New Print: St. Louis Style!

I just finished a new screenprint, which will debut this weekend at the Rock ' n Roll Craft Show at 3rd Degree Glass Factory here in St. Louis. The print combines a couple of my inspiration/obsessions (gross food, local lore, the St. Louis skyline) and is guaranteed to look good any kitchen. Here were some sketches: You'll notice that I eventually ditched the Arch-as-Giant-Belly, as well as the Dirt Cheap Chicken's inclusion in the pantheon.Here were the results of some color tests after mixing up inks. I thought that I could create a T-Rav / Brain Sandwich-ish orange by laying a Provel yellow over the St. Paul brown ...
... but I also made the happy discovery that laying the Gooey Butter / Ted Drewe's yellow overtop of the brown yielded enough of a Vess green to keep me from adding a fourth ink. Huzzah for semi-translucency!Working on the print reminded me of this illustration I did a couple of years ago, showing just how many times I can regurgitate the same local landmarks. Anyway, the new print is a 3-color, hand-pulled screenprint on wheat-colored Canson Edition paper, edition of 100, 30" x 11 1/4". I'm sellin' 'em for $25 apiece.Thanks for reading! Hope to see some of you at the Craft Show. I'll be working all day Sunday, if anybody wants to bring me any reference for future prints.

Great Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts

This week Leon Beyond tells of the secret origins of the popular kids' gross-out folk song "Great Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts". This song has appeared in my comics before, like this page from the "Ghost of Dragon Canoe (Kramers Ergot #5)". Just like the kids' sing-along son "Dead Skunk (in the middle of the road)" was written to ridicule Richard Nixon, "Great Green Gobs" originated with real life targets, the turn-of-the-century gang The Gophers.
After the chant caught on in areas beyond the ghettos of New York, the song was modified according to regional and technological circumstances. Kids in Detroit prefer their eyeballs dipped in motor oil, instead of kerosene, for instance. Thanks Leon!

Graphic Dogzign

Leon didn't harm any dogs in the making of this comic strip. Maybe verbally.
Read it here!

Famous Fictional Villains: Riders of the Apocalypse!

Tomorrow night, Friday Nov. 6th, is the opening for an art show I put together here in St. Louis at the Mad Art Gallery. It's another one of these "Famous Fictional" shows in which local artists draw portraits of characters from popular fiction, in this case, books and movies.
These are some rough sketches for the posters I printed up advertising the show.
The rules for the show were:
1) Each artist makes two pieces the same size and shape
2) One piece from features a character from pre-20th century literature. This includes everything from ancient mythology and religious texts through 1899.
3) The second piece must features a character from film.
4) Both characters must - to a reasonable degree - be recognizable to casual viewers
5) Both characters must be VILLAINS! The characters I personally chose are The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (from Chapter 6 of Revelations in the New Testament of the Bible) and The Lone Biker of the Apocalypse (from the 1987 film Raising Arizona). Some sketches: My paintings are big sheets of Masonite covered in fluorescent orange spray paint, silver leaf pen, acrylic paint & india ink. Here's an early in progress shot of the Horsemen:
And here's a detail from further along:
And here's a sneak peek at the Lone Biker:
You should really see the whole paintings in person to get see how bright this construction orange spray paint is. It should be a fun time. It goes from 7 - 11, radical DJ Tone Wolf will be playing songs, etc. See y'all there!