to fine art paintings! Check out Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein to see some gorgeous panels from mid 20th century comics blown up so you can really get a look at them and their printing process. There's just something about seeing the delicate and cheap balance of the halftones mixtures and registration in your face like that that makes me feel the same way I do about a great, sloppy punk band live- like it could all fall apart.

Appreciation: Queens of the Stone Age "Era Vulgaris"

It’s been a year since Queens of the Stone Age’s Era Vulgaris came out, but I just got around to really listening to it this summer. It’s not fair how underrated it is.



To start, just look at the cover. The title is Latin for “The Common Era” and the art features a smoking cartoon lightbulb and a pirate cartoon lightbulb. Genius. The rest of the album’s art campaign- spanning 7’’ sleeves and posters- has more crazy cartoon characters and artwork along that retro-sleazy Grindhouse vein (check out the artists, Morning Breath). The “You Have Mono” phony-monophonic label makes it for me, though.




But what’s important is what’s inside- the music. I will admit that the first time I heard the songs nothing stood out, but repeated listens reveal by far the sexiest Queens of the Stone Age album in recent years. It is a much closer match to the band’s manifesto of making rock “heavy enough for the boys and sweet enough for the girls”, unlike the macho Songs for the Deaf and the snoozy Lullabies to Paralyze. A lot of the vocals are softer and falsetto, and every single song on Era Vulgaris is danceable as far as heavy rock goes and sounds perfect at 70 mph. And within those parameters, there’s a surprising diversity of sounds: it’s got southern-flavored psychedelic (“Turnin’ On The Screw”), heavy irony (“I’m Designer”), rhythm n’ blues (“Make It Wit Chu”), really spastic ("Sick Sick Sick") somber introspection (“Suture Up Your Future”), and what can only be described as car-chase ("3's and 7's"). I’m going to say that this is my favorite album so far, but I admit I haven't listened to the first two in a while. Any of the ones I mentioned are highly recommended, but everything is good. And while you're at it, check out the fantastically titled b-side "The Fun Machine Took A Shit And Died".