Breaking Radio Silence, Part 2: Grand Scenesterism

I've recently done a couple pieces for Scene Magazine, covers and what not. It's actually a pretty awesome gig doing work for them now. They recently took on my homie, and design powerhaüs, OKPants, AKA: Aaron Secrist, as their new Art Director and he's really whipped things into shape, with the quickness!

At any rate, I did the cover of the May 18th issue, which was for an article, The Job Machine, about an organization, Global Cleveland, that is working to bring a specific type of immigrant, H-1Bs, to Cleveland to fill jobs, and what that might mean for the region. I used the local iconic image of one of the Guardians of Traffic statues that hold sway over the Hope Memorial Bridge (Lorain/Carnegie). I think it came out pretty awesome, even in print it looked better than I expected.

In addition to that, I did the cover for an article about Ohio selling off the prisons to private corrections firms, and the impact that will have on the system, all the lives completely wrapped up in that, and the communities that have to co-exist with it.

Years ago, I did the art for a series of columns in the Cleveland Free Times written by a man who was actually IN prison at the time, called simply "The Joint". I posted a lot of them on this blog, but apparently only labeled some of them, HERE. After reading the draft of the article, Shake Up in Lockdown, I went back and looked at all the art from The Joint, which I hadn't looked at in years. I felt a strange level of pride for all that work as the memories flooded the vines of my mind grapes. There's a distinct illustrative growth that I think is apparent over the arc of the series.



These are the roughs I jammed out and sent Aaron, and the editor, Erich, to light the fuse on this piece. I knew it needed to be claustrophobic and have a great many number of people in it. One of the worst problems in the corrections system is over crowding, and the pressures that puts on the inmates and the C.O.s was something I thought would be visually compelling.



They chose the fourth option, and I just ran with it. I love drawing crowds of people and trying to make them all look like unique individuals with stories of their own. Essentially, I'd like you to be feel able to point out any single dude in that shot, and feel like you could read their story and it would be interesting, at the very least, and a compelling tale about a dude, at the very best.



I've been to prisons, I've never been IN prison, but I've been to them. I've even been to the prison they talk about in the article, in Grafton. I've visited, and spent a lot of time paying attention to the convicts, inmates, the Corrections Officers, the other visitors, who's there and the way everything is set up. I didn't use any hard number statistics as a basis for the crowd on this cover. I based this drawing on what I have seen, with my own eyeballs, in my own head, right in front of my brain. Prisons are pretty dehumanizing, and it's easy for people involved to get wrapped up in the systematic details, and what those statistics mean. To loose sight of the vast number of actual lives involved. It's also very easy for people who don't have the first hand experiences of being there and seeing it in person to not think about it, or even give a shit about what's happening. It's easy to glance at an article or catch some seconds long news bite about the system and think "hey- that's fucked up, thank god it ain't my problem. It's all those people that are statistics' problem." When I got assigned this cover, in some small way, I felt like this was an opportunity to silently state "LOOK- this is what we're talking about. THIS is what we're dealing with." I don't know if it worked or not.



Here's the final colors. I think it came out good. I think I saved a palette of swatches in Photoshop just to use for the clothes and skin tones. I knew I wanted it to be pretty colorful, but also limited. Lately I've been using this Color Scheme Designer website to cheat. It's pretty helpful, but I often then go way off into the wilds after setting up the palette.



Here's the final with the text designed by Aaron, which looks awesome. I always do all my text by hand, and I love the way that looks, but goddamn does it look great when another designer spikes it over the net straight into the opposition's faces (yes- a volleyball reference! Who knew?).



Also in the mix over at Scene, I drew this background are for the featured Happy Hour of the week, which runs in the center of the magazine every week. The art stays the same, but the Happy Hours change every week. I drew this pretty big, brush and ink on Bristol Board... 14" x 17", I think.



Here's the colors. This one I knew I could get pretty bright and vibrant. It's always a blast coloring a city scene. It's easily one of my favorite things to draw. There's definitely an opportunity to make buildings and other urban structures just as expressive and characteristic as ...characters. It's architecture and also part of bigger scheme, I think cities lend themselves to articulating something that maybe can't be said otherwise. I have to think about this way more before I keep on typing.



Aaaaanyway, here's a shitty cellular telephone camera picture of the spread in the magazine. I like it. It works.

Next up: MELT megapost.

Best Of ...2009

This is what that self portrait was for.

What I really like about being a part of Cleveland Scene's Best Of issue as "Best Concert Poster Artist"is mostly being sandwiched in between a piece about a night once a month where nationally popular DJs play Biggie, Snoop, and Dr. Dre songs in the basement of a club (which, I still listen to Dre's hugely influential The Chronic at least a couple times a month if not more often) and a piece about Kate Voegele, a super young celebrity singer/actress on a major label/TV teen drama (I'm sure she's awesome, but I wouldn't know her if she walked right up to me and told me who she was).I'm also pumped on the mention of Flip Mo Pi. What a dog! The mention of Died Young Stayed Pretty is also pretty cool.

