Zs, CAVE BEAR, X-BOLEX, HELLO HELLBOY

I don't know much about Zs, or X-Bolex for that matter, but goddamn this flyer was fun to draw. Cave Bear is still Cave Bear. Lou Muenz took a really sweet picture of myself and Brendan from Cave Bear SHREDDING while playing in Self Destruct Button on New Years Eve. That set was great and will hold me over till at least May. So here're the pencils, inks, and colors for this goddamn flyer. The colors were a lot of fun once I came to the conclusion that the best way to approach them was to just say "fuckit" and go haywire.





I don't know how good this coloring job is, it took forever. I like the way it turned out but wish I could figure out how to seperate elements better. I was trying to use channels with this one. I think I failed. However, I did get a lot done today inspite of wasting most of it on coloring this shit. I attribute that solely to the fact that I have started drinking coffee. I've never been able to drink coffee, really.



Firstly, it makes me bounce off the walls. I can drink any other kind of caffiene and take a NAP, but coffee, for whatever reason, I go bonkers. Secondly, I hate the way it makes your breath taste for hours after you drink it. Then my friend's moms gave me a buncha bags of gormet coffee grounds for christmas. Okay, cool... Then, I decided: why not? Why not get a coffe maker and drink coffee every morning? I think it's time I start living my life bouncing off the walls with bad breath.



That's where this story takes a swerve for the worse. My girl Maggie knew about this plan, and at Target saw a Hello Kitty coffee maker on sale. IT WAS ON SALE! Only $4.95!!! So, this is how I'm able to now get a lot of work done every day. I am bouncing off the walls after making coffee in a Hello Kitty coffee maker. I am the toughest man who has ever lived.



One more thing before I go lay down and read comics. I was at ASTOUND!, the very indie friendly awesome comic shop in Westlake, OH, and I got hooked the fuck up with a sweet HELLBOY ANIMATED t-shirt. Look upon my new shirt and be jealous, all those with no new Hellboy Animated t-shirts!

THE BOSS, BABY TO CHICKIN WING RATIO, SKETCHES

I'll have more to post tomorrow, plus dumb shit, plus an all new flyer. I'm just awake right now and it seems like as good a time as any to post these last few pages. I drew that sketch with the bunny headed woman conjuring the band names at the Laundry Dock in Avon Lake, Ohio as my drawls tumbled dry. I hate the laundry mat, but my cousin once drove her car through the front of it years and years ago, so now they have those big concrete pylon things in front so she can't do it again. Also, I stole an awesome months old TIME magazine with a huge piece about the journo that lost his hand in Iraq. It had all this stuff about amputations and new prosthesis that are now available so wounded soldiers can survive and become bionic people. Wheels started spinning.

COCKBLOCKER BUM, SKETCHES, CDs

Been drawing regularily in my sketchbook. It's fun and cathartic. I'm trying to keep it up and do at least a couple pages a day.





I've gotten two new CDs from people in Cleveland lately. The first is a CD of a shitload of songs by a group called Thumbs Up! The group consists of John Rodemann. It's feelgood digital videogame music; lots of beats and bumpivity. For the uninitiated, "bumpivity" is a term coined by the Cleveland hip hop group The Chop Shop Renegades. I don't really know what it means in spite of the fact that it's the name of the title track on the CD they put out like, 5 years ago. Thumbs Up!'s "Sightless Dendrochronology" is way way better than that CD. Actually, with the lack of lyrical content this CD makes for great writing music.



The second of the CDs I've gotten lately is GAY EROTICA, a noisy punky raw spazzy three piece. It's only three songs, but they're all pretty badass, and they sound awesome. I only listened to this CD once so far so I don't have a lot to say about it, but my girl Hannah was in this band and that makes me happy. However, the other members both moved away, and they broke up and that makes me sad.

HANDS, RANT, SKETCHES

I painted this based on a photo. I had just come in from outside and was still wearing my hat and scarf. I set up the digital camera my dude Billy Delfs let me barrow, and took some shots for this image that I've had in mind for a while now. It took a long ass time to get it right. It was fun though. Anyway...



Been going batshit up and around lately. That's all over as of yesterday. I'm going to stick to the Cave from now until this project for my dude is finished. I have been slacking on it for decades and I'm ready to throw down. I think there may be many benifits to staying home and not going out. Firstly, I'm trying to stay healthy and clean and not get sick and die. This has been a problem almost every spring for the past 6 years, with the exception of the one where I was unemployed. So, my hypothesis is that I spend all winter running around and dealing with the Cleveland weather, usually ice and snow, and I just grind myself down into a sick susceptible dude. Then BAM! Something happens that takes me out for months. NOT THIS YEAR. I'm trying to eat regular meals and sleep regular hours, and not waste thousands of hours watching DVDs and going to shows every other night and hanging around in bars. I'm kind of excited to just WORK. Get ready for this healthy healthy summer of comics and madness.

Also, I'm going to draw in my sketchbook:

CAVEMAN DIARIES VOL. 5!

CAVEMAN DIARIES VOL. 5



Now Available! Caveman Diaries Vol. 5, at 8.5" x 11" with 60 ridiculous interior pages, is by far the biggest and most fool heartedly insane Caveman Diaries yet. This issue boasts over 40 rock art flyers including two in full color AND a full color poster sized centerfold (graciously colored by the mighty comic artist Nick Filardi), a wicked killer sketchbook section chock full of not only Skullface but also a handful of beautifully seductive femme fatales, and page after page of more than the usual black and white electrostatic artworks and rantings that make this 'zine unmistakably the leader in Cave Culture. The issue is $10, plus $2 shipping. I'll post details at the end of this blog as to how to order.



The cover is a variation on a photo of the Inimitable Zippy. You may remember Zippy's arm as the original inspiration for the arm in the Parts + Labor flyer. He's my main model right now. That's really really WEIRD. I chose the lion's head because it was the moswt pimp of all. The King of The Jungle n' all.





I'll be at the Beachland Ballroom this Saturday from 12 to 4 for the Rock and Roll Flea Market. I'll be selling these zines and a LOT of the original artwork from the flyers and art. I've also been really into the X-Mas Spirit this year fort some goddamn reason. I'm usually the most meanest and last human on earth to get Christmas-y, but this year I'm retarded for X-mas. So I've been doing a series of paintings that I'll also be selling on Saturday.

So if you would like to order a copy of CAVEMAN DIARIES VOL. 5 by mail you can send cash, check or money order made out to John Greiner, to 373 Lear #52 Avon Lake, OH 44012 or paypal to jgritty@hotmail.com. I'll ship it out immediately and you will have just spent the best $12 of your life.

Here are some of those paintings!

Parts + Labor, Jerk, Clan of the Cave Bear, Ohm's Law, Child Bite

Been really busy both being sick as shit, and working and reworking The Caveman Diaries #5, which I blew my self imposed deadline of 11/10. Now I'll be lucky if I can get it out by the December 9th Rock & Roll Flea Market at The Beachland Ballroom. Anyway, so... on with the art. This show is gonna be pretty awesome. Parts + Labor is on this insane tour at the moment, which apparently Todd from Suckapants is with them. I haven't seen Clan of The Cave Bear since John moved away to NYC, and he's been back for like, 5 months. I swore off going to shows, but I'll definitely be at this one.



I gave this one a whirl at coloring, mostly for practice. I didn't invest a whole lot of time on this. Still, I think I like it. If I were more diligent I'd have varied the blacks of the words on the arm to a deep red, and then spent more time on giving the flesh more dimension. Finally, I would have also done more to deepen the background and give the splattered areas some dark colors.



This flyer is based on the clever idea by John Delzoppo, the drummy half of Cave Bear. I wanted to go with a more RISK: 2210 based idea, but John's original was screaming to be redone with brush and ink.

UPDATE, Free Times Piece, Fuckin' Snow

I can't believe I haven't been posting any updates, but I haven't really been doing any flyers and all the art I've been doing has either been for Caveman Diaries #5 or for that column "The Joint" for the Free Times. So, I'll post a piece that I did for that which I'm actually proud of. The piece is about the health care faculties that the Ohio prison system provide. Here's the link: The Joint. This was a particularily good column and I'm glad I did a good piece for it. People always ask if the column is real or fake and who actually writes it. It IS real. The author, Lidge, is in prison right now. I've never written him and he's never written me. I deal strictly with the Free Times Art Director, Ron Kretsch. I have seen the hand written unedited versions of the columns though, so I know they're real.

There's a totally shitty blizzard outside right now. It hit kinda hard, and now it's totally shitty. Hopefully it will be gone by tomorrow morning.

P.S. I have given myself the deadline of having Caveman Diaries #5 done by next Friday, the 10th, my 28th birthday. It's going to be a much bigger zine, filled mostly with the 35+ flyers I've done since issue 3. I'm going to print it full zined at 8.5 x 11, with both a full color centerpiece and full color cover. I'll post again with further details when I'm done.

Town Meeting, Church, Pelican, Some Bands

I can't think because apparently there's an unscheduled TOWN FUCKING MEETING going on at the coffee shop. These dumb motherfuckers are standing AT MY TABLE and talking about the dumbest fucking shit. From going to Macy's to trash talk about some woman who was on an Angelo's Pizza flyer. My christ. Oh, and I realized the reason why nobody ever leaves any comments on my blog was that I never fucking approved anyy comments in the "moderate comments" section of my blog control thingy. So, if you left a comment and it never appeared, sorry. I approved them all so they're now there. Feel free to leave more. Please.

I really like doing flyers for The Church. I like the ability to both use the uniform look of using my standard "Church" text, with the xeroxed all to hell type. Also, I like robots, and pterodactyl, and bombs.



This Pelican flyer is a totally different direction from my usual dirty style. I wanted to branch out a little, and try and clean up my act. I used a photo ref and didn't deviate almost at all. I'm not sure if the cross hatch worked too well or not. I'm glad I lettered it by hand though, even if it doesn't look as pro as it could. Kinda roughens it up a little. SunGod is a pretty new Cleveland band. I'm excited to hear them, as I've been a fan of all the bands the members have been in and I generally approve of Sun Gods.



This last flyer for the Grog Shop was a total fucking BITCH to do. I didn't plan it out at all, but I kinda figured I would just get it off the ground as I drew it. I had a really small rough sketch in an old sketch book that was of a girl pirate riding over a sea of skulls on a giant spider. It was supposed to be a painting for my friend Sarah, who I lost a bet to last winter. I'm still gonna do the painting but I'm gonna plan it out a hell of a lot better than this flyer. So I did the art and used references all to hell for both the girl and tarantula. I opted to leave the skulls line art and not fill in the blacks like I usually would. Then scanned it and tried to letter it but nothing looked right. I had to wait to get online to download that goddamn font. Then nothing I tried looked anywhere near right. Man, Fuck this flyer. The one redeeming factor is the art itself. I think it came out fucking great and that chick came out better than I expected. I may even color it.

Finally- NEW ART

This was kind of a rush job, being that the show is a week from tomorrow. I still wish I had taken the time to hand letter it, but whatever. It's CHILD ABUSE. This show is gonna be so awesome. I wanted to do something with all this recent talk about torture and treatment of "detainees" and "compliance" with "Geneva" "Conventions". I still didn't want to do anything too overtly political. There's a fine line between commentary and preachiness.

I've got a bunch more flyers to do on my desk now, so hopefully I won't have a huge slump in posts again anytime soon.

Got My Hair Cut

And Lauren kissed me.

How I Became a Gritty Old Caveman

A nine panel grid on ninepanelgrid? Yeah, this is page one of Caveman Diaries No. 4. It's the last thing I did for the issue because realized I only had 23 pages when all was said and done. I got to work and this is what happened.

Caveman Diaries No. 4

So I finally put out another zine. Caveman Diaries vol. 4 is the ALL SKETCHES issue. There's no finished art, just a lot of both sketchbook stuff and roughs and thumbnails from a bunch of flyers and shit. I'm pretty pround of this one. A lot of sketchbook collections I've seen are just sketches or whatever, but I commented on everything and I think I wrote at least half intelligent shit.

The book is 24 pages, with a grey cardstock cover. It's $2, plus 75¢ shipping. You can paypal me at JGRITTY AT HOTMAIL DOT COM, or send cash, check or money order made out to John Greiner to 373 Lear #52 Avon Lake, OH, 44012.

I'm hot the heals of this shit too, I'll hopefully have Caveman Diaries Vol. 5 done very soon. Certainly before SPX, which I'm going to do my best to attend.

Victory At Sea, Knife Crazy

I got this gig for this flyer and it turns out the show is on the giutarist from Knife Crazy, Vic's 30th birthday. So the request was to somehow incorporate that into the flyer. I decided early that doing a woman popping out of a cake might be a good idea, but it was only after sketching for two hours that I landed on the idea of giving the woman six arms and having her holding knives. I went through so many bad ideas, from giving her a cat head to making it a dude with horns. I guess that's just how it goes sometimes. You gotta just keep on drawing until lightning stikes.

Speaking of lightning... I don't know if anybody actually reads this blog, but just in case, I'd like to call attention to a blog I've had in my links for a while. Eric Canete has been keeping up posting the most rad sketches ever on his Discard blog. I'm ever impressed and inspired by his work, most recently the covers to the NYC Mech: Beta Love series that Image published. So, check him out, it's worth a look.

MAD CONDUCTOR

The Mad Conductor is a project by Chris of No-Ca$h. It's a psychadelic freak out dance rock thing. I can't wait to see this band. I've known Chris for so long. He's one of my favorite dudes of all time, and I'm anticipating having a lot of fun on Thursday. I don't know anything about No Service Project or Evil Empire.

There's also a second show booked for that night at the Church. It's three more bands that are going to play after the Mad Conductor. Matt Valentine + Erika Elder, The Asscrack Beat, and Little Claw (from Detroit). Again, I don't really know much about any of these bands, but I'm sure it will be awesome.

Japanther

Been real busy lately. I intended on going to Chicago for the weekend to hit the Wizard World Comicon and see my sister and her family. I spiked a fucking fever last night though, so now I have a doctors appointment tomorrow instead of an eight hour drive. I'm actually bummed as hell about this. This show is the one time a year that I get to hang out with a bunch of my friends from all over the country. I was so looking forward to seeing the NYC Mech crew members Andy MacDonald, and Ivan Brandon. At this point, these dudes are like family.

Speaking of ... Ivan is the brainchild behind 24seven, a comics anthology published by Image Comics. I haven't mentioned it on this blog yet, but I wrote an 8 page story for 24seven that was drawn by Leland Purvis and my old friend Becky Cloonan. I think it ended up being pretty successful. I haven't seen a copy of the book yet though.



JAPANTHER is playing at The Church next Wednesday. Should be a good show. I drew that first flyer and was all but finished when Jae from Self Destruct Button called with this idea for this second flyer. I'm so glad I drew that. I think it came out awesome, and I drew it really quickly, so it felt good just to start out with an idea and execute it without stumbling. It reminds me that I really actually do know how to draw.

Eh, back to work.

NEPTUNE

Three days of freedom after being paroled from that goddamn ridiculous nursing home, and I started rocking the chillz and mean fevers again. I ended up back in Metrohealth, where they began to perform many tests and I waited many boring hours and days for results. They scared the shit out of me with scenarios that were not hopeful, and then put me in isolation. Then, in true american health care fasion... they let me go. They gave me a perscription for an $850 anti-biotic. I hope it worked, I took it all and now I'm kinda sorta just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Uh, yeah, fucking NEPTUNE is playing a show at The Church!!! Neptune is this wicked evil band that makes their own instruments to play this insanely mad heavy rhythmic noise rock that turns me into a giant steam powered rocket robot from the industrial age of man every time I hear it. They're from Bahston. I've heard nothing but great things about Sword Heaven from Columbus. You should come to this show, because if you do not you will miss something special.

More art soon. Keep looking to the Free Times.

Blood

So, I've just gotten over a sweet blood infection. I had to take I.V. antiobiotics for almost 8 weeks. I stayed at this goddamn nursing home in Westlake because Medicare wouldn't pay for the drugs to be sent to my house and given by a visiting nurse. This is in spite of the fact that they would pay for a nurse to come to my house and administer the drugs. Instead they payed a shitload more for me to hang out in a goddamn nursing home for 6 weeks. It was ridiculous and kinda flushed half my summer down the toilet. The up side is that I saved a buncha money and got super healthy while I was in there. My hands are even clean. It's a miracle.



Also, I worked on a script for a full length Skullface book. I love Skullface and I can't wait to bust him out in long form. I didn't draw a whole lot, but I did these pieces as gifts for a couple people that ordered zines from me and I slacked off on sending them out, so... you know who you are if you're reading this.



I missed a couple episodes of The Joint in the Free Times. That bummed me out. However, as of two weeks ago, I'm BACK on that, which... it was a good return. The page The Joint was on happened to be in color so I got to use RED for the blood. It was a pretty violent column, which I'm happy about. Next weeks is a good one too. Check back again in a couple of days as I'll be dropping a bunch of new flyers and shit.

Thanks to everybody who sent me shit to read and watch. You guys is saints.

Yeas

I am not dead yet.

RIOT

Yes, the first actual fucking NINE PANEL GRID on this page. It is this, a flyer for a show. A show that Wheelchair RIOT is representing at. YES, Wheelchair RIOT. We've got new bastards. We've now got a guitarist. It's gonna be special. I'll post more later before Saturday. I've limited access to the internet.

Uh, I love you all.

Shoplifting, Paint it Black, Filardi, Dead Moon

Did this flyer on Monday to promote the show on Wednesday. Kinda shitty, put it up on myspace and shit, but too late is too late. I didn't make any copies of it or anything. I'll print one for you if you'd like one. I'm kinda like, hitting this weird stride with these flyers where I have a specific approach for each place and like, genre of music. Then there's the time when I have absolutely no iudea what the bands sound like. I just usually base the pieces on the venue. This Shoplifting one was like that. It was set up by George from Steve Dracula, but I think Shoplifting got added to the bill later. Anyway, the show was awesome. Shoplifting is fucking great, and Impractical Cockpit is amazing to watch. In fact, I have a lot to say about the show in general, and I'll try and post more about it later. If I can find the time.



Paint it Black, Nine Shocks, Insurrect... I am too old for this shit. However, I still like to draw burning trucks, and robots with guns to their faces. I like violence as much as the next guy, but goddamn. I hope to start doing more flyers for the Grog. I have a lot of fond memories of seeing many great great shows there over the years. Mostlyy when it was down on Coventry. That space was so hagard.



Nick Filardi colored this poster for me. I cried a little when I opened my email and this was attached. I love working in black and white, but if this is what can happen when a limited palet is applied... I'm like, gonna start pushing to get him to do this more often. Nick is also a wicked artist in his own. There's a link to his comics on the side bar to this blog. Check him out.



I have no idea what Dead Moon is all about but they have one of the worst logos I have ever seen for a band. It's a cresent moon with a skull poking out the side. I went with an insanely simple and legible font for this piece to make it as instantly recognizable as possible. Maybe went too simple. I dunno. I'm on the fence. I like it but I think maybe a slightly less common font would have been better and like, y'know, not as blah. Still, I spent a lot of time working on the art, so... yeah. Mignola should kick my ass.

I may be losing my internet connection at home, so these updates may be even less frequent than they have been. Which is pretty infrequent, but still... yeah. No money, and debt up to my eyeballs, and summer being around the corner. I might have to get a job. I don't want to do that. Fuck Jobs.