Just a quick post to let y’all now the first Phaedrus silkscreen is on sale at Etsy, and there’s only 6 left! I’m also very interested in working up a trade, if anyone is into it; email me for more info so we can trade ideas.

Click the poster for full size options via Flickr.

Back in November 2009, I was contacted by a friend who wanted to know if I was interested in helping create a few posters for the Institute of Physics in the UK. The problem – one that the US shares – was that the hard sciences in general and physics in particular were seeing declining interest in the population of school children. Part of the problem, it was postulated, was that UK kids were not exposed to the interesting side of what physics is at a young enough age; by the time physics becomes a school course option, most kids have already relegated physics to the ‘boring’ category, and go on to pursue their degree in macrame interpretive dance. But even as an artist, I can say, this is not so! Physics is without a doubt one of the most far-thinking, philosophical fields out there; I’ve been a dilettante about the subject in general for years, and while I can’t claim to speak about it with anything approaching coherence, the fact that I could do anything for The Cause made me kinda pumped, something akin to what the Ghost Army must have felt when landing in France. (Was that too arrogant?)

Click the poster for full size options via Flickr.

Additionally, I had the great fortune to be able to work with Rich Seymour for the initial conception part of the project, which was great fun, and was inspiring to say the least. Meeting someone who has made a career for themselves by brooking no infringement on their creative vision and ideas, and sticking to their guns, even when it meant losing a job – that’s a kind of hard-assery that you can’t buy, you can just learn by spending years figuring out you’re the smartest mother-effer in the room.

Click the poster for full size options via Flickr.

As per Rich’s idea, we waded into some of the more far-out printing processes, ending up with two photo-luminescent posters, and one printed with thermal inks, that reveal ink underneath when one applies heat, with your hand or a flame-thrower or whatever. The design implications, challenges, and opportunities brought about using their rather esoteric printing techniques were eye-opening for me, and terrific fun.

The posters will be placed in classrooms all across the UK. In a few months, the impressional young eyes of UK youth will all be transfixed by this weirdness, which I feel pretty good about. I’m still in talks with the IOP people, trying to convince them to set up a purchase option for these posters, because I think a lot of nerds might be into these, but we’ll see. Don’t forget to click through the posters to see them full-size, via Flickr options.

Just a quick post to draw attention to my most recent illustration for Hilobrow, in which I illustrated Luc Sante’s small piece on one of my favorite photographers, Weegee. Not only was I totally honored to be able to accompany Luc’s terrific writing, it took me back to when I did my BA sophomore-year photography project on Weegee; the assignment was to find a favorite photographer, and then recreate the style ourselves. In retrospect, it’s a totally regressive and vigorously uninspired assignment, but my contact sheets, with my friends lying in pools of blood on the sidewalk, riddled with bullets in a bathtub, do exist. Somewhere.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been lucky enough to a contributor to the terrific cultural website, HiLoBrow. Edited by Josh Glenn and Matthew Battles, it’s an online journal that attempts, usually very successfully, to parse out the genuine cultural gems in our rapidly accelerating cultural from so much chaff. Glenn and Battles are experts at not only figuring out the real deal from what is an increasingly confusing brew of humor, advertising, self-promotion, art, and commerce, but presenting it in a way that reengages the audience in something they may have been trained to ignore. We all accept the precepts of Highbrow, Lowbrow, and Middlebrow, but Glenn and Battles take it a step further, finding the sliver of real deal in the grand Venn diagram. From it’s manifesto, HiLoBrow is

…a manifestation of engaged irony. (When the cast of John Waters’s 1998 movie Pecker toast the “death of irony,” they’re toasting the death of middlebrow sarcastic hipsterism.) The engaged ironist is a hilobrow.

It’s a great experiment in cultural semiotics, and I’m very glad to be a part. Over the past year or so, they have been running a series called “Hilo Heroes”, in which every day they celebrate the birthday of a Hilo Hero. I have have done quite a few by now, and I have now also collected some of my more favorite illustrations that accompany my text into a HiLoBrow Flickr group. I’ll be adding more as I do them. Follow along!

Page 3. Click for larger size.

I’m very excited to extend the invite to anyone in the area to the opening night of the group show I’m a part of, Landscapes of Quarantine. From the press release:

NEW YORK CITY – February 17, 2010 – On Tuesday, March 9, 2010, Landscapes of Quarantine, a group exhibition exploring the spatial implications of quarantine, will open at New York’s landmark Storefront for Art and Architecture. The exhibition consists of new works by a multi-disciplinary group of eighteen artists, designers, and architects, each of whom was inspired by one or more of the physical, biological, ethical, architectural, social, political, temporal, and even astronomical dimensions of quarantine. Curated by Nicola Twilley and Geoff Manaugh of Future Plural, the exhibition will be on view at Storefront until April 17, 2010. Entrance to the exhibition is free; the launch event on March 9 is open to the public and will showcase a one-night-only, inflatable quarantine prosthesis attached to Storefront’s façade, designed by architects Jeffrey Inaba and Joseph Grima, as well as a range of beers generously donated by Brooklyn Brewery.

This was a bit of an adventure for me, and, I suspect, several other participants, since we had 10 solid weeks of inspection of the subject matter, group idea sharing, peer crit, and a final group review with a stellar cast of all-star critics. As an illustrator by trade, and often a web-enabled artist by choice, I don’t usually have the luxury of ruminating on a project an entire season before putting it together. Often times when, late at night, I’m reading the working practices of famous artists I admire (as I’m wont to do, whiskey in hand), I’m envious of a time when artists were able to chin-scratch for years on one project, painting, or attempt. Maybe I’m romanticizing it, but from a pure economics point of view, unless you’re a really famous artist, what someone might get from selling a piece of work hasn’t kept up with cost of living increases, to say the least, so more work is demanded in a shorter amount of time. But maybe it’s also personal. I’m a type-A guy who’s also impatient. Regardless of the reason, the length of time was a breath of fresh air. To be able to share that with a select group of amazing artists who gave some un-sugar-coated honest critique almost felt like I was being greedy.

Detail from Page 1

My particular piece, titled Pages 179-187 is a result I came to after studying both the roots of quarantine in the modern age, as well as the plague epidemics of early times. As we were introduced to the historical material, I became fascinated with the power imbued in the  Powers That Be to make very real decisions of life and death, sometimes with very little real information at hand. The idea of The Word From On High, for the good of all, became, in my mind, inextricably linked with the power structure behind a quarantine, and the nearly-imperialist power that implies, on top of how that word was distributed to the masses. I quickly found a relation between what the elder times placed their faith in (God), and what our more modern forebearers trusted (technology), and came up with a kind of ‘lost fable’, told in a form that was a consciously reminiscent of both 19th century etchings and cartoons, and both Italian and Byzantine illuminated manuscripts. My hope is that the result is 8 pages that are nearly ahistorical, so universal are both the themes and the images.

My initial plan was to get these pages binded in a leather tome, but after some teeth gnashing and rending of clothes, I ended up abandoning the plan, due to both a logistical flaw: how do I get every page to be shown without asking the audience to touch the pages?), and a thematic one (isn’t that a little Epcot-y?). My final framing choice I think you’ll find both subtle and really cool and appropriate.

I’ll be posting all the pages, eventually, but if you’re in the area, please do come down and pull me aside to say hello at the opening on March 9th,  at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. It should be a blast, and not only can you see my pieces in person, you can see all the other fantastic stuff on display. See you there!

Download the original press release here.

New comic by yours truly, for no other reason than it seemed like a good idea at the time. I like probably more than I should. Click here for larger size.

Since being lucky enough to get a lot of work lately, I’ve been finding I actually have more time to spend on personal projects, which is strange. It turns out that a lot more time is spent hustling than I realize, I guess. Up next: long awaited Untitled Gallery Project finally goes into preproduction! W00t!

…according to TeeJunkie.com, anyway. Hooray! Thanks to everyone for voting and throwing me to the top of the list. Yay!

I would just like to thank Jesus, Mohammed, Vishnu, Yaweh, Santa, and the Noodle Monster for their infinite widsom in directing votes my way. The others guys were formidible competition, but at the end of the day, we just wanted it more than the other team. We stuck to the game plan, and our guys gave 110% out there. I’d also like to thank my Momma.

Anyway. You can buy a version of the teeshirt here. Thanks again, everyone!

The Thames 1,2,3 Comic, on the inside cover of the new BLDGBLOG book.

The new BLDGBLOG book, with comics by yours truly, is to be released soon. Sweet!

Cool animation for Nike by James Jarvis, of Martin fame. This is apparently his first motion project, which is super cool for him. Obviously rotoscoped, but a lovely application of the process, in the tradition of Pinocchio and 101 Dalmations (something there is, tragically, no video evidence of on the internet, putting to rest the idea that EVERYTHING is online. But look for it in the movie, when Cruella DeVillie’s car flies off the embarkment and into the snow; some of the strangest, coolest rotoscoping ever).

I posted this to a online group I’m a part of, and it immediately brought up the ’sell-out’ clarion call, and whether it would be applied to Mr. Jarvis. What a crock of utter horseshit. As a professional illustrator, I want to, for once and all, call every single self-important punk-ass artist out on the mat for using this tired term born of petty spite and jealousy. There’s only two types of work in this world: the kind of work that satisfies you, and the kind of work that helps you continue to make the kind of work that satisfies you. Nothing else matters.

Well done, James: I hope Nike paid very well

Above is a poster I did for 97bottles.com, a social beer site, which seems like a great idea. Inspired by some great WPA stuff.  See the full size here.

I’d thought I’d also show how I got there, just because when I do this type of stuff, I get that questions occasionally.

This is the scan of my hand drawing, after I’ve gone over it with ink. I take it into Photoshop, convert it to a duotone via the Threshhold tool, and then select the black out, and place another layer. Then I delete the background layer, so I just have the line work on Layer 1.

I lay down a new background layer of that light, elementary-school-bathroom green, and apply a reverse gradient, with the Dissolve brush selected of a nice dark green, also on a separate layer. Pretty much everything I do from here on out I do on a separate layer: it creates a lot of organizational hassle, but to me, it’s worth it, to have the total control of having everything of a separate layer provides.

I create the big blocks of color with the straight-lasso tool, which mocks the big blocks of color laid down in silkscreening. Obviously, the blue here is the lowest layer, and so on. I choose a distressed brush, again select the ‘dissolve’ brush type’, and shade upwards in sweep motions, making sure it’s not *too* even, with my stylus.

I apply the small blocks and shading and color in similar ways to the previous step, using the gradient tool to mock the airbrush effect on the WPA posters. Again, the “dissolve” option is my best friend here.

I add a second reverse circular gradient around the top most layer of the image, to give it a nice vigniette. I also cut out the line work from the line layer, that contains the bottles, place them on their own layer, and use the “Color overlay” layer option to apply the light green.

Finally, I lay th type on top, and in a stroke of inspiration, I turned off the line layer for the objects, which alluvasudden made the whole thing sing. I love when stuff like that happens.

And there it is. Hit me with questions.