Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Sketch: OBITUARY (Xecutioner) Poster


So I got the pencils done for this piece yesterday in about an hour, and I just finished inking it, which took about 2 hours.

The flyer itself will be in full black-and-white, but I'm working on a color version that I would make available for a limited time and post on my site. Until then, enjoy this sketch!

DON'T! (Tread on Me) - New Piece!



I did this piece back in July and finally got a chance to post it today. The piece is called "Don't! (Tread On Me)" and is based on the Gadsden Flag that was flown at the birth of America. In my version, it's a recoiled snake skeleton ready to pounce on any and all who dare to cross it!

This piece was a lot of fun, and work, to get done. The research drove me up a wall and the inking took hours. I really dig this one!

Monday, July 13, 2009

Sunday, April 12, 2009

DESTROY WHAT DESTROYS YOU!

In the past, I've had a problem with having awesome sketches in my sketch book and only OK finishes. I've tried just blowing up sketches with little success, and this time I decided to try something else: Just draw a finish in my sketch book and ink it at home. It worked perfectly! I had a great sketch that was done to size, I scanned it into my computer and blew it up a little bit, and basically inked it on a lightbox. 



Also, the reason I haven't posted a lot of sketches as of late is because I noticed a lot of keyword activity on a piece that, sadly, I haven't finished in nearly a year. I decided to stop posting until it was done... it isn't, but I decided instead to not post sketches unless a piece is done or almost done.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Whoo-Hoo! ART!

I... I have no idea what this is called. This is an early version of it... I plan on scanning a larger piece tomorrow.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Sunday, March 1, 2009

New Sketch Book

I got and started a new sketch book recently. Last weekend I went to New York City. In fact, it was last Sunday. I had work the next day and left for NYC at around 4:30PM. I had to get back soon, so I was only there for about 2 hours and it's a 4-hour round-trip. It was 100% worth it to just get out of Philly.

I can't say I've gone through much, but really I have. Some good, some bad, and some... well, REALLY good. These sketches don't say much, but they're pretty good.



Saturday, February 14, 2009

Not Quite a Sketch...

I fucking hate Valentines Day. Well, you tend to when you don't have a girlfriend and your stuck home alone and pissed and sad that you don't have anyone...

So I took some time to draw the Bride of Frankenstein. Full inks and everything. It isn't done yet, but hey, ENJOY! 

Saturday, February 7, 2009

FUCK! Or Me On a Bad Day...

So I now have a bet (in a way) going with half my friends that I may suffer from Bi-Polar Disorder. Whenever my friends talked about it, I always said their diagnosis by whatever quack they saw was bunk. In essence, Bi-Polar Disorder basically says that people go through lows and his at a big speed. Like I said, life. I think they call it "bi-polar" if you get really bad about it, and really, that's what it seems like. Because I tend to have severe mood swings, dissociative episodes (basically these can be anything from doing something and forgetting it to almost sleepwalking), and did I mention extreme mood swings? That's the important part for me because it's a problem.

So Thursday things got beyond a part where I could just take it anymore. Having a girl I really liked, and who felt the same, having to give me the "lets be friends" talk.. fun, fun stuff (If you read this, don't worry, I actually handled that insanely well! I was bummed, but hey, we're still friends! :) ). And maybe losing my house? Cherry on top!

My response?


Also, looking for a model right now that I can get to pose naked except for being wrapped in Caution Tape. My, ahem, "previous model" said she may not be able to do it anytime soon. Here's what I have so far:



If you click on the sort of "nicer sketch" of this (that isn't even close to a finish! I did it on the train basically to see if I had an idea I liked), you'll see a bunch of notes about what I think works and what doesn't. A pretty interesting peak into the twisted mind of Larry.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

My Favorite Punk Chick and My Inner Demons...

One thing I've been working on since the summer of 2007 was an idea for a book. That's all I'll say because, really, I don't want to jinx myself or shoot myself in the foot down the road, so I'll leave it at that. But this is the idea of the main character that I've been developing. I've had the look down since Day 1, but drawing her over and over again and looking the same... well, I've never been good at that.


Also, stress. I have a ton of it. If it isn't one thing, it's another. Not really fun to deal with, either. If you ever saw some of my "ink-paintings", you'll recognize the style quickly. If not, well, this is another style of art I do that's 90% expression, 10% technique, ability, and form. The main idea is to just not be angry or stressed anymore.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

A Nun and a Facist

After looking over the blog world and, well, life in general, it seems everyone is in a bit of a malaise. Makes sense, really; Last week was a big with celebrations and "hope", and this week has been.. blah. The fact that temperatures have been at or below freezing for most of the country didn't help, nor the cold economic reality that life fucking sucks.

Oh, and Valentines Day is in 2 weeks. Am I getting someone something? I wish I knew...

Eh, that's neither here nor there, is it? This is about sketching!


Saturday, January 24, 2009

Tattooed Woman and Military Might

Just some more sketches from the last two days. I had an idea of drawing some tattooed girl sitting on a tattoo needle and another of a series of military women I've been doing. That's about it.


Friday, January 23, 2009

From Sketch to Finish: A Quick Overview

I don't want to give too much away about my process and how I get to an end... at least not yet. I like having people dissect it to get their own meaning out of it. But here's the sketch:


Now, I started to mention this yesterday, but here some more detail on the subject:

When I was in art school from 2002 -2006 (worth mentioning because I think I may be among the last to learn old-fashioned principals of design... or sound like an ass for saying that), there were teachers who had been in the industry for nearly 30 - 50 years. Hearing them talk was boring at times, but hell, I learned a lot! One teacher in particular was Mr. Crawford, and he taught some really basic, really smart things. For example, when your doing a sketch of a design layout with type, make little boxes for each letter. I was, ironically enough, doing that when I was a kid so it was a pleasant surprise.

You can see little notes about the font choice. That was a big thing to me because, as much as I'm a fan of artists like Brute and Shepard Farely, I never want to just copy them. I hate copying my hero's, it feels like I'm ripping them off. I'd rather just learn from them and make it my own. So in this case, I was looking at the work of Brute and realized that using Impact for everything would be ripping him off. For that "RULES" series I did, and all my propaganda pieces, all the fonts are Arial Black (oops, gave away a secret!) that I've modified. In the case, I didn't think it would work so I wound up using some new font I got. I can't recall the name... it started with an "F" but it wasn't Franklin Gothic... eh, anyway, that's besides the point.

I've been getting some really rude comments about images in some of my pieces, and I try to only use photos I took myself or in the public domain. For this idea, I needed public domain pics. Interesting fact: Any image created and distribuited by the US Government is 100% free. Enjoy!

I messed around with a few ideas and for the one I plan on executing in public, like printing and such since black and white is cheap, I did this:


I actually have another one in some color. Not much, just a little to go with what I normally do. I'll post that later.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Some New Sketches from January 21 - 22

I'm going to have a post about artists I'm checking out, but once again I'm going to make a renewed effort to post more here.

That said, here's some pieces I did over the last few days in my sketch book. Some of them lead to other finishes, as you'll see. It's always interesting to me to see the thought process.

The first one here is a Vulture. I took a photo, printed it out, and drew from it. Yeah, there are plenty of vultures in Philly, but none of them look like the one I wanted; the ones around here look like human beings.



So next up are some sketches of various projects I have in mind that involve, you guessed it, the vulture. I did these yesterday after the inauguration and was inspired but a lot of the imagery. I wanted to do a faux-presidential seal for a few months now (wow, that's a long time!) and finally decided to give it a shot. The entire "He's Watching" thing is based on how Obama voted in favor of keeping wiretaps... and the fact that his face seems to be everywhere. Am I the only one who thinks that's like "1984"? Eh...



I'm posting the sketch now, but I'll do the reveal tomorrow. How do I like to develop an idea?
Well, for anything that's purely design, 99% of the time I just wing it on a computer. It tends to be better than me over-thinking it and, in my daily job, I kinda have to. So it's rare that I do a full semi-detailed sketch of what I plan on doing. You can see in the sketch above that I laid out my type in boxes. I had an old design teacher teach me that... but that's another day. The entire idea was to create something that I could make into about 9ft by 3ft, maybe even larger. I'm going to ask around about doing "Street art"... anyway, here's the thing: