Holiday Doodles for Kids

Drawn at Nordstrom West County, Des Peres Missouri, 11/28/09.

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!

Apple Souls

New Amazing Facts & Beyond explores the origins of apple-based Halloween festivities and myths. Be careful out there, kids!

Read the entire strip here!

Hot Rods & Eyeballs & Comics

I'm honored to have some strips in this year's Best American Comics book published by Houghton Mifflin, edited by the esteemed Charles Burns. Included is my strip SPIRIT DUPLICATOR, which was originally published in Comic Art #9. In addition to those strips I also had the honor of illustrating the books' endpapers, so I drew this long crazy highway scene filled with people reading comics. It allowed me to indulge my twin obsessions of Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth style hot rods and bulging eyeballs, taking them to their logical endpoints.Ink & watercolor, 30" x 10". Click for a larger view!I designed the drawing to have the explosion bleed of the edges of the endpapers, containing the wreckage within the book.Speaking of hot rods, I found perhaps my earliest work on a drawing of a dragster, framed and hanging in my parents' basement. It looks like by brother Jake (age 5) drew it, and I (age 3) colored it. I remember making this exact drawing all the time. That blue thing is the driver's head a in a helmet sticking out.
And speaking of eyeballs, here's a picture of me at St. Louis' Laumeier Sculpture Park next to Eye by Tony Tasset.

Autumn Oddities

It's that time of year... new Amazing Facts & Beyond! And while we're on the subject of amazing facts and obscure local legends, Leon wanted to give shout-outs to this awesome new book just published by the St. Louis Post Dispatch:Our Own Oddities was a weekly comic drawn by Ralph Graczak published in the paper every Sunday for 51 years. It could be described as a more folksy, homespun version of Ripley's Believe It or Not! (another of Leon's favorites) - lots of vegetables that look like faces, local bowling lore, weird pets, etc. My pal Tom, who edited and designed the book, sent me along this serendipitous snippet from one of the 80's strips:More information and ordering info here.

Halloween Heads of Don Zettwoch

Drawn from memory. More detailed view of the Jam Box head here. I hope these are still to be found somewhere in my parents' basement!

Where the Wild Things Are

I did a one page illustration/comic/infographic inspired by the book Where the Wild Things Are for the VICE magazine booklet & blog released in conjunction with the new movie. Check out my whole drawing here. Here are a couple of my rough sketches.
Here's part of the vector drawing:
Thanks & Apologies to M. Sendak!