Six for the Price of One

Flyer Month continues, drew all these at once. Feel bad some of these shows are like, tonight and tomorrow. Not much for promo time. Anyway... yeah:

We're Here For Your Bacon and Eggs

Motherfucking DIPTYCH for the 8th and 9th as the Flyer Month rolls on. I like Brunch at The Beachland. Es muy bueno.




Contrary to popular belief, this is NOT the same Wizard as my homie in the SCALPLES piece of yesteryear, but just a close relative.



Happy Birthday, Kevin! The poster doesn't say who Kevin is, but it's the Kevin of Team Music Saves.

Mr. Eko

So, yeah, next piece in the Month is for LOST night at The Matinée, this time the Cleveland one. I love LOST but haven't seen any of this new season yet. I dunno, something about being too busy to catch that show. I really dug the scene with Mr. Eko standing his ground with the smoke monster. What was that? Season 2??

Day Late...

Flyer Month continues strong with a day late posting this piece. Didn't really have an event for this, but my dude Tim moved to Longbeach yesterday. At least, he left today. I'm sure he'll thrive out in California. On Tim's right shoulder, I'm the devil, clearly. On his left is The Archangel Aaron Bostrom, our buddy we used to ride with. Tim's moving in with him out there. It's probably a good time to move out west. It's fucking 12˚ here. Fuckin' Cleveland.

Reuben Melt

So, for the first date of the Flyer Month, I got in touch with Matt Fish at Melt, easily my favorite restaurant. He didn't have any specific events, so I offered to throw down in the name of the March sandwich special, which turns out is the Reuben Melt. So, For March 1st and beyond, I banged out this poster. I kinda went crazy with it. I'll maybe update this post later with a behind the scenes separation thing and post all the different drawings that went into this, but... anyway. Yeah, went Celtic, and bonkers. Overgrow cities and UFOs. That sandwich, I love drawing FOOD for some reason.

In my early design stage, I was going to have this Celtic warrior woman holding it down behind the sandwich. She didn't fit and it would have cluttered up the layout anyway. I'm sure I'll user her later in something else. OR, maybe just make a background and make an art poster, without any band names or sandwiches? Like "Skylooker"?

Mother Bear

March 3rd of the Flyer Month. Not really for an event, per se, but I like Music Saves and I needed something for the 3rd, and wanted to draw the Mother Bear in her UFO. Maybe they'll sell more copies of Neko Case's new record? Probably not, that thing will sell itself. Still...

Here's an earlier version:



Here's my procession:

Starts super duper rough, this is actually step two, after the initial design thumbnails. I opten to to rough in the text on this one so I could just jump into pencils...

Tightened up on the drawing board, still leaving a lot to do, but y'know, cleaner.

This is after drawing with a paintbrush and ink. Most of the bold lines, anything that needs fills...

This is what things look like after I go in with Micron pens and touch it all up, details... blah blah blah...

Toof-brush and ink splatter all over the place, I initially masked of everything but the top, so it would be darker. I also spilled ink all over the bottom left corner and had to white out like a motherfucker.

Here's the first go-round with the lettering. I opted to do that pointy fluid like lettering I used to do on all my posters. I like that look. I also decided that the cat on the record player from the back of the Music Saves business cards needed to be on this. Designed originally by Little Jacket, one of the hands down best professional graphico gangsters out there. But then it turns out that all that info may or may not have been accurate. Sometimes plans change. So, I redrew the text, tried harder to make it more legible and BAM! Here ya go:

I took more time on it the second time around and feel a LOT better about it.


I also messed with the colors to make them more... more.



Music Saves will be giving away copies of this thing to people that purchase the Neko Case CD! You know you want one!

Brace for Impact

Simple doesn't always mean easy. I didn't save them all separately, and I don't have the time anyway, so I'm not going to post a "process" thing for this one, but ...there's quite a few layers to this piece. I like it though. Sun God, and The Dimeras, maybe there will be another band.

Oh, BTW: I designed that Sun God logo.

Shipsunk

HotChaCha, Slide Machine, Freedom, Mystery of Two. Should be a pretty rad show. I saw Mandy from HotChaCha and asked if she had any particular request for this one, she said "Big Boobs". Sometimes I worry that I go a little overboard with the mammary glands, but apparently not everybody takes offense... The one thing I wish I had done was draw more life aquatic... underwater happenings. After the last few pieces, I really really want to do a mermaid comic... which, no idea if that's even a thing. Maybe a horror comic set underwater or... a crime thing? I dunno. All's I know is it's fun to draw underwater stuff.

Non-Specific

A Non-Specific Tour Poster for Scarcity of Tanks. Keep it B/W for easy cheap mass production. Skullface and that Giant Robot? Friends of Foes? Stay tuned...

Samurai

Wolf Eyes, Emeralds, Skingraft.

I like drawing shit that I then cover up with text. Also, recurring characters. This and the Nunslaughter jam are my first two pieces for the Flyer Month. Right now I'm furiously scrambling on a couple others. I'm really pumped for my poster for March 1st.

Pink Armor

Nunslaughter.

That's all.

Blood for Blood

Radio Dystopia presents: Juana Molina at the Grog Shop! Looking forward to seeing both Ken Rei and Shitslicer.

Los Muertos de Mayo

This is actually way the hell into the process of drawing this piece. This is after going through about 20 other sketches. I take the best parts of all the failure and piece it together into a success. This is a culmination. I actually looked for some Dia de los Muertos art, but there wasn't a lot online of what I was looking for. I also actually went to the Avon Lake Public Library and looked through the Art Books. Shit. They have some really good stuff. I was in awe. I looked at this entire history of Latin American art. It was huge. Anyway, I think it helped a lot. I dunno.



I like ink. Brush, pen, tooth brush, white out. Masking tape.



Just when I think my Adobe Photoshop skills are honed to a fine point, I turn a page and BAM! I'm trying new shit and ways of doing things, like it's just a never ending game of one-upping myself. I love it.



Yeah, somebody actually has their shit together enough to start promotion for something 4 MONTHS AWAY. Weird, huh? I know, I couldn't believe it either!

Anyway: LOOK AT THAT MOTHERFUCKING LIST OF NAMES! Clay Parker, Scott Pickering, Staci McNasty, Dana Depew, Bernadette Glorioso, Jim Karpinski, Josh Banaszak, Carrie Bukala, I don't know who Ms. Coca de Loca GQ, Ryan Kacsandy, Dr. Trease, Liz Adams, Liz Stout, or Sara Higgins are, but if their in the company of the rest of these muggs, they probably throw down. Hard. This is gonna be a great show.

Lowlife Gallery is all the way down past the Beachland on Waterloo. This show is being set up by Staci McNasty. She wants it to be a banger. Let's not disappoint the woman. Bring yer kids.

Learning to Swim in Fire

That show on the 7th is gonna be great! I caught Filmstrip at The Matinee a couple weeks ago, I was really into 'em.

Call me when you start a Justice League.

The blizzards have really really been fucking up my world all week.

This Lottery League event is gonna be great. You should go.

This kid Andy has started a blog/project thing called Year of The Beard. No shaving for a year!

Winter Beard

MARCH 2009: FLYER MONTH

Dear Friends:

MARCH. FLYER MONTH.

My plan is to do a flyer/poster for something every night in March of 2009. Every night, all month. 31 flyers in a row.

The project is going to have a very loose narrative that pulls them all together. I'd like that narrative to at least partially be driven by the events. So, I'm not just making drawings that I can throw any old band names on. It'll be one big cohesive thing, with each part standing on it's own.

I'm also interested in doing some for events other than music performance events (ie: rock shows) as part of this. So if anyone knows anyone that might want to have posters made for anything, let me know. In fact, please feel free to forward this info to anybody who might want to be involved.

I'll work out the printing for all the posters and flyers, but I'd like to get paid something for the majority of them. I plan to publish a book of the collection after it's finished.

