Beyond the Five Known Senses

First of all, here's something from last year that just came my way! It's the Pangolin (what in the world is a pangolin? find out!) painting I did for the "Inside Out" show I had last March. I actually didn't get a chance to scan or photograph this before the show but luckily it went to one of my best friends, Jeff ,who sent me this photograph this week. It's nice the see the weirdo again. A cool thing about this painting is that it has tons of iridescent detail work that pretty much...no one will see except for maybe Jeff.

I figured that since I have a little downtime I'd talk about supplies for a second, in case anyone is actually curious haha. All of my paintings are done on bristol vellum almost always exclusively with brushes. Since I work so small I basically stick to very small detail brushes though I do have a few (still small) moderate sized ones. After much searching the best and tiniest seem to be these:
Loew-Cornell 18/0 Round and Spotter. The short squat handles offer a really good grip and the points are suprisingly versatile.
so teeny tiny!

At this point I primarily use three kinds of ink. The first two I appreciate mainly for their vivid and concentrated color:
They're both very watery and fluid but the color is so concentrated that it isn't much of an issue. The fluidity makes it really easy to get a nice continuous line. The Liquitex has a very slight gloss to it which irritates me because I like for everything to be totally matte, but the colors are really good and can be great for mixing with thicker paint. The absolute most essential and recommended ink/paint I use though is this:
I first bought a jar of black Pelikan Plaka in college, mistaking it for a basic ink. It's actually a highly opaque casein emulsion paint, which dries perfectly matte. I can say with some certainty that their black is the BLACKEST BLACK I've ever found, and has none of the iridescent qualities of other black inks. While the black and often the white are pretty easy to find in most art supply stores in the U.S. , I've only ever found a full selection of the colors at one place. In addition to all these I have no qualms with using any kind of water-based paint, from cheap acrylics or gouache, to craft store 35 cent paints, to flourescent and glow in the dark tshirt paints. I also occasionally use these koh-i-noor watercolors for backgrounds:
Annnnnyway, if you survived all that shop talk, I also wanted to mention the H.P. Podcraft H.P. Lovecraft literary podcast that Mike and I have been listening to. I highly recommend it! They love Lovecraft but have no problem poking fun at him and critiquing his work and offer a lot of interesting context and background for his stories and ideas. Haha of course it doesn't hurt that they also reference Suicidal Tendencies and Futurama. ALSO, I just listened to their podcast about The Chronicles of Dr. Herbert West (featuring Stuart Gordon as guest commentator) and was startled when they made the same connection I did in my post about the Women record cover , between the experiments with transplanted dog heads and Herbert West. Excellent! I just wish there was one of these for Robert E. Howards work.

Just slugging along doing work for my show! At some point I need to write up a little bio for here, and one for a hang tag for the shirt I did for my friend Carol's store. I don't know how to talk about myself in the third person without wanting to vomit though.

Oh and hey, if you live in philly, check out the Exhumed Films Ozploitation double feature this friday. Road Games and Patrick!

The Spirit of Evil

Completed my second piece for the show. I know I said I wasn't going to post EVERYTHING but it's hard sometimes, especially since I'm trying to keep this blog active. Anyway, as I said before this is based on the short story Viy by Nikolai Gogol. Here's a little synopsis of the particular part that inspired this, just because it's so cool:

"On the first night, when the Cossacks take her body to a ruined church, he is somewhat frightened but calms himself when he lights more candles in the church to eliminate most of the darkness, other than that above him. As he begins to say prayers, he imagines to himself that the corpse is getting up, but it never does. Suddenly, however, he looks up and finds that the witch is sitting up in her coffin. She begins to walk around, reaching out for someone, and starts to approach to Khoma, but he draws a circle of protection around himself that she cannot cross. She gnashes her teeth at him as he begins to exorcise her, and then she goes into her coffin and flies about the church in it, trying to frighten him out of the circle. Dawn arrives, and he has survived the first night.

The next night similar events occur, but more horrible than before, and the witch calls upon unseen, winged demons and monsters to fly about outside the church. When the Cossacks find the philosopher in the morning, he is near death, pale and leaning against a wall. He tries to escape the next day but is captured and brought back to finish.