That issue came out last Wednesday. Last year I drew all the art for the issue. When I think of the monumental amount of stuff I've done in the last year, and all the stuff I'm working on for the coming months, it kind of freaks me out. I have so much work to do!

Best Of The Best Of

So, I drew the front cover and internal section break covers for Cleveland Scene Magazine's BEST OF CLEVELAND issue. It came out about a month ago, October 8th, I think. The theme as "Cleveland Confidential", using the point of view of an anonymous old timey photographer. I had a lot of fun doing this work, and I think people really liked it. These images are slightly cleaner, remixed versions of the print images. I took about an extra hour with each, except the cover piece.

The Cover: The art director gave me a really solid rough of what he wanted. All I had to do was hammer it down an make it bang. Over at the Scene's website there's this awesome thing that allows you to page through the whole Best Of Section. Do yourself a favor and take a glance, at least. Firstly, from a design standpoint you can see the text elements of the print version of this cover, which are really well done. Also, you get to read the issue, find out what's "best". I love that thing.



Best of Arts & Entertainment: This is kind of clearly the Beachland Tavern, and the band is just some fictional band I guess I wish existed. I have really grown to love drawing crowd shots every now and then. There's something fun about the aspect of hiding people I know in the mix.



Best of Bars & Clubs: This is kind of Lava Lounge, but not really. It's a local I've used in the past, for the Rafeeq piece in Heart's Blood, and the bar from my story in Shiner #1, "On Down The Timeline". I drew the abstract art that's hanging on all the walls of the interior shots in these drawings on the actual illustrations. I kinda like them. I dunno, it's just splatter and white out. Not complicated, but yeah... abstracted.



Best of People & Places: I actually went out on the Hope Memorial Bridge to shoot references for this, but none of them really came out too great. i totally had to fake the perspective and the sculpture of the angel guy holding the covered wagon. Luckily it's close enough that nobody will ever look at this and know I did that. Anyway, I love that bridge. The idea of focusing on "places", and using a place so uniquely Cleveland... I'm real happy about how this one came out.



Best of Shops & Wares: This is maybe the one I cringe at the most of any of these. I like this version of it, but the print version wasn't my finest hour. I drew all seven of these over the course of a three day marathon in which I slept for ...maybe 3 hours. Cumulative. So, I was totally bonkers exhausted and strung really far out on coffee, by the pot, by the time I was coloring. Anyway, this is pretty much the corner of W. 65th and Detroit. There's a great shop called Room Service right on the South West corner. South East corner is a killer coffee spot, Gypsy.



Best of Food & Drink: This is obviously MELT Bar & Grilled. Seriously, my favorite restaurant that has ever existed. The bottle is a TALL IVAN, a fictional beer I made up for the CLEVELYN stories I've been doing in Shiner. Tall Ivan is a reference to Ivan Brandon, who is the tallest Cuban that has ever lived.



and finally, Best of Sports & Recreation: I had a shit ton of reference to draw a football scene with some bro-dawgs tackling each other and out heroic photographer about to get clobbered in a huge stadium full of people. Then I realized... this was my chance to get some BMX, alive and well, in the Scene Magazine. What the fuck, football? So this was drawn on the fly completely from memory and wonky perspectives. As a former BMX rider, I used to take my bike apart, clean it obsessively, and put in back together almost every night. I loved that shit, and I still harbor deep affection for some bicycle love. I can draw every part of the bike I had when I broke my back in '95. The last part I actually still have is the sprocket. A purple anodized 44 tooth Profile.

So, there ya have it. Sorry it's a month late. All I do is draw and then run around trying to get money for the shit I draw. And watch bands. Blogging has taken a deep backseat. BUT: I give you Andy MacDonald's Sketch Blog: Whiskey Mech.

Nebulous Planetary Gangrene

I've got a piece in this week's Free Times, it's for another Jara Anton column.

This week I'm on spring break and getting thick into some grizzly shit. Got a bunch of things on my table that I'm really taking it to the next level with. I think.

Narcissistic Posthaste Graphics

This week I've got a piece in the Free Times again. It's a drawing of Lebron James, King James, The Chosen 1, The New Jesus Christ... of Nike. We Are All Witnesses. The article I drew this for is actually a review of a book, The Franchise, which is apparently about Lebron James and the remaking of The Cavs a couple years ago.

Anyway, here's the art:

Notable Power Gap

I haven't seen a copy of the magazine yet, but I drew the artwork for the cover of this week's Free Times. It's a piece for an article titled "The Murderer's Apprentice", or, I guess they changed the title to "The Serial Killer's Disciple". I think this piece came out pretty good. I like coloring more and more, and although I'm not a huge fan of some of the assignments that I've been working on in my Raster Based Imagery class, I've already learned a lot. It's simple simple stuff, but because I was largely self taught in Photoshop, it's aspects that escaped me for whatever reason. Maybe I'll post some of my assignments here? Not sure there's any need for that, but it might be fun.



On the other side of that coin is the fact that knowing Photoshop alone can not a good artist you make. Um, I think. I mean, sure. Anyway, here's the negro y blanco of that piece. I spent a lot of time making it right. I used layers upon layers of splatter, both black and white. I used Math and Magic to get the bricks in proper perspective, when I usually just eyeball it. Over all I'm pretty happy with this cover. I haven't even read the article yet so I have no idea how close this plays into it. I can't say I like working that way. When I do editorial illustration I'd much rather spend some time with the actual piece and find the subtleties to work from. Try and illustrate more the idea of the piece in a way, rather than just representational images of actual words from an article. Unfortunately that's not always feasible in the publishing world. That's another thing I find hard to get my head around: the fact that I'm part of the Publishing World. I won't rant on it now, but yeah... being aware of your place in the grand scheme isn't always as easy as it should be. However, it's probably one of the more important things to have a grasp of if you want to achieve any set goals, no matter what they are. Seems obvious, but I think it's easy to lose sight of in the hustle bustle games we all have to play on the daily just to make it to tomorrow.



Finally, here's a self portrait, kind of a work in progress. I'd like to color it, but so far this is where I'm at with it:



I hope to post more frequently, but school is totally kickin' my ass. I'm still watching Samurai movies, but have slowed down a lot. Post to follow. Still working on comics, post to follow extremely soon.

I've added some new links to the sidebar:

Obsolete References is a blog by a guy that works at a CD/DVD store in Seattle. It's always pretty funny, especially if you've ever worked retail, or been to a retail store. He and I used to work around the block from each other in Downtown Cleveland, and it was always awesome to visit him at his crappy job, or when he visited me at mine.

Rick Spears has a new site/blog. Rick is the publisher of Gigantic Graphic Novels and probably the foremost killer scriptist throwing down comics awesomeness for your hard earned dollar. Seriously, he's got Black Metal with Chuck BB from Oni Press, REPO with Rob G and Pirates of Coney Island with Vasilis Lolos from Image, and if you haven't read Teenagers From Mars, or Dead West (both also with Rob G) yet, it's not too late! It's never too late!

Nomadic Placebo Gifters

HEY! I have a couple Free Times piece out this week. Firstly, there's a edition of The Joint column in this week's issue of the magazine. I really liked this piece when I finished it on Sunday, but now looking at it from the distance of a few days I'm not sure how I feel. I wish I had made the image inside the prison's frame more symmetrical. Still, I like this more than if I had gone with a more sequential piece. I like the idea of a single image having more of an impact for something so brutal.



Also, if you're anywhere near a college, I have a piece in the Free Times College Guide. It's for an article about the author's first solo apartment. I think I'm still going to work out the colors some more. This was finished really quickly, and I wanted to experiment more... anyway, I think it works.

Nobody Pays Generously

Hey, not back up online in full effect yet, but enough to bust out the Work in Progress of this flyer that I did with Zippy. We were chatting one night, I mentioned doing a flyer as a puzzle, like a brain teaser... he mentioned maybe ...a ....brain scrambler? The idea was hatched, dropped into a frying pan, and grilled to perfection with this one. So, yeah, guy that cut open his own skull and is scrambling his own brain (note the metal band Goat Cheese's awesome representation).



So, I drew the cover of this week's Free Times, here's a version unfettered by texts and logos and whatnot:



Also in this week's Free Times, a Joint column about peeing in a cup, here's the illustration for that:

Necro Planetary Grassroots

There's another installment of The Joint in this week's Free Times. This week's column, about gay promiscuity in prison. I think I actually did a good job representing what the piece entailed but I didn't go too overboard with the gratuitous sex scenes. The pink and brown color scheme might have been a little much, though.

Still no internet at home, and I'm in this coffee shop right by my house. The place is usually dead as hell, but today it's mad hoppin'. There was a huge gaggle of teenagers buying $4 Mochas with all the trimmings. There's a really really weird trio of adolescent boys being lead through a bible reading thing by this creepy ass nerdy dude. Then, the rest are all old people, complaining to each other about innocuous shit. The coffee kinda sucks. Shoulda got some tea. I do appreciate the fact that this is here though, that I can just roll out my house and get online. Crazy world we live in.