Post-It Show 9 preview

It's that time of year again!

The Post-It Show 9 is right around the corner. Here's a selection of pieces I submitted this year. They're characters from some of my favorite games.

These are all painted with acrylic paint and ink on standard 3"x 3" Post-Its. The Post-It Show is held at Giant Robot 2 gallery in Los Angeles and is curated by the dynamic duo that is Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson.

Pumpkin of the Opera...aka...Phantom of the Pumpkin Patch

Hey work, you made the grave mistake of letting me into your pumpkin painting contest. The rules were simple, take a small sugar pumpkin, and decorate it any way you want as long as you don't carve into it. I think I took the contest a little too seriously.

I probably would've settled for just very simply painting a pumpkin, but I was specifically challenged by a few of my coworkers. They literally came in to my room, and taunted me. What's a guy to do?

Fueled by the incessant workplace taunting, I added more and more detail with each wave of smack-talk. Things like, "Aw bro, I'm going to destroy you." only fed my weird competitive streak.

I knew that I wanted to do a Universal Studios monster from the beginning – even when it was just a lone, painted pumpkin. I chose the 1925 Lon Cheney version of the Phantom of the Opera- because Lon Cheney was the best. However, as time went by, I added cardboard structures cut out with X-Acto knives, papier-mâché, and a blowtorch to the works. Okay, there was no welding…but it was way more time and effort than I should have put into him.

Oh, I failed to mention – this is for a contest at Trader Joe's. This is not some art studio that I'm working at where all my competition are also artists. I literally pouring tons of effort into this pumpkin contest and I really don't know why. Maybe it's because I'm pompous and I JUST HAVE TO WIN ALL THE CONTESTS!! At this point I'm actually expecting to lose because I put so much effort into it.

The organ is made of corrugated cardboard that I cut with an X-Acto knife, taped with blue painters tape and then finished with papier-mâché. I waited overnight till the papier-mâché was dry completely and then I painted directly onto it with acrylic paint. The papier-mâché I went with is simple: little bit of flour, a little bit of water, and strips of newspaper. The "cobblestone" base is 1/8 inch plywood that I cut with a jigsaw and then painted with acrylic paint.

Everything else is painted in grayscale tones of acrylic paint with little cut paper hands and feet and a cape made of heavy duty paper towels that I drenched in ink. Lastly, I finished him off with little yarn strands for hair.

 Happy Halloween everybody!

Her Eyes Can Be So Cruel

Hey!

This piece up at the Say Hi To the Bad Guy show at Gallery 1988 West. The show is covering the love of the bad guys in cult classic film. Opening night is Friday, October 18th, 7-10 PM

Her Eyes Can Be So Cruel
Acrylic on panel 8.5" x11.25" x 3"

I felt it necessary to paint Jareth from Jim Henson's Labyrinth as a total creepster. Here he is doing a little research on his super inappropriate love interest Sarah. Look, if it makes you feel any better, it seems like Jareth, although actually super old, is really a tween at heart. From his super cool hamburger phone