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!

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!