Vida de Nuevo

I wanted to do something a little different this year, in terms of yard decorations for Halloween. I whipped this up with the intention of hanging it on our gate during the day...
















 turns out it fits perfectly within the inner recess of the gate frame!

Here it is at an early stage. I very quickly sketched the outline with crayon.

Sandia Range

We saw a giant frame in a dumpster a few years back and I have finally finished a piece for it. Its a straight forward graphic of the Sandia Mountain Range in New Mexico, where Sarah is from. I wanted to do it in a style that was very very simple, and this pretty much ended up being paint by numbers. We have 2 young kids, and my thinking was that they would appreciate that you could see detail and form even with simple color shapes. I think they like it OK.

This is the first canvas frame I ever built!

The picture frame has a unique aspect ratio (56X26) and needed a custom canvas. I used Birch. Here it is Stretched and mounted.

Here is my daughter Catarina with the outline before the painting started.

I Love You So Much!

My Sister in-law asked me to draw something up for a mix CD of  "Songs Inspired by Kabir and Ingha's Romantic Love".

This is what I came up with.

Flyer for The Khans / Bad Bad / Pee Jays

I love show flyers. They are a great place to experiment and play with ideas without the pressure to create something "definitive". For the same reason, I never want to spend too long on them. 

When I heard The Khans and Bad Bad were playing together my first reaction was the word "EPIC" that came out of my mouth involuntarily. Both bands have people that are good friends of mine, and their shows are truly some of the most fun I've ever had with live music.

The second reaction was, "can I do the flyer"?

I started with collage, intending to do a massive pen and ink drawing. I even started it...

It was fun too! But then I saw this article on generation loss (which i've always been a fan of)...

http://www.petapixel.com/2012/07/12/distorted-images-created-by-repeatedly-rephotographing-photos/

I used to do this kind of thing with Xerox machines... shrinking down images, then scaling them up. You get tons of grain and halftones and contrast and fun. 

So I started messing around with my old HP B&W Laserjet and Epson 4490 Scanner:

I decided to go another route and do some pen work on top of the 2nd Gen Print/Scan. This saved me a ton of time, and while maybe not as cool as all original line work, it was probably more fun. Here it is after the last of the pen work:

And here is a Duotone version of the finished piece:

Poster for "Please Dont Feed The Children"

DVD Cover for Death Grip