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!

Mystifying Oracle

Here's my piece for the aforementioned Heart Show. It's a heart shaped Ouija board with a heart shaped planchette that Josh Robeson cut and assembled for me (did I mention he can make anything?). All painted in the usual Pelikan Plaka and now a new Speedball liquid acrylic I picked up recently and really like. While the board isn't technically functional with the planchette, due to the constrictions of the show's theme, the planchette is pretty use-able on it's own (aside from the fact that you'd be putting your grubby fingers on a painting). I've been wanting to design a Ouija board for a while and took this opportunity to make a first attempt. I still want to make a full sized and functional one some day.

Here's the info for the Heart Show, there are a ton of really neat people participating!

Saturday Feb 13th: 3-9pm
and
Sunday Feb 14th: 12-4pm

@STORAGE
1414 S Darien St.
Philly, PA 19147

Also this weekend is the Fun-a-Day show. Because of conflicts with the Heart show I (and my work) will most likely only be there Friday night, but come check it out if you like seeing paintings of tiny creeps.
February 12 and 13, 2010, 7-10 pm at Studio 34
4522 Baltimore Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19143
Reading Event February 13, 4-6 pm

You might also want to take a look at Mike's work for the show. It's ridiculous and awesome. Here's the card he made for his project:


PS- check out my giant tarantula ring in the planchette picture! a birthday present from Mike. Made by this etsy seller whose shop I obviously frequent (animal skull jewelry? YES)

Fun-A-Day Week 3! Finished!

The last week of fun-a-days is finished! Note godzilla and king kong are larger (heehee "to scale") also the toxic mutant glows in the dark! I took a few pictures of them framed to give a sense of the scale. These guys are tiny!

Fat Jackals Howl at the Moon

Totally unrelated to everything except what I'm generally preoccupied by today but ohhh my godddddddd:


I love that.....

Only 5 fun-a-days left! the first few from this next batch are probably my favorite. I'll post them at the end of the week sometime!

Next up is the heart show. Unfortunately because of my work (meaning boring paying job) schedule I'm pretty much doing projects back to back most of the time, without a lot of time for sketching or fooling around, but I'm excited about my idea (heartshaped ouija board and a heartshaped planchet!) and hopefully with an extra day off of work it'll all get finished in time!

Fun-A-Day week 2

Still at it.

the venturers don't venture here

I spent all day listening to the adverts and roky erickson, painting and cleaning the studio. For the record I am the world's least organized person and in the 5 hours between me taking this picture and me posting it, I completely wrecked everything but I present this very false impression of my work space. Imagine it covered in piles of frames and plastic toys and crumpled paper and you're pretty much there.

Fun-a-Day, first 10 Days

Hey Hey,

So this year I decided to participate in Fun-A-Day, thinking it would be a fun challenge and an opportunity to throw myself into painting in a smaller scale. I decided in order to combat my short attention span I should stick with what I'm interested in and opted to paint a monster a day. They are each about 2 inches across. Here are the first 10!











In other news, as I mentioned back in the Snyderman Works on Paper post, my roomate Josh makes AMAZING frames, and I've been waiting for him to have something online for me show off. He just started his own blog where you can see his excellent artwork as well as the beautiful custom frames and various other carpentry jobs he's done. If you're an artist looking for really beautiful professional frames for your own work, or if you have some art you need framed for your house and would like to pay a real life talented Philadelphia artist to make something for you instead of the swedish slave labor gnomes who make frames for IKEA please seek him out! Here are a few pictures of his work: