Bad Robot!

I drew this shirt that is currently on sale at Shirt.Woot!
The design is a riff on Isaac Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics, and was suggested as part of a T-shirt contest I was involved with in Las Vegas with my pals at shirt.Woot!

I drew & painted & semi-ruined about 40 custom t-shirts over the course of 2 days, most of which you can see here. Each was based on a concept suggested by a convention-goer. Here are a couple of my favorites. "Inter-Species CES" & "Crap in 3010: Still Crap":"USBacon (suggested by Leslie Townley)" & "My Mom Says I'm Special" (I added the 5.25" floppy disk, even though I couldn't quite remember what one looks like):"Just Brains" & "Lonely Apocalypse / Escort Pamphleteer (suggested by Matthew Shultz)":"The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth" & "Sushi Revenge":"State-of-the-Art Catapult / CES 1010" & the winning design "Overcoming Asimov's Laws (suggested by Jonathan Knell)":Thanks to my Woot! for a good time and everybody who submitted ideas! It was fun, and I still have silver fabric paint under my fingernails.

Vegas Travelogue: Jan. 6-9, 2010

Also: Be sure to check out this week's Amazing Facts & Beyond, also inspired by our trip to Vegas and the Consumer Electronics Show.

Things Leslie Hates!

That kind of sketching just soothes the soul!

Falling on New Year's

Just in time for your explosive New Year's Eve festivities, Leon teaches more valuable lessons involving safety, anvils, pickles and testicles. See the whole strip here!

Local Color: Best of '09

Last year the Riverfront Times printed a bunch of my weird drawings to accompany the Unreal Year-End News Quiz and by Gosh, they did it again this year. Be sure to check out a copy of the paper or look at the online version, but in the meantime, here are my sketches & illustrations (watercolor & ink on typing paper). Click on them for larger views.George Clooney sightings during the filming of Up in the Air swirled.So did genitalia-shaped Mardi Gras beads.This wasn't your Grandma's Easter service.This wasn't her funeral.If you ever throw the first pitch out at a professional baseball game you are guaranteed to get made fun of for something.I'm kinda shocked this guy never got me.One of these guys probably will.

Leon Beyond Crossing the Delaware

This week, Leon debriefs us on the REAL War on Christmas.Washington Crossing the Delaware, by Emanuel Luetze, 1851.

Look at the Fine Print!

Tomorrow I'll be setting up on Cherokee Street, hawking lots of printed goods along with many other great printmakers, as part of the Cherokee Print League. I'll be stationed at Fort Gondo. It goes from 10 am - 7pm. Poster by Firecracker Press:In related news, this week's Amazing Facts & Beyond tells the story of the early advances in printmaking, use of Fine Print, and the first Cherokee Print League:Come see me! Dress warm! I hear there will be cookies somewhere along Cherokee Street, too.

Sweet Meat RFT Cover

I drew the cover to this week's Riverfront Times, and it features beloved local radio mascot, KSHE's Sweet Meat. And if there's anything I love more than cute/weird corporate mascots it's REAL ROCK RADIO. KSHE just published a coffee table book documenting classic St. Louis rock history and this drawing is documenting that. Here was my idea: And a tighter sketch:And the final drawing, after simplifying the scene a bit. That is an autographed picture of Sammy Hagar on the mantle.Here's how I colored the drawing initially, sticking to a muted nostalgic scrabook vibe: I like the more festive final colors better, but I don't like that Sweet Meat's white ear-hairs somehow got lost along the way. SIGH. If anybody was curious about that little drawing inside the scrabook, it's this legendary piece of St. Louis-related Classic Rock Memorabilia:Thanks, Sweet Meat!

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!