GYAKUSHU! Dipp, Mr. Hipp

Here's a diptych for a pair of what promises to be some seriously great metal shows. It's actually an homage to Gyakushu!, a comic by my dude Dan Hipp. RIGHT NOW, for the next ten days (until Oct 31st, 2010), you can read the entire series of graphic novels FOR FREE at THE THIEF IS DEAD! I highly recommend you take advantage. It's an awesome, weirdo, epic fantasy adventure tale of REVENGE and HEARTBREAK. These are easily some of the most fun designed characters to draw. What's better than a guy entirely wrapped in bandages?

Seriously, also look at Dan's blog, he regularly posts pretty amazing pieces based on your favorite movies and comics. All of which are super good, all of which are for sale, super cheap.



This rough is really small, a couple inches by a few inches.



Line art, drawn as one big piece, then broken up for the posters. There's a climactic fight scene that takes place in the snow, so I knew I wanted to add a shload of snow falling. I used three layers of splatter at various levels of opacity. I also used another laying of splatter which I stroked with a tooth brush to give a kinetic vibe to it.



The Invincible KEELHAUL, from Cleveland, is playing at Red Seven in Austin Texas on November 19th. Pack of Wolves, Eagle Claw and Curse The Heavens are also playing.



SkeletonWitch from Athens, Ohio is on tour with Withered and the frantically female fronted Landmine Marathon. Sounds like a completely apeshit show to be at.

Here's a video of Landmine Marathon:

Scion A/V Video: Landmine Marathon - Shadows Fed To Tyrants from Scion A/V on Vimeo.

GODDAMN, I love Heavy Metal.

Ghost Soldiers, Answer To None

Cutting it quite close with this one, the show being less than a week away! I just want to see heads on the floor. I want to see blue blood splattering all over the walls, the ceiling, the heavens. I want to feel threatened in my own skin, and confident in my response. I want there to be a swarm of killer bees in the shape of a pentagram. Everybody's got ideas, but most of them are bad. Most of them are stolen. Most of them are beaten to death. Over and over. I want some living ideas to beat your ass back.



Human Eye is coming from the moon, Beast in The Field is coming from under the earth. Centrifuge, I think may be Younstonians. Little Sister lives in your earholes.



The art and this lettering is mostly brush and ink. I think the only thing I used pens for was the tattoos and then some cross hatching, maybe. I accidentally left my ink bottle open overnight and it got really thick and crusty on me. It yields good results, but damn is it hard to work with.

Genghis Con 2010

I'm going to post the process and rap about the inspiration for this poster later, but I wanted to get this up online tonight. I've been slightly sleeping on this year's Genghis Con, but that's at an end. I am very much awake from here until Saturday, November 27th.

Mom's Meatloaf Melt!

Mid-October already and I'm just now catching up enough to post this month's sandwich special from Melt bar & grilled:

Mom's Meatloaf Dinner
Homemade slab of tender meatloaf
Chipotle ketchup glaze
Garlic mashed redskin potatoes
Provolone cheese

Amazing Vegetarian / Vegan Option Available
Great flavorful vegan meatloaf
Vegan or regular garlic mashed redskin potatoes
Vegan or regular provolone cheese

West Side version available at the Lakewood Melt:

East Side version available at the Cleveland Heights Melt:


Yes, I know the sandwich has Provolone, and the posters say Muenster. That was my bad this time. People make mistakes, and as hard as it is to believe sometimes, I am, indeed, a person. One mistake you can avoid making in October is to miss out on eating a Mom's Meatloaf. I had the vegetarian version and I gotta say, this sandwich is phenomenal. The thing I like most about it is the way that all the ingredients fit together, with the chipotle ketchup being the key, I think.

I really like making diptychs (and triptychs). I'll post it later, but I did something similar for lat month's Soul Vegetarian posters. September just got away from me too quickly and I didn't get them up here. I'll rectify that soon! At any rate, we're in the home stretch of 2010 and the last two sandwich specials are two of the most anticipated sandwiches ever to grease a plate in Cleveland.

This is an ad (alluded to in a previous post) from a Cleveland Magazine, I'm not entirely sure which issue:


Characters based on my good pals Zippy and Leia:


Photo by Lightning Fingers!

The Riff Raff

As previously indicated here (thx Asb), Hurray For The Riff Raff is playing at here Front Room Gallery next Monday, the 11th of October. Samuel Doores and The Tumbleweeds, and The Crooked River Blues Band are also playing. It promises to be a great night of beautiful and raspy warm heartfelt folk and blues music.

As is indicated on this poster, I'll be giving away a limited print of the artwork from this poster, exclusive to this show, to anybody that comes and donates $5 at the door. These donations will be going directly to the touring bands.

This is what the print will look like, it's 11" x 17":


I feel like I did a decent job representing this show with this poster. I'm pretty happy with this leaf business. It's another fall, another autumn, here in the heart of it all. As much as I already dread the oncoming Ohio winter months, I'm very happy that the summer has given up and gone the way of things that go away.



It's not necessarily a part of a series, but I think of this piece as a companion to the Lightning Bolt poster from earlier this year. Thematically, we're looking at size disparities and power dynamics. It's about relationships to environments and strength versus delicateness*. They're one and the same. Nature, working with characters to develop balance and build a texture scape.



I inked this mostly with a brush. I used a .01 micron pen for some of the hatching and details, but mostly, it's all brushwork. The original is 14" x 17", ink on Bristol board. There's something good about drawing bigger.



This splatter is one of three layers of splatter I used while coloring this piece. Multitudes of layers, piled on top of each other. Things get interesting. Like these leaves, like time.



I really like how this text turned out. It's fun to play with ascenders and descenders. It's fun to play with serifs, to warp letters, to make them fit. Everything makes sense if you look at it all together. Sometimes, it's so much worth it to spend the extra few minutes and draw some thought out text rather than blast it out and go bonkers with it.

Any time I hear the words "Riff Raff", I almost always think of the film "Rififi".

I think I'm going to print a handful of really huge versions of the art in black and white, to sell at the show (again, money going to the bands). At 24" x 36", it'll look like this:



Here's a video of Hurray For The Riff Raff playing at a house called The Secret Garden, I think. It's a pretty great video:

Hurray for the Riff Raff at the Secret Garden #2 from hoovesontheturf (sarahana) on Vimeo.

*I had no idea delicateness was a word until I typed it in and the spell check aspect of Firefox didn't indicate that it wasn't.