Doughboys

Here's a piece I did for a show in Austin that got canceled. I was just going to sit on it until they booked another show this would be appropriate for but I'm so happy with it, and how it came out that I decided to post it anyway. The band is a hardcore grind crust legendary type of band, and I wanted to go pretty far into black terrain with some guttural doomed out gasmask imagery. Also, the fans of that kind of hardcore, in general I think they respond to black and white art more than bright vibrant eye-popping oranges and pinks. So I knew I wanted to do something I could easily do a black and white version of also, and make it crusty and stark. I've done that before and I've got a couple projects I'm working on where that will be the case for other reasons (cost of printing).

I'm pretty stoked about sneaking in that Chuck Taylor. That was fun.



I always liked the term "Doughboys", which seems so locked into that time and place of the first World War and like, that generation of Americans. Trench warfare is such a completely insane idea. They did a pretty great job depicting it on the first episode of the second season of Downton Abbey, which just aired last night. Watching that might even been what encouraged me to post these. At any rate, there's a character that goes on leave from the trenches a couple times, and I just can't imagine being able to get away from that hell and then having to go back.





Get this: the last surviving Doughboy that fought in the first World War just died last year, at the age of 110! Frank Buckles! What a dude.

Anyway, here's the ink splatter I scanned and used to create the colors of the sky and background of this one. Splatters. I can't believe I'm still doing this. Just making a mess and turning it into something. I'll be posting some more stuff later this week. I've got an announcement and some other stuff. Working on some posters that I'm super psyched about! Stay tuned!