KILLER CAT EYES

My cat has eyeballs that produce death beams.
That is all.

ICT WINTER BAZAAR

This weekend on Sunday the 8th is the ICT Winter Bazaar. It runs from 3-7 and it's held at Century II. Why am I promoting this event? Well because I'm going to be there peddling some of my prints and handmade wares! I'll be representing Tornado Alley Press, WSU's printmaking guild along with my fellow printers.

I've never been to this event so I have no idea what to expect. I've heard though that last year there were about 60 local vendors and this year there should be 75-100. They say it’s not going to feel at all like a convention hall but more like a party. There should be a cash bar, live music and local art. There also will be food trucks in Kennedy Plaza. Best of all, it's totally free!

So come on out, buy some dope Christmas presents and support all these fine local peeps.

INTERNATIONAL TYPE FIGHT

I've officially entered into an International Type Fight. Basically tons of other designers, art schools and people from all over the world are submitting their designs of a few letters into the arena to be voted on. Nothing is won other that the respect you get when you trounce your competition. I ended up making 3 out of the 4 we had to choose from since they were so much fun to play with. For reference, here are the original letters:

Since I don't know much, well... anything about these alphabets or the cultures behind their letters, I wanted to stay pretty true to the original letter form. I made the Hebrew letter feel like it could be on the side of a fighter jet, the Sanskrit letter I made more old world scroll-esque and the Arabic letter I went with a snake simply because that's what I saw first when I looked at it.

There might be others of mine chosen tomorrow for voting (I'll be sure to update and post about them if they are) but my Arabic snake has been chosen for the first round of votes. Vote as you please of course, but mine is the snake similar to the one above. I ended up changing the background at the last minute so what's on the type fight site is a little different than this one.

Mine for today is Arabic Round 1, Fight 4
Check it out and cast your votes!
http://typethrowdown.wordpress.com/arabic-round-1/

BALINESE TRIBAL MASK POP UP

I know I barf up plenty of posts that have to do with my schooling but what can I say, it's a full time job. Besides, I treat every art project that I'm assigned as something that I would want to present to a client or art gallery. I invest a ton of time and effort so why not showcase my hard work? Anyways, enough with the disclaimers and on with the show.

In my Graphics Materials and Processes class I was tasked with making a pop up based on a tribal mask from any society that I wanted. Obviously I'm going to do something monster-like and creepy. I just so happen to have quite a few real masks from various cultures from around the world. One of my favorites is my Balinese Rangda, the demon queen. So I decided to base my pop up off of her yet stylize it more my own way.

I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted her to look but I did one of my half and half sketches. This is where I start with the one idea I like on one side and then experiment on the other. I take elements I like from the one side and transport them to the other. Once I drag it into Photoshop I then only have to illustrate one half, duplicate it and then flip it. Work smarter not harder right? The left side in the sketch below is the more traditional version of the demon queen but I really liked the big-ole eye concept. 

Then it was on to the physical creation of this beast. Let me tell you what, making anything in 3-d is a bitch. I actually had to remember how to do geometry, degrees, measurements, angles and shit like that. I mean really? I'm an damn art dork not a math or drafting geek! But I guess all my teachers were right, math sometimes comes in handy. Once I got past all that super awesome fun stuff, I had to wrestle with paper types, cutting methods and gluing. It took 3 prototypes before I got it all perfected. 

I also made the hard back cover for my evil baby. I used a iridescent paper for the cover with colors that related to the mask inside and type that flowed kind of like Balinese script. Notice the band-aid wrapped finger in the animated image below. I damn near cut the edge of my finger off with an exact knife cutting this bad boy out. 

This was hard work but the final piece I'm pretty proud of. I actually inspired my brother and I to try and do a full pop up book. But that, my friends, is another tale.

CARDBOARD RACE TRACK

What does one do on a Sunday when you're board and don't want to spend any dough? Get crafty! So I made Paladin a race track out of an old box. Needless to say, we had fun for hours.

NO FUTURE

I was tasked with creating another font recently but based off an existing typeface. My first instinct was to work with Futura as it's my favorite. When thinking of the future I tend to think that it's going to be bleak so I figured a more deconstructed version of Futura was in order. Unlike most projects where I brainstorm and sketch five billion ideas, I immediately knew how I wanted it to look and I jumped right in head first. At the same time that I was working on this project, the ass hat U.S. government was officially shut down. Our leaders are running this country into the ground which inspired me to relate it to that event, hence the image behind. No future was only fitting for the name of the type.

DROP YOUR PANTS HERE

Uh huh huh huh... drop your pants...

Undies required?

DEVIANT GOLFER

So I tried golfing for the first  time the other day. I pounded a couple balls (uh huh huh huh) pretty damn far but the rest of the time... all in the rough baby. All I really want to do is whack the shit out of the damn ball as hard as I can like it kicked my momma in the face. I didn't do so hot and golfing isn't something I plan on taking seriously or doing again anytime soon but it was amusing none the less.

SERIGRAPH: PIERCING

This is my newest serigraph work titled "Piercing." Since I unveiled this print at the Bombshelter Show, I've been asked quite a few times about its meaning and why the name Piercing. I typically don't reveal the entire back story or reasoning behind all my pieces. I do this because I don't want to skew how this art speaks to the individual viewer. Plus the meaning I attach to the work might make turn off some viewers. It's not that I'm trying to please anyone but I like an uncontrolled destiny for my work. Wow that sounded pretentious. Any-who...

The name of this piece is Piercing due to this lost souls intense and penetrating gaze and the symbol behind him. I believe that there is a faint unsettling feeling that creeps over the viewer as those somewhat eerie yet sorrowful eyes leer back. The sharp-tipped foreboding black triangle behind the face also subconsciously pierces the psyche of the onlooker. Triangles in general have a lot of connotations but more specifically to this work, it's a subtle reference to the badges that were forced upon inmates at Nazi concentration camps. Those that were deemed "asocial" got the black triangle. There are also three dimensional recessed lines or what I like to call "bars," that I hand pressed into the paper to also liken back to Nazi incarceration. 

This piece is a four layer, three color, 9 edition limited series screen print. The triangle and face were printed with Eco-friendly, water based inks which I meticulously hand mix. The drips oozing from the dreaded triangle were hand painted with oil based lithograph ink. The drips are all slightly different and thus unique for each piece as can be seen in the 2nd image below. As mentioned earlier, this lightweight linter paper was hand pressed in certain areas with "bars" to give the work more physical depth and a deeper, more visceral story, which can be seen in the 3rd image below. I also intentionally "rough handled" this delicate fibrous cotton paper to give each piece more character. 

Let me know what you think and there are editions of this for sale in my newly reopened lastdeviant Etsy shop. Check it out!

"Piercing"

Drying of the triangle badges

Recessed "bars"

The ooze

Face detail

Full size

GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN AND VETERANS SCHOOLING

For VA Education Benefits users out there, we should still get paid even with our ass hat government being shut down. Veterans are more protected than other parts of the federal government, but vets and their families should still be concerned and not be surprised if payments get delayed or even stopped if the shutdown is prolonged for a long stint.

Note: This comes directly from the Veteran's Field Guild to Government Shutdown.

PALADIN'S SKELETON DIAGRAM TANK TOP

My nearly two year old son received yet another screen printed shirt this week from his dear ole dad. This time it's a skeleton like out of an old medical diagram book. I thought the little letters around it made it have a fun Sesame Street feel instead of simply creepy.

Skulls are cool, my son.
The end.

POST BOMBSHELTER SHOW REVIEW

The Bombshelter show went extremely well last Friday and far better than I had expected. For starters, I sold a print of George to Christopher Gulick, a bigger name Wichita based sculpture artist. I also sold four of my shirts and gave away almost 200 stickers. There was a huge turnout with all kinds of people from young to old and every walks of life. The bands were all entertaining and there were plenty of inspiring works to be seen. I met a lot of really rad people! This is the kind of art show/scene that needs to happen more often here in Wichita. Unfortunately, I heard that this is a once a year event.

I actually got filmed doing one of my live screen printed shirts of The Raven all guerilla printing style without a press. The video is a bit long due to the slow drying process of using a heat gun instead of a flash dryer so I'm only in the first 3 minutes. Check it out!



Thanks to my printing helpers that are in this video, Sydney Fish (inking and registration), Joe Moss (screen pressure), Phil Nellis (dryer), and of course Jonathan Clark (videographer).

I also want to send out a massive high five to everyone that came out to support the art and music scene here in Wichita. This place can only kick ass if we make it that way.

BOMB SHELTER ART/MUSIC SHOW - FINAL FRIDAY

I know it's short notice but I'm having a few of my prints put on display (and for sale) at Anna Murdoc's for Final Friday this week. I'm doing this event in coordination with Tornado Alley Press, the Printmaking Guild at Wichita State, which I'm a member of. We're also doing some live shirt screen printing too which I'll have a few designs for as well.

Come on out and support the local art and music scene!

WHERE:
209 E Williams
The entrance is off of MARKET, leading DOWNSTAIRS into the exhibition space.


ARTWORK ON DISPLAY AS WELL AS SEVERAL INSTALLATIONS

TIMELINE OF EVENTS/SPACE:
1) BOMBSHELTER (downstairs)
2) ANNA MURDOCS
3) PARK NEXT TO KANSAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY (down the street on Williams)


POETRY at the BOMB SHELTER 7:30-9:30 pm

THE RADIATION ROOM - POETRY from the Prose Collective's best. David C. Warren is hosting the poetry event. There will be a Tea bar as well! enjoy some poetry and tea!

OPEN MIC "SALT AND PEPPER SERIES" 9:15pm - tilll the MIC drops INSPIRED by the RADIATION ROOM?

UPSTAIRS Anna Murdoc's Cafe This is an open space for EXPRESSION hosted by Joshua J. Gwinn

DOWNSTAIRS AT THE BOMB SHELTER MUSIC 9:30 Domestic Drone 10:30 $badger

NEW MUSIC/ELECTRONIC HOUR at the BOMBSHELTER 11:30 - 2AM 11:30 dreamcrusher MIDNIGHT We Have The Technology 12:30 Golden Living Room 1AM-2AM TBA

THE PARK 6PM - 9:00PM LIVE ART/GRAFF & COLLABORATIVE PAINTING

DRUM CIRCLE 7PM

THANK YOU to everyone participating this year especially those of you who have been helping with the planning and set up for this show, we couldn't do this without your active engagement and hard work. ALSO BRING CANNED GOODS FOR OUR FOOD DRIVE!

GRUSS VOM KRAMPUS

I finally took some photos of my first attempt at screen printing,  a tribute to the Yule time myth of Krampus. You might be wondering who in the hell I am referring to but you're not alone as he's almost unheard of in America. The short and skinny is that originally St. Nick came to reward children on Christmas with presents if they were good. But in turn, if they were naughty little monsters then Krampus came a knockin' equipped with birch branches and chains to whip them with. If these miniature miscreants were particularly terrible, they would be tossed into a sack or basket and carried off to be... well, I bet you can imagine some of the horrors a demon might have in store for his prey. I hear the flesh of children is quite a delicacy to the underworld.

*shudder*

A lump of coal sure seems mighty nice in comparison to demon torture doesn't it? So our touchy-feely wuss-puss culture decided to drop ole Krampus from our X-mas celebrations. I don't know about you but I might not have been such a little turd growing up had there been a possibility that a horned and cloven fiend might come for a visit.

I wanted to subtlety work in little bits of his myth into this mini poster print that you might write off as purely decorative unless you knew the story. Some of which are the little kids hands reaching out for forgiveness at the top, the sad children silhouettes on the sides, the chains at the bottom and the two birch branches that the banner wraps around. The banner stating Gruss vom Krampus, translates to Greetings from Krampus. My first run was in black and white and the rest varied in color and inking techniques. I was attempting to produce a somewhat 3-D look with the use of white under the red in the last pic below. There are about 10 one of a kind color prints that will be for sale once I get my Etsy store opened back up in the next month if anyone is interested in purchasing an edition. It might just help keep the spirit of Krampus alive and keep your kids in line!

So when the Christmas season rolls around again just remember that if the chestnuts are roasting, so might be naughty little kids at the hands of Mr. Krampus.

TEMPTATION - LOVE LUST

This piece was the second attempt I had ever made in the realm of screenprinting and my first encounter with using Rubylith. I created this piece for a nationwide screenprinting postcard exchange put on by Iowa State University. The following were the requirements:

1. Theme: Temptation
2. Any editionable printmaking technique may be used (woodcuts, lithography, intaglio, photography, silkscreen, digital printmaking, etc.) NO MONOPRINTS PLEASE
3. Size: 4” x 6”
4. The 13 identical prints should be sent INDIVIDUALLY to the address posted below. Each card must be stamped and will bear the markings of travel and the postal service. (Do not send the cards together in one envelope.)

When it comes to temptation, the number one in my book is sex, sex, sex. Did I mention sex? Anyways, I of course had to do something creepy and I wanted to show love and lust intertwined. I've been working on this piece as an additional installment in my heart illustration series following Heart Attack. The kicker was that I did this completely with Rubylith, which means each color (or layer) has to be delicately hand cut with an razor blade. I say delicate because if you push too hard, you'll cut right through the clear film backing. On the other side of the coin, if you don't cut deep enough, you run the risk of ripping the red film when you remove the unwanted sections of red. It's quite time consuming and it requires far too much patience for my liking.

After I had all the layers of Rubylith cut and exposed onto the screen, then comes the four layers of ink. Seeing as the exchange require 13 identical prints, each color had to be perfect and registered very precisely, which I totally could have done better. But I suppose that's part of the learning curve.

I liked how this turned out but I'm far more excited to make it realistic as one of my illustration pieces. So keep your eyes peeled for that in the future.

BAMBOO

Look what I found at a little old ladies garage sale. Check out the tape price tag... it says drawing game. It set me back a mere 15 smackers, which I attribute to the woman not knowing what she had. Score!

PALADIN'S CREEPSHOW SHIRT

Pal is reaping the benefits of my screenprinting artistic explosion. The shirt in the pic below I made for him and his best buddy at daycare, Tyler. Now they have matching, sleeveless, tough-guy T's. They're like a little gang of cute marauding ankle biters.

Save for that adorable face, those horns only make him look that much more fierce right? Well... maybe not. Might just have to be a lover not a fighter.

MORE ART THANKS TO FLICKR FEEDS

I just went through my entire site and updated all the different sections with image slideshow feeds that are linked directly to my Flickr account. This means that I can post new work to Flickr and it will automatically show up in it's proper place on lastdeviant.com. This speeds up the update process by a thousand fold. So now I have no excuse as to why my new stuff isn't be up for viewing, other than laziness or random chaotic life events like zombie gopher attacks.

So with these new image viewers kicking ass, I have gone through and uploaded tons of images in just about every category on my site. Some of the work is a little older since I haven't posted much in a long time, but still new to the site none the less. Plus I added two new pages to check out new art in, Design and Printmaking. Design will contain everything from CD layout work to packaging. You'll find a lot of commission work in there. The Printmaking section will contain anything I've screen printed, block printed or ran through a letterpress. Each section is still being updated with my most current work so stay tuned for lots more updates in the next couple of weeks.

Let me know if you have any suggestions or issues with the new image viewers and layout. I'm hoping this will make the process of updating my site with new work much faster and easier. This should free up even more time for me to actually create instead of pull my hair out for hours rewriting and figuring out code. I really do hate coding.

ROT: ALEX'S TREASURE

It's been quite some time since I've posted a Random Object Thursday and today's is something a little different, it's actually 4 random objects.

As I was sifting through old jackets to sell in our yard sale this week, I found my daughters old rain slicker from when she was about 5-6. While rummaging through the pockets of this pink shiny plastic coat with a big pink cat on it, I found a pocket with a zipper. Inside I discovered a big metal nut, a grape hard candy, a penny and a soft rubber snake toy. All of which I could see my daughter thinking was treasure when she was that age or possibly even now. Who am I kidding, I'd even think it was awesome if I found those in my coat pocket!

EYE SCREAM ICE CREAM

This summer I decided to take a letterpress class. For those that aren't quite sure what that is, it's the old school way of printing things like they used to do for newspapers and what not. Think ole Gutenberg... got it? So anyways, I've gotten to play with both lead and wooden type. One of our assignments was to take an odd speech/grammar term from the English language and define it using one of the above mentioned presses. The word I chose was:

ORONYM:

Strings of sound that can be carved into words in two different ways. 

Ex: Four Candles / Fork Handles or Tulips / Two Lips

Bet you didn't know that! I sure didn't before this assignment. I went with an example everyone is familiar with but probably didn't realize what they were saying; I Scream and Ice Cream. I tweaked it a bit and went with Eye Scream/Ice Cream instead because you know I love to make everything a bit odd and macabre. We didn't have to do an image but I am so in love with screen printing right now that I decided to incorporate it. So I drew up a little cutesy cartoon, screened it on 30 sheets of paper and then did all the type on an old letterpress. Here's the final version:

Final Print

The orange letters were letters carved from wood as you
can see at the top center of this shot and the little text in
the poster is made from lead.

Running the press.

Close up shot of the lead and wooden type.

As an added benefit, I silkscreened my son a tank top. Just one of the perks of having artsy fartsy parents I suppose.

I LOVE INDEPENDENCE DAY

When making those firecrackers go boom, remember that today is all about life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and a nationwide middle finger to the air because we are subservient to none.

Happy Independence Day and long live free America.

FEAR THE BAT: TEACHER CRITIQUE

What comments do I have to pass on to my Biological Anthropology teacher on his end of semester critique? Why, the most important bit of information that one could ever receive, FEAR THE BAT.

MOTHER'S DAY 2013

I completely forgot to post this pic as I just found it in my camera. But for this Mother's Day past, Paladin and I had a field day painting up Nicky a big ole card. We had finger paint from head to toe and there are still traces of it in my garage/gym. But it was totally worth it to see how happy it made Pal Pal's mommy.  I hid it away until the morning of and we dragged her out of bed to see it. Pal then decided he had done enough and tried to make a break for it as you can see from the pic.

Oh and I got my mommy some uber fancy and quite yummy pasta from the farmer's market downtown. She's an italian food (namely spaghetti) nut so my mother was quite thrilled.

IMAGINE DRAGONS: RADIOACTIVE

I've been diggin' this song as of late and the video is fairly humorous too. I mean it has Lou Diamond Phillips in it for Pete's sake, so it has to be awesome!

 

SWITCHBLADE

This was yet another school project from this Spring. We had to create and object in Illustrator. So I made my trust old switchblade. After I was done I got bored and made a poster for it. What can I say... I love this line of work.

MACBOOK PORT FAIL

I prefer using a mouse over that poopie touch pad thing but I guess I need a five foot cord when using a MacBook. Why would they only put the ports on the left side?! Why not the back so it's even for both lefty's and righty's? Apple, I love you, but sometimes you're pretty retarded.

WAIVE YOUR RIGHTS WITH YOUR FLAG

Now that I've gotten more into screen printing, I've decided to push more into this medium. I feel like it gives what would normally just be printed out of a machine, a higher artistic worth. It's very time consuming and labor intensive, requiring a considerable amount of attention to detail. I believe this helps push my work even further into the fine art field as I not only conceptualized this work but I hand made the final piece myself.

My third printmaking work is titled "Waive Your Rights With Your Flag." There are eight different colors in use on this piece and each was painstakingly hand printed on high quality paper from the French Paper Company which I then personally trimmed down to 11x14.  Below is the final print and a few shots of the printing process. This is a limited edition print series and there are only a three left out of eighteen. If you're interested in purchasing one please contact me soon before supplies run out as this will never be reprinted.

Final Print

Detail

Unfortunately, not all of those turned out

Making sure everything lines up before laying down ink

One layer of ink

Drying after each ink layer