Breaking Radio Silence, Part 1

• May: Ended in a whirlwind of a lot of hard work toward the last half, which was all great and I felt pretty strong being able to demolish all that in the midst of magic missiles exploding all around me. Unfortunately, this left me a little bit burnt out, a little bit exhausted.

• June: Realizing I needed it, I opted to take a slight break and chill for a piece. However, apparently the only thing holding me together was the work- because as soon as I stepped back I quickly started falling apart and crash landed in a pile of burning wreckage. Which was not as much fun as you would think. I still got the work done for Melt and some Red Seven posters done, but mostly by the skin of my teeth. Also, I will be posting those separate, later.

• July: This shit's been ridiculous. Between the 4th being an explosion rich war zone, and the brutal punishment of the earth scorching heat (and I'm not sure why, but I have absolutely no capacity for the heat anymore, due to the way I'm paralyzed I can't sweat, so I get pretty sick just being outside for a few minutes. Then I'm cooked and done for hours on end. I used to be able to handle it for longer periods of time, but not anymore), I'm just now, at the end of the month, starting to feel like I'm fighting my way back to normal. I'm still out of shape- and I'll get rocked every time I have to face the sun, but I've done some real good jobs lately, and got good jobs on the horizon.

I'll be posting some more of the stuff from late May, June and July in the next couple days. I may even dip into some older jams I never got up here before. In the mean time, I'll be drawing hard. Here's some stuff:



Most recently, I've done a couple posters for Now That's Class. I loved doing this because I feel like I was somewhat sharpening my poster chops in a way that I hadn't done in a long time. Melt posters are incredibly awesome, but I don't cut loose with the harsh gangster gruesomeness, or push the weirdness out into the absurd zones like I can for posters like these.

This one is a giant Sludge/Doom Metal show on August 11th, with bands from all over the globe. Pledge of Cain, Dead, Megachurch, The Unstoppable Death Machines, Churches Burn, and Red Sun. I fucked up the "E" in Red Sun and connected the horizontal lines after not doing that on any of the other "E"s.



Toxic Holocaust, Midnight, Holy Grail, Krum Bums. This one, I think worked out really well, even when I wasn't as confident it would, while I was coloring it. I gotta admit, the reverence that younger dudes ascribe to 80s thrash metal is fucking beyond me. I'm just old enough to remember how totally fucking stupid most people were in the 80s, and even though there were some beacons of true grim darkness out there in the spandex wrapped, hair spray tinted, day-glo cocaine storm, I can testify that the 80s pretty much fucking sucked. Then again, I'll probably be saying the same thing about NOW, in 20 more years, or... like, next summer. Goddamn, I hate guitar solos. Though, Midnight rules.



I drew this for this weirdo show. Tiger Hatchery, Moth Cock, Drake/Sceible/Henry Trio, and Dead Peasant Insurance. I had a lot of fun drawing this, I think I'll put the original up in the Shiner Comics Big Cartel store later this week. Dude's eating a Doom Sandwich.



Here's an Asbestos Breath flyer that I liked. What a nut! I bet that was a good show, too.



Here's a poster from waaaaay back in April, for the May 1st show at The Beachland, that The Cleveland Bachelor had me bust out. I'm not sure if the proximity to Cinco de Mayo inspired the use of this pyramid, which I think I based on The Kukulkan Pyramid in Mexico, outside of Sour Soul's home town of Mexico City. I was also riffing pretty hard on Spaghetti Westerns, which... of course. I still have no idea who Village Bicycle or ME is. Not that I'm actively trying to find out.



BEST FOR LAST TIME. This is one of my favorite posters I've done in a while. It was a show that Blue Arrow Records put on, and I knew I needed to include some sort of feline based imagery. I decided on the tower really early, and the band being called The Building had almost nothing to do with that. The cats are all based on The Volcano Cats. I had a really good time making this one. I liked drawing the text.

