JOIN, or DIE.

Another Red 7 poster! Austin's Set Aflame and Goodnight Goddess, San Antonio's Tension Speak, and Bonnie Blue from College Station. Not exactly my jams, but I love doing posters for shows outside of Cleveland, and I think Austin is probably a good place to be doing posters for. This is also a JULY 4th party, so that's fun. It's how I landed on a lot of the design decisions with this character.

But I'll get to that in a minute. Here's some process breakdown:



Not sure why I've included this one, other than it's the initial concept, I feel like I haven't done the "hot tattooed chick with gun" approach in a while. It's one of my faves, and can always be catered to whatever the context is. At any rate, I think the initial madness at the bottom of the page with the skulls and stuff would have been fun, but possibly overkill. I dunno, I'm glad I didnt do it though.



This rough of the girl took a while, but it was totally worth it. Thinking up tattoos and trying to get the pose right is always a fun challenge.



I ink with a brush and then micron pens. Sometimes splattering ink with a tooth brush.



This time I chose to draw the background separate from the character so I would have the option to resize things if I needed to. Sometimes details change, or when I'm laying things out I leave enough room to make mistakes.



Took me a minute to color this one, I kinda got obsessed. This was a really fun piece to work on. Been using a blue sky a lot lately, maybe because it's summer?



So, firstly, I gave her a Dead Prez shirt because I've been listening to a shitload of Dead Prez lately. I'd never really gotten too into them, but man, they're good. It's been kind of a boon, I've been finding it's a lot harder to stay focused lately. A lot of Dead Prez songs are about working hard and staying focused and being healthy and smart. On the other hand, the rest of their songs make me want to just run around killin' white people. So it's definitely something to moderate. I've been blasting heavy ass metal intermittently. Anyway, new Dead Prez comes out Tuesday!



JOIN, or DIE., a Benjamin Franklin piece from 1754, that was used during the build up to the American Revolution. I love this image and imagine revolutionary militant punk girls would have it as a chest piece.



The Gadsden flag, again. I love this shit.



There's a Kool-Aid Man tattoo. There's also a green... peace sign.

I've got a lot of stuff on deck, so check back. I did hang a bunch of art at Cleveland based marketing firm Boondock Walker's studio for their summer open house party, Humdinger this past Thursday. The party was a blast, it's been a while since I've seen that many people, that happy. It may have been the new Boondock Walker brand of beer, or the awesome food (especially the huge bowls of muy bueno guacamole)(both provided by the awesome Rocky River Brewing Co.), or the super loud smooth jazz (seriously, it was loud), or the plethora of fashionable attractive people there (I felt like a bridge troll, like in that Patton Oswalt joke about the London Batman Begins premier on Werewolves and Lollipops). It most certainly had very little to do with my artwork, but I'm super stoked I was a part of it and got to hang my work, it looked great. I had a great time and got to meet and hang with some cool people. Boondock Walker rules.