Sack Lunch Drag Race

If you find yourself in the magazine aisle of your local grocery, look for the September issue of Nickelodeon Magazine (there is a smiling cow on the cover). In addition to lots of other fun kids' stuff there is a weird "back to school" themed drawing that I drew for the cover of the comics section (pictured above). Inspired by some Sharpie/White-Out drawings I did on French cardboard, the editors suggested I do some drawings on (American) brown paper sacks. Here are my first rough and real stupid ideas:At some point I decided to do a drawing on a 3-dimensional bagged lunch rather than flattened sacks and here were some ideas on how that could've worked ...... and then (of course) I decided to turn it into a hot rod! Actually two dueling hot rods, one full of gnarly bad-for-you bully foods and one full of wimpy good-for-you foods. WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?! The first step was to stage the little drag race scene by stuffing a couple of sacks with me and Jenny's actual lunches and position them on the blue tile floor of the St. Louis Science Center's gift shoppe. Then our pal John took lots of nice pictures with his fancy camera. Thanks John!
I got rid of the sweet note from Mom and changed the tile to a nice puke-green back-to-school color. Speaking of wimpy, at some point I realized that I wouldn't be able to do the drawings on the bags themselves so went toward a more layered photo/illustration combo method. Bottom-line -- it was light-box and tracing paper time:
After a bunch more boring computer voodoo this is how it turned out (below). Now get back to shopping or your ice cream sandwiches are gonna melt!

VICTORY

Another summer at the Saratoga has come to a close, and with it another gold pin for the Handsome Brothers' trophy case. It was tough, having narrowly edged out the Heisenburgs, 3 J's and a Z, and team Whoa! Yeah! for first place in the final week. Luckily there were some sharpies laying around for me to deface our loot (pictured above) with. I love drawing at bowling.
In case you haven't seen one of us strutting down Manchester in our team colors, here's what our logo looks like:
And here's an action shot of me. It should look familiar to purchasers of Private Stash. The pin is probably hiding a gnarly 4 - 10 split (the lanes were real graveyards last night). For an indication of how old the Saratoga is, count the stars on that flag.
Look out Fall League!
UPDATE: See Billy K's sandwich blog for another view of this magical night.

Local Color

In case you didn't hear, me and 3 pals of mine were recently elected by St. Louis Magazine some of the "Coolest People in St. Louis". I know what you're all thinking: "St. Louis must SUCK!" But the fact remains that we got to party with Murph-Drrt and Bill Keaggy. And we did the above collaborative drawing to accompany an article about us. From L to R: Kevin H, me, Ted May, and Mardou.

The Sunny Side of Dan Z.

(Drawn during thesis reviews at my alma mater the week my wisdom teeth were removed and I had a surprise root canal. It was too dark to ink the page I had snuck into the auditorium with me and I was in a bad mood. These made for good catharthis though, as did the white castle fish nibblers I ate on the way home. I was ashamed of both in the light of the next day.)

Free M.U.S.C.L.E. Association

If you have a ballpoint pen, a pink colored-pencil, and some time to kill I recommend this brainstorming exercise. I'll wait 'til I draw 1,000 more until I do a proper post on M.U.S.C.L.E. figures and how simultaneously awesome and infuriating (did anyone have the wrestling ring, and NOT have the little clamps break off?!) they were.In other news, I am back in the States and back in action. I've still got a lot of travel drawings to post over on our other blog but I've also gots lots of new stuff for y'all too.

Spanish Prisoners

Hey gang : Jenny and I are in Madrid for the month! That is why you haven't seen us at the bowling alley, BBQ, basketball courts, bible study, or basement punk show. We'll need to find Spanish equivalents I reckon. Hopefully I'll have some nice drawings to post here when I get back to Los Estados Unidos (at least a Spanish style hot rod). In the meantime, follow our adventures on our team blog. Not much there yet but expect lots of sangria-soaked doodles.

Homemade Screenprints

A couple of exciting silkscreen things to announce. First: I finished a new print! It's the first in a new series I'm making memorializing St. Louis folk heroes (future subjects include James Eads, Redd Foxx, Mike Shannon and others). This one is a 3-color tribute to the greatest professional wrestler of all time, Lou Thesz. It was printed with gold, navy blue, and red ink on 18 x 24"double-thickness chipboard in an edition of 75. Get in touch if you'd like to buy one for your den or home gym - they are 50 bones apiece. Here's an early sketch:
Secondly: That print will be appearing in a little art show I've got hanging at the Forest Park Community College Art Annex. The show is called "Ruined Pants" and is chock full of my homemade screenprints, everything from birth announcements to holiday cards to comic book covers to punk rock flyers I've made over the past few years. Here's the postcard:
If you don't have anything going on this Friday, June 8th, between 6 and 8 p.m - and you live in St. Louis I reckon - feel free to drop by the opening reception. The Gallery is at 5435 Highland Park Dr. Here's a map. Basically just turn off Macklind at the White Castle District HQ. I think there will be punch and snacks and the show will look a tiny bit like this:
Hope to see y'all there! Mention this blog post for a free hug at the door. Warning: I will probably have wet ink on me somewhere.

Old / New Stomping Grounds

Ozark Travelogue May 2007

Yin and Yang

I've been into painting on shoes lately. Especially cheap $6 pairs from you-know-where. As canvases, they are probably not archival (especially when worn circling the bases on a muddy ballfield or circle-pitting in a beer-soaked basement) so I told my Mom to wear her old sneakers when doing those things. The Fleur-de-lis is common symbol of Louisville (my hometown) and St. Louis (my adopted hometown), both named after French kings.
Happy Birthday and Mother's Day, Mom! Love ya!
On the other foot, I've been obsessed with Madballs lately. They combine two of my favorite things: goofy, gross-out monster art and sports. Remember how much that stupid Madball football hurt if you caught that plastic nose-cone right in the chest?
photo credits: Jenny C.

Star Clipper Tote Bag

I designed some tote bags for my friends over at the best comic book shoppe in St. Louis, Star Clipper. Initially I had a bunch of varying terrible ideas but I ended up doing a little tote bag dude strolling along doing his thing. I knew it'd be printed in two-colors so I started to figure out how that could work: I always have this book laying around nearby for inspiration. I love corporate cartoon mascots -- there is something about animating a twinkie or carburetor, or a gigantic baseball or gasoline pump or 2" x 4", with googly eyes and a cocksure grin that warms my heart, and mysteriously makes me want to spend money. (Spammers take note) I used that same fake charcoal effect to try and emulate the era of advertising when Mr. Products' textures weren't so slick, even though their motives were. Below is a close-up:
As pictured, I eventually changed the soda can in the original design into a Japanese soda bottle, since they sell those at the shoppe. I didn't change anything else because I needed to preserve my secret plan for taking this job on: to force Star Clipper into selling hot dogs.Go get a tote bag and cram it full of comic books!

Hello / Goodbye

Our good friend Baseball came to town last week but our good friend xTony Jx left town. Here's a pair of shoes I painted to commemorate the happiness/sadness of both events. We'll miss you Tony! Acrylic and Varnish on Wal*mart "Athletic Works" deck shoes ($6.47).

Fuelman / Leadville

Is anybody else disturbed by the gradual (de)evolution of obscure-but-beloved gasoline/corporate mascot Fuelman? What/Who can be next?! That Sinclar Dinosaur? Here is a better shot of the original:
And here's some sticker designs I did for my pal Will's band LEADVILLE, one of which features the more sophisticated and streamlined Fuelman Jr:
I refuse to dignify the boring and seemingly inanimate Fuelman III with any more attention (the same way I feel about Hank Williams III, by the way), so if you want bigger versions of that design you'll just have to find it on another blog. But since I am divulging inspirational gas-station sign designs - and by inspirational I mean things that I shamelessly rip off, here you go:

Oscar Reuben Part II

I finished those birth announcements for my little nephew Oscar I was talking about earlier! Above is a scan of the actual screenprint. Below is what your experience must've been like if you got one in the mail. (photo credits: Jenny C.)
And so you can judge how well I captured Oscar's likeness, here is a reference photo. Okay - you caught me - I'm only posting it because it is so cute.
And to get back to the nuts-and-bolts stuff that is the bread-and-butter of this blog (sorry fellas!) here is a color test I did when mixing the screeprint inks. I never quite got the orange as transparent as I wanted but I guess there's always next time.

SuperCross Sketches 03/03/07

Oscar Reuben Zettwoch

Congratulations to my sister-in-law Leah and big brother Jake and for bringing the sweetest little dude - and newest Zettwoch - into the world on Friday. I'm silkscreening up some birth announcements heralding that fact (shown above). After that I am going full-blown into my crazy uncle routine, for which I am gonna have to get a much cooler car. Maybe a dune buggy?
According to my brother he already benches 225 grams and squats 600. How soon will he be doing this?

But I think he might be more into drawing (sorry bro). Good work Leah & Jake!
love,
Uncle Dan

Jetlagged Cardboard Funnies

I carried a Sharpie, a White-Out pen, and boxes full of comics to France and all I came back with were these lousy drawings. And a flattened penny stamped with an embossed Arc De Triomphe*.
I made these while I was supposed to be working at the Buenaventura Press table at the Angoulême Comics Festival last week. They pertain to utilitarian concerns of our first few days abroad - travel, lodging, etc. - but I promise we did do some culturally worthwhile activites while in France, too. I just ran out of White-Out.
Some photographs of me and my pals standing in front of things (or at least beer-stained ticket stubs) will probably surface once I unpack and I'll scan them in too.
*The Arc de Triomphe was pretty awesome but it would've been even better had they went with this.

Open Road / Angouleme

I'm hitting the rails, skipping town for a couple of weeks. In particular, between January 25th and 28th, I'll be at the Festival international del la Bande Dessinée in Angouleme, France. If you're gonna be over there, try and come find me over by the Buenaventura / Kramers Ergot / Comic Art booths in the 'Espace Alternative BD' area. If you're not gonna be in France, but you may be in, say, Minneapolis, there's a Kramers Ergot art show opening at Macalester College on the 28th. A bunch of my original pages from Kramers 5 & 6 will be in the show. Here's one of them:
To my StL friends: see you when I get back home!