Thanks for reading. Check back for a lot of drawings of sandwiches, and some type about other junk later. Now get back to work. It's damn near August.

A Bachelor in Cleveland 7: Our Beard Flint

After a long busy busy absence, the Cleveland Bachelor has returned to bring to the city a couple shows that Jessie Torrisi, all the way from Austin, Texas, is playing this Friday. One at Blue Arrow Records, then at Arts Collinwood Café!



This poster is kind of different from my usual, and I'm pretty happy with it. It was pretty much a riff on the art for the In Like Flint poster, originally painted by legendary poster artist Bob Peak. I've never seen In Like Flint or Our Man Flint, but I've always loved that design work. Note the Blue Arrow rescue kittens and the Bachelor's own dogs.

A Bachelor in Cleveland 6: From Russia With Grub

I based this on a Soviet Propaganda Poster by request, and I think it came out really awesome. I know the title of this post was a cheap easy shot, but I couldn't really resist. Another Cleveland Bachelor jam.

This show is TONIGHT, as I'm posting this. Which, hopefully if you're a Coco Rosie fan, you're reading this before the show. Apparently they're not really from France, but just moved there. I dunno, I'm under an avalanche of work so I won't be able to see them and ask to find out.

ALSO TONIGHT, at The Beachland in the Tavern, Holly Golightly is playing. That might have been where I would've ended up if I were going to to go anywhere other than the trance-like state where I get a lot of drawing done.

Anyway, back to work.

A Bachelor in Cleveland vs. A Street in Cleveland

One evening, Saturday, March 13th, and all this stuff is happening. It's a big party, a street wide Waterloo party. Arts Collinwood, Music Saves (CAKE!), Lowlife, and Blue Arrow throwing down to have a good time. THEN, The Beachland is having a great show, a Cleveland Bachelor approved show.



Summer Cats are coming all the way from Australia. I like Australians. Afternoon Naps are coming all the way from The Neighborhood of Make Believe. City Center is from New York. Also, there will be ghosts, specifically Lowly The Tree Ghost. But probably other ghosts as well.



Yeah, so, I guess I was wrong. I'm not as gruesome as I thought I was. I tried, but apparently... I really like kittens. What? SO? You don't like kittens? I'll fight you to the death. After I finished drawing that huge kitten, I thought: "Imagine the litter box".

Speaking of kittens, Debbie from Blue Arrow has started the North Collinwood Feral/Stray Cat Project, which is a Trap-Neuter/Spay-Return (TNR) Program. There's an article she wrote on it from The Collinwood Observer, here. You may remember Debbie from a post about one of the kittens she rescued, Lucky Sunshine. I love that dude. Anyway, Debbie is true blue, and it's a genuine issue over there. If you're inclined to help out, head over to Blue Arrow and speak up. Or donate some money- every little bit counts, and it all goes to helping these kittens in the neighborhood.

Something Like An Obamenon

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Here's a poster commissioned by none other than Cleveland Bachelor Dr. Justin Vaughn. I've drawn President Obama a couple of times now, and I think this is at the least the most accurate I've been able to get. He's kind of a hard nut to crack, our Prez.



Because this isn't for a rock show, or DIY type event, I knew I wanted to keep it somewhat more straight forward and cleaner looking, design-wise. I still wanted it to be pretty raw though. So, I sort of knew my approach from the start. Keeping the suit black, creating an almost silhouette against the gritty background, made for a perfect platform to place that block of text at the bottom. In the past I've also drawn The President in a light blue ...almost leisure suit. I definitely didn't want to do that.



Again, elements of grittyness, I drew this flag with a broken old crusty brush, just splattering the ink and making a mess. I drew the stars separately.



I did look at some photo reference of the White House, and Chicago for this, but that all went out the window in the inking stage.



I'm not sure this even needs an explanation. So instead I'll write about how today I spilled a cup of coffee inside my bag, and onto the leg underneath it. As soon as I noticed, I thought to myself "I wonder how hot that is". Turns out, not very hot. So now I smell like old coffee and I'm staying tired. What a day.



I think I like how this piece turned out. It was a nice break from some of the other things I've been working on lately. Bigger projects, long term things. Things that require grim visions and heavy lifting. Hard decisions. Making moves.

A Bachelor in Cleveland 4: Beard & Fred's Excellent Adventure

Another month, another Cleveland Bachelor Show of The Month at The Beachland, this time with So Cow from Ireland, Shiny Penny, and Modern Electric!

It was a lot of fun to riff on this shot of Justin and legendary Cleveland staple, Fred Gunn:



I definitely feel like I wasn't as able to capture Fred's look as well as I wish I had, but... there's always next month!

EDIT: I forgot to mention the appearance of Chicken & Waffles! I don't know if there's any good place that would serve a comparable vegetarian Chicken & Waffles, but I did get the veg version of the Big Sandwich in Little China last night and was amazed at how much I liked it. I didn't really know how I would feel about it, but damn... that's a great sandwich.

A Bachelor in Cleveland 3: Follow That Beard

January's Cleveland Bachelor Show of The Month is rapidly approaching, and co-sponsored with the good cats and humans of Music Saves. The Rural Alberta Advantage, The Octagon, and The Buried Wires hold it down at The Beachland.



This rough was created, by scanning and layering maybe three or four different sketches, to print out and use as a guide for doing the final art. This is as fully rendered as I got with things before starting the final pencils, I think. It's kind of a mess, but I knew what I wanted it to look like in the end, so I didn't really need to get into the details.



Seriously, Justin Vaughn's beard is out of control at this point. Personally, I think it rules. I have opted out of the winter beard this year, trying to keep things clean. Unlike this line art, where I kept things pretty messy. I knew I wanted to go with a big open winter sky, splattered and textured out the eyeballs.



Coloring this was fun. Part of me still feels like it could have been a lot better, but then I got some pretty positive feedback, which made me feel better about it. I've been on the warpath lately, and there's definitely a point where you can over work a project. Sometimes that's a fine line.

A Bachelor in Cleveland 2: Christmas Lights Boogaloo

The second in the series of "Cleveland Bachelor Show of The Month" posters for http://clevelandbachelor.blogspot.com. This time it's for the Beachland Christmas show, featuring Bears, Unsparing Sea, The Modern Electric, Shit Slicer, Mystery of Two, Terminal Lovers, and All Dinosaurs. Seven local bands filling both the Ballroom and The Tavern, not a bad way to spend the night before Christmas Eve.



This was drawn from a photo reference that I actually took, but am not posting because it's a pretty crappy photo. I like The Terminal Tower, though. How awesome would our lives be if the original plan for Goodyear to use the observation deck as a terminal for dirigible travel between Cleveland and New York City had actually been feasible and worked? "Pretty goddamn awesome." is the answer. Hey, it could still happen. Dirigible travel might be the next best thing.

I'm old enough to remember the Cleveland Skyline when the Terminal was the tallest building, and when the plans to build the BP Building included making it taller than the Terminal, it was kind of a big deal. I vaguely remember that Cleveland freaked out at the idea of something new surpassing something traditionally held as the standard. Didn't matter though, Key Tower went up 6 years later. Skyscrapers, what an awesome idea.



Our hero, this time drinking a milkshake from UDF, outside, in the cold. I'm a huge fan of the UDF milkshake. They're open until 1AM! My favorite is the chocolate peanut-butter, extra thick. I always go to the Lakewood one, and there's always something weird going on. Just those weirdos that are only ever hanging around in Lakewood, buying smokes or standing next to the payphone. Always an adventure. Sometimes I wonder how long it will be before I'm one of those weirdos.



I just drew the text by hand, I didn't lay it out first. I figured by now I kind of know what I'm doing with this stuff. I like using the banners on something like this, but then it took me forever to land on the colors I eventually ended up with. I tried a hundred different schemes.



This is what the snow layer looks like when I scan it. Black ink splattered on white paper. I used to just splatter white acrylic paint right on the art, but then coloring that and keeping the snow white would be impossible. So I've evolved to simplify.



It's the holidays, so the city lights up the Terminal with a red and green glow, it looks okay. I will say though, the lights in Public Square are pretty bonkers. I don't really remember if I even saw them last year or ...paid attention any other year, but this year I drove down Superior and my eyes got rocked. I'm a pretty grumpy dude, maybe, but I really love Christmas lights.



So, I drop the character in on top of the background, which, sometimes I don't do this. Sometimes I draw it all as one, but this time I kind of knew I wanted the white stroke around The Cleveland Bachelor. Also, I think I was still working on the text layout when I started drawing the art. So if I needed to re-size the character, it makes that a lot easier.



So, I take that piece of black ink splattered white paper, make it a layer over the background but under the character. Then inverse it so it's white on black, then just delete the black so all I have is white splatter on the art. I almost opted to not use this technique on this one because it obscures the background so much, but then when I ran a proof, it looked awesome. So, yeah, snow.

I'm really not looking forward to the snow this year. I mean, it's beautiful and it makes the warmth of being bundled up and cozy that much more warm and cozy, but goddamn. I hope me typing this doesn't call upon the winter demons to come forth and lay frozen waste to my city. I'd like at least a couple more weeks of sludge free wheeling.

A Bachelor in Cleveland

This is the first of a new monthly series of posters I'll be doing for The Beachland, and Cleveland Bachelor, a blog about Cleveland stuff.

This is a situation where I had never heard of any of these bands, so I had to actually look them up and make sure I didn't draw anything too divergent. Evangelicals are from Norman, Oklahoma. Holiday Shores are from Tallahassee, Florida. Mother Country Madmen, are locals. Booyah.



We're going with a recurring character for this project, so I figured I would at least spend a couple minutes trying to do the design work that I'm going to use for the long haul. Justin, THE Cleveland Bachelor, suggested a robot, dinosaur, or viking character with characteristics suspiciously similar to a college professor... so I went with a robot, because any dinosaur I want to draw probably wouldn't be as versatile and vikings... vikings need to be taken seriously. I figured there would be a sense of humor about at least some of these posters. Vikings need to be taken seriously.



I toiled with this layout for a little while. I'm trying now, not to repeat myself too much. I almost went with a giant deer-headed creature climbing up on the busted ass city, maybe coming out of a body of water. Instead I felt the need to play it more subtle... an OPEN GRAVE. Maybe I'm still a little infected by Halloween, and maybe I just like the idea of resurrection. Anyway, there's the ruff.



So, this is about as detailed as I felt like getting with these pencils. This is the first poster I designed in The Monastery, the new studio space I've been renting and finally moved into this weekend. The Monastery is awesome. I really really like working there. This isn't the first drawing I did there, but it's the first poster. Though, I totally miss my cats while I'm there.



The inks came out pretty loose, I think. I like it. It's good to loosen up every now and then. I think the tree could have used a reference, but I knew that most of that would be covered by text anyway. I planned for that.



Yeah, colors. I'm actually really happy with how this came out, color-wise. This, I didn't really plan out at all and just kinda worked out as I went. I think my cats are kind of freaking out about the fact that now there's absolutely nothing in The Cave. It's pretty empty. I need to remedy that soon. A couch? A hot tub? A cave-size maze-like series of kitty trees and kitty condos? Suggestions are welcome.

So, tonight at Midnight I'm going to start a 24 Hour Comic. I've wanted to do this for a while, and I never set aside the time. Well, I'm doing it. So, yeah. At the very least it will be something new for Genghis Con, at the most it will be another chapter in the series of Clevelyn stories I've been telling in Shiner.