You can either email me at jgritty@gmail.com ...

Ball-Handling

Yukon from Baltimore, Maryland. Really tempted to scrap this idea and go for some WIRE connection, but I've been planning this ball handling jam for a while. This dude is a real guy. I'm not gonna post details about him or whatever because I'd rather not have him know about my work, but... there ya go. Ball. Handling.

Dysart

Drew this for my dude, killer comics scribe Josh Dysart.

Andy Mech

Big Congrats go out to Andy MacDonald for his Marvel Comics debut as the artist for Punisher War Journal #26:



He did not draw this cover, but his name is ON it. It's a really good issue though. Matt Fraction, y'all. Great colors by our pal Nick Filardi, too.

Here's a piece. Andy drew it. I colored it:

Posters Process Pages

Here's some procress stuff I forgot to post before, here.

I knew I was doing the quadriptic, and that I wanted to feature the Skullface Family. So I got to sketchin'.



As you can see there was originally going to be some tentacle action. Opted out of that for whatever reason.



Lady Skullface has killer boots.



He's a fish, in a bowl. With a body.



I decided to draw the background as one big giant piece so it would be consistent. This drawing is like, 7.5" x 22" or some shit.



Then I drew all the characters separate. The text is all separate too, but I forgot to make a jpg of that.

Booya:

Skullface Unit Live

My dudes and I played a show at Pat's in The Flats on December 20th in 2008. the inimitable Lou Muenz took video, here's the whole set:

Crust Almighty

Dude plays bass in DMC is my old long-time amigo Mikey. We were once young and filthy, rode bicycles, hunting the ruins for big game. Once. We used to fight each other. We're not young anymore. At least, I'm not. I ain't fighting anybody.




This is one of the pieces I just sorta laid down the loosest possible groundwork before throwing down with the inks. I liked the way this gasmask guy looked.



Posters can't rock on gas masks alone, so I decided to put the blue lady bird in the BG. Gave her some swords. Why not?



Here's the inks. I dunno how long I spent on this piece, but I had fun drawing it. The text I made by printing it out, shrinking it down and blowing it up on my copier to get it crusty as hell, then taking the part with the band names and moving it on the glass as the copier's light bulb thing moved under that. It gives it that deformed blur look. Then I copied it again and took that, cleaned it up with a pen and white out, and scanned that.

I forgot to put it on the poster, it wasn't in the text that Mikey sent me to put on the poster, but... I think this show is a CD release party for DMC.

The Music Underground

This is from the awesomely talented
Laura Webb:

Hey All!

Over the past year, I have been traveling to DIY (do-it-yourself) /non-profit music venues across the United States documenting the spaces and events within.

I am excited to announce that this January, a selection of this work will be on display at Bela Dubby, 13321 Madison Ave, Lakewood 44111.

The opening reception will be this Friday, January 9th, 2009 from 6-9 pm with an acoustic performance by The Ghostwrite. Please stop by if you are able!! (and bring your art loving friends, the reception is open to the public.)

Hope to see you there!

Laura

www.laurawebbphotography.com/music
www.myspace.com/beladubby
www.myspace.com/theghostwrite

The Music Underground is a photo documentary of non-profit, DIY music spaces, the people and community that call these places home, and the actual structures themselves. I believe these spaces play a key role in expression, alternative thinking and the birth of new ideas. Their existence is fleeting. The life span of each venue is directly affected by each cooperative’s ability to dedicate the time, money and energy necessary to keep them open.

My passion for music brought me in contact with these venues and gathering spaces at a young age. Within their store fronts, art galleries, basements and living rooms, expression is undefined by societal norms and remains untainted by consumerist ideals.
My images document these spaces and the intimate moments shared by the audience and performers.
There is life and beauty here. Freedom of expression. Gathering and sharing. Open minds. New thinking.

If you are anywhere near Cleveland, make an effort to get your ass there. After the opening is a wicked noise show with rad dudes.