On the third night the witch’s corpse is even more terrifying and she calls the demons and monsters around her to bring Viy into the church, who can see everything. Khoma realizes that he cannot look at the creature when they draw his long eyelids up from the floor so he can see, but he does anyway and sees a horrible, iron face staring at him. Viy points in his direction and the monsters leap upon him. Khoma is dead from horror. However, they miss the first crowing of the rooster and are unable to escape the church when day begins."

Basically a priest is asked to sit a vigil with a dead witch for three nights and each night she terrorizes him. The characteristics of Viy himself are actually based on Russian beliefs surrounding St. John Cassian who was depicted with eyebrows down to his knees which he lifted once a year (on his feast day) to cast an evil eye on the whole world. I really like the way Christianity was sort of folded into traditional folk beliefs in Russia (though I would naturally prefer it if Christianity was never imposed at all!) with a lot of borrowing and integration and a complete disinterest in abandoning superstition and supernatural beliefs. Really neat. Here are two close ups:
I will say that composing in an inverted cross shape is incredibly stupid and challenging. I have another one planned that should work really well but I don't know if I'll be able to get through all eight.

In other news please check out this interview Denis did with Melissa Farley who is one of the most talented photographers I know!

Draw Not Your Bow Till Your Arrow is Fixed

I do all my spray painting in our basement, which is also a screenprinting studio, with no concern for the state of the floors (rented property, total scum landlord). My roomate took this picture of the aftermath of the gold painted crosses i made for my upcoming show and it delights me.
The "2010" below is from a sign I made for the fake photobooth at my friends' new years party.

Right now I'm working on a second cross with an illustration from Viy, a short story by Nikolai Gogol, which was also made into a seriously incredible movie. It was the first soviet era horror movie produced in Russia and slipped under the radar because of the traditional folk tale elements it contained.



Totally insane technicolor, witches, demons, flying coffins... I love it. There's actually a remake in the works that looks really good!

There is a Grove of Bleached Bones, where Lupins Vomit Children's Limbs

hey hey hey.

I'm currently working on pieces for my upcoming solo show at Benna's Cafe. So far I'm excited about what I'm doing (pieces from Russian folklore and literature and icons) but really anxious about my usual time constraints. Unlike last time I haven't gotten work done ahead of time because I was so busy doing other work, not because I was procrastinating. But just last night I finished my first small piece and started to feel a little relief and optimism. I'm not sure that I'll be posting everything I make for my show until after the show itself because I would like for there to be a few surprises, but I'm going to make an effort to post a few things and maybe some progress shots. I've always avoided showing progress shots because I think the stuff I'm working on looks like such a mess before it's finished (so much so that I feel an anxious need to finish quickly because it bothers me to look at it half done) and in its earliest stages it's the most basic and unimpressive line drawing. Anyhow, this is the first thing I finished and will be one of probably 6 inverted icons:

What you're seeing there is Friday the 13th on my laptop.... These aren't the best pictures because my camera doesn't really do macro or low light well, and anything with flash bleaches out the color. Hopefully before the show I'll be able to have a photographer friend take better pictures. Also something I'm going to be working towards in the future is building my own glassless false frames, because I really prefer the way stuff looks completely matte with no glass but I think in order to protect the painting at least somewhat there needs to be a little lip around it like in the case of these wooden crosses.

Anywhoooo I'll talk for a second about Colombia which was really awesome. Bogota is an amazing city and Tayrona National Park was probably THE most beautiful place I've ever been. In Bogota Mike and I picked up this:

which a dude was selling on the street along with many other ball point renditions of metal album covers...

In Tayrona I found a bunch of animal vertebrae on the beach which I smuggled back to the states wrapped in a tissue stuffed in my raincoat pocket. My bag was searched THOROUGHLY exactly 5 times during this trip because of a number of suspiciously shaped metal items purchased at a flea market (a brass hand, a bottle opener, some metal picture frames) as well as a large deck of Colombia specific tarot cards with the strangest art I've ever seen (photoshopped collages from paintings and illustrations and photographs of popular colombian athletes ?!?!) but the bones thankfully went undiscovered. I set aside one for me and one for Mike to make necklaces with but if anyone out there is interested I still have 5 and will mail you one. No idea what kind of animal they come from as there was nothing but these left when I found it.

In other much sadder news, Frank Frazetta died while I was away. I know I'm pretty late commenting at this point but I didn't want to let that pass without saying something. I'm a huge fan of his work and recently got to go to the Frazetta Museum and was just blown away by how amazing his paintings are in person, and by what an awesome accessible little forum it was to show off his work. Everyone there was so friendly and encouraged us to take pictures in front of our favorite pieces and had so much to say about Frank. His paintings looked amazing on book covers, but seeing them up close in large scale and seeing all the secret hidden details was mind blowing. They also sell prints of his work for extremely reasonable prices which makes it possible for almost anyone to be able to enjoy his work in their home. I have nothing but respect for artists who make themselves and their work so accessible and seeing his post stroke work made me want to punch my own face because of course even with these new limitations he was still making this perfect dynamic really fucking cool work. I was really sad to hear he died and I hope the Museum manages to keep operating because it's a very rare and awesome thing.
One of my favorite pieces: "The Sea Witch"
On our way home from the museum Mike, Josh and I did our best Frazetta poses in front of Bryn Athyn Cathedral.

R.I.P.

A Female That Brings Doom, Don't Look Her in the Eye

So I was recently asked to design a shirt for a ladies messageboard (like...on the internet). Since I happen to know a lot of the women involved and because they gave me permission to draw a "lady monster" I said yes. While I'm sure I could have done something more obscure and less tragic I went for Medusa because I've been wanting to draw one (and some snakes) for a while now. I decided to defy gorgon tradition and make a "Super-Medusa" with an extra man-petrifying eye and horns, and real hair mixed with her snake hair. The general shape of the design was supposed to be the women symbol but I think it got more abstracted as I drew and added strange shapes. Hopefully it's still there, at least subconsciously. I'm including close-ups of each part since I've realized the size restrictions on images in this forum really makes a lot of what I do completely get lost.

Additionally, please see the song that's been in my head all week as a result of this project:



That's all from me for at least a week or two, as I'm leaving for Colombia tomorrow! See ya, chumps!

Cosmic Hearse

So, as I mentioned a few posts ago my favorite historic site (it is actually technically a National Historic Landmark) in all of historic Philadelphia is Laurel Hill Cemetery, and in honor of their 175th Anniversary they are putting out a publication and accepting submissions of artwork and writing. I highly recommend the tours and programs at Laurel Hill. In addition to being full of cool monuments, it's situated along the Schuykill River which is probably the prettiest spot in Philly, is the resting place of many famous Philadelphians and has a few noteworthy and strange graves like one with a glass viewing window along the top, the movie prop grave of the character Adrian Balboa from Rocky Balboa (as a permanent fixture), a really amazing and famous one designed by Alexander Calder and my favorite grave that of Mrs. Catherine Drinkhouse Smith and her husband Professor Levi Franklin Smith who were both victorian spiritualists (and she was a medium!)

Anyway, this is my submission. The wreath is actually my favorite part and based mostly on victorian mourning art, hair jewelry and design. The center image is taken from a photograph I took at the cemetery recently, when I went on an exceptionally good, very long tour where they let us into a crypt! I'm pretty pleased with the whole thing, especially the wreath (I'm particularly into the mourning brooch), and it was really fun to be painting in full color again. I had wanted to do something a little more ambitious but I only had ten days to finish. I have some ideas for ways to frame the original which I might sell at some later point.

here are a few close ups:

As a side note, another really interesting (if you are a morbid creep like me) related place in Philadelphia is the Museum of Mourning Art which I visited and really liked. It's small but they have a really good collection of mourning jewelry, including one made from Abraham Lincoln's hair!

Paging Dr. Herbert West

So, I finally finished that Women record. It took way longer than it should have, mostly because I was dragging my feet and wildly distracted by the weather. I'm pretty pleased with how it came out. I used Microns to ink it instead of the brush I usually use, and while I definitely prefer the way my brush lines look, I needed to use pens for this because it was so much work and I drew it at such a large scale and pens are much faster (and reproduce a little better). I also used Photoshop, which I hate, to add the color because I understand that a true solid color reproduces much better in limited color printing, and I wanted to make things easier in that respect. I'm the first to admit when I'm being a stubborn cavewoman, and I can see how using photoshop for a few things can make it way more usable and printable. But man, I feel so much better when I'm actually painting something with my hands, and I feel like everything I personally do looks better when done by hand.
I'm actually really excited about how the back cover came out design wise and once again was excited to draw those tails.
I'm also pretty pleased with the lettering, which was basically what I did on the labels. It's supposed to look hairy. I really like doing hand lettering, though it can be frustrating and there's lots of room for stupid and hard to correct misspellings and errors (zack's "birtday" card is a very good example of this haha)

And here's a close up of a screaming rat face!
Oh and a word about the theme: after a lot of back and forth and changes of ideas the band wanted to do something Re-animator themed, with a dead rat and a syringe full of the green reanimation fluid (though I think the rat is actually from Beyond Re-animator) . I was delighted because I like rats and drawing rats (and anything gross with a million tiny hairs) and I love horror movies. The back cover and the labels were sort of vaguely rat king related. The sewn together rats on the front were an idea I had that came from a couple sources. Inspired in part by the mouse with a human ear grown on it, in part by the death of Chang and Eng, and also by an account in Stiff by Mary Roach, in which she describes a series of experiments where the head of a dead dog was transplanted onto a living dog and supplied oxygenated blood before brain death could occur. The transplanted head lived (for a couple days or weeks in different instances) an obviously tragic and confused existence on the live dog, and they occasionally even bit each other. Aside from that being an incredibly cruel account of Mengele-esque animal torture, it's a really good example of modern science falling squarely in line with true mad science. That is definitely an experiment Dr. Herbert West would have done.

I got started on the the Laurel Hill project immediately after finishing this one. It's basically a race against time at this point! 10 days to finish!!!

Return of the Rat (oh no no no no no no no)

Hey guys!

I know I haven't updated in a while, but don't think I haven't been doing SOMEthing. Right now I'm concentrating on one piece at a time, but like I said before took on waaay too much (for someone with a full time job). Anyway, I dont usually post photos or works in progress, but I wanted to make an update, and this cover is basically done. Something about it is bothering me though, and I thought I'd take a few days and get some distance to figure out how I can adjust it. Also all the lettering will be solid puke green when I'm done.
Drawing these rats (and feeding pizza crust to one in Rittenhouse Park last week) forced me to think a little more about their anatomy as you can see in this closeup. The hand on the left was my loose understanding of what a rat hand looks like, and the hand on the right is the one I drew after reference. I'm going to have to go in with white to fix the first one.
Also, I have always accepted the cartoonist shorthand for "rat tail" as seen in the simpler label rats of my previous post. It occurred to me for the first time that I wasn't actually clear what those horizontal segmented lines were mimicking and a closer look at a rat tail revealed teeny tiny scaled skin, not in any way broken into segments (which almost seem like a simplification of scales that look more like armadillo plates). What I settled on for my rats was actually a hybrid of the imaginary segments and the tiny scales, and the tails ended up being my favorite part of the whole drawing. While I do think working from your imagination is very important sometimes a little glimpse at the reality of nature reveals something way cooler that you can then build on.
Also of note I donated a piece to this which is opening tonight:
It's the framed original of the Bones of Sea Birds Cassette cover I did for Peasant Magik. You will notice there is no moon in the original. That was actually added on the computer at the musician's request.

Speaking of Peasant Magik, my friend Denis recently started a great blog where he photographs and interviews friends about their music and art and process. His first interview was actually with Sal about Peasant Magik records. While I often tell Sal that he is the grossest person I know, I rarely tell him that he is also one of the most inspiring (I don't want him to get a big head). He puts so much care and effort into every one of his releases and I have spent many a night folding and cutting covers with him and left knowing he had days and days of the same ahead. Check out Denis' interview and photos here: http://dissolvingintogray.blogspot.com/ (it will also be cross posted at http://nevernothing.com -another friends' photography site) and keep an eye on his blog for more interviews with a lot of the people who I show and hang out with here in Philly!

r-a-t-t

So I started working on some album art for a Philly band, Women. It all has a sort of...mad science Reanimator theme, and what it amounts to is a LOT of drawings of rats and green fluid. So far I finished the labels. The live rat is A and the dead rat is B. I still have a lot of work to do on it.



I'll basically be working on the Women record for the next few weeks but I'm trying to work as hard as possible to get it done in time to do the Laurel Hill thing. Also of note, one of my birthday presents from mike was a magnifying light:
I tried it out last week and holy shit...it makes those insanely small details so much easier and makes some really ridiculously small things possible. Of course it's slightly maddening to see my lines under it, looking so inconsistent and imperfect but always relieving to pull the magnifyer away and watch all the flaws disappear...also, man...are my fingernails dirty it turns out...

If you live in NY (or will be there soon) you should REALLY go see Tamara's show. It opens tonight and it looks amazing. Basically everything I've seen of hers is really cool and mindblowing, and she's an awesome multi-talented lady!

Life is Short and Full of Stuff, so Let Me Know Baby When You've Had Enough!

heyyyyyyyyyy hey. After a week and a half of stupid "drawing" block and procrastination angst, I got a bunch of ideas and committed to possibly too many projects for the next two months. One of the things I was struggling with for some reason was thinking of an idea for a shirt design for my friend Carol's store, Toilet Water. It's absolutely stupid when you are given free reign to do whatever you want and your mind goes completely blank of (appropriate) ideas. After cruddy weather forced me to take the subway one morning all the sitting and waiting and walking resulted in a mini brainstorm. I decided to do a memento mori inspired design with lettering spelled in hair as a slight reference to mourning jewelry. I include a couple of close ups here since the blog format reduces the whole design so much:

The "Too Bad You're Gonna Die" phrase is actually lifted from a Cramps record, with the grammar corrected so that Carol wouldn't have to hear about it from anyone. Though I actually really prefer it with the incorrect grammar. I particularly like this phrase because it's kind of an obnoxious snarky reduction of memento mori.

On the same topic, shortly after I got to work with my idea for Carol's shirt already decided on, I read that Laurel Hill Cemetery is producing a publication for their 175th anniversary and they are accepting art submissions! I'm thinking about submitting something, because I'm a big fan of the cemetery (and cemeteries, and funeral iconography and mourning practice) and a lot of their tours and public programs. I'm thinking of working on a design that incorporates the braided hair lettering and one of the more famous monuments from the cemetery with a gravestone poem (probably culled from the hundreds of pictures I have from cemetery trips). Hopefully I can get something finished by the submission date and hopefully if I do it gets selected! It would be really cool. In the mean time I'm working on a record cover and some illustrations for a friends viking rpg manual, and as always working full time and hoping to occasionally see the outside.

In OTHER news, check out Mike's New Blog, which is completely devoted to his obsession with madballs, fake madballs, and assorted other monster balls (yes, I know that's funny). He's a wonderful weirdo. He's also been working on designing some of his own madballs, and will soon start posting those along with madballs designs by other artist friends, including me of course! Also I drew the header logo!

heart attack!

Pictures of the 2010 heart show that my ouija board piece was in are up, if you want to see some of the other work!

http://www.theheartshow.org/

When the Rain Comes Down, Would You Choose to Walk or Stay?

hey hey,

First of all you may have noticed my fancy new blog header. I've been meaning to make something specifically for my blog for a long time but really didn't have time between other projects. So last week I just made time. It was really fun designing and making something just for myself and I think the actual painting itself came out really nicely. I realized when photographing my heart show piece that a lot things that get lost in scans (like all the tiny linework) come out a lot better in photos so here are a couple of the painting I used to make my header:



In other news, I got some pin sets made from some of my fun-a-day paintings, since they were already in a perfect round format. Just the four cryptids: nessie, the mothman, the yeti and the chupacabra. I learned a few things about what looks good in pin format, and found a great place to have small quantities made (http://smallworldbuttons.bigcartel.com/). This lady is super fast and the pins look really nice and she offers the 1.25" size I prefer! I will probably work on designing some art specifically for a button set next. In the mean time though, here are these guys, a 4 button set of 1.25" buttons, $5 a set (including shipping) if you're interested! Contact me through email and I can take shipping info and direct you towards my paypal.




In OLLLLLD news I finally got a full scan of that ST drawing I did last year and cleaned it up on photoshop. Inspired by the song "suicidal failure" and the many excellent hand drawn ST shirts on the cover of the self titled record which is probably one of my lifetime most listened to records:


I may sell prints of this if there's sufficient interest. I mostly made it to amuse myself with the hope that I would one day get around to screening it on the back of a white button up so I'm not sure how desirable it is to other people.

I have a bunch of cool projects to work on coming up and as always I'm struggling to work 40 hours a week and finish art projects and just maybe sort of have a life. It's been snowing (and now raining) like crazy which helps me explain away the fact that I spend pretty much my entire life indoors. I've been really into 80's and early 90's goth and deathrock lately, so I leave you with links to a bunch of that, assuming that like me you would like to wallow in the gloom of late winter! Two Witches, X-Mal Deutschland, 45 Grave, Skeletal Family, Bone Orchard, Ghost Dance, Sisters of Mercy and Christian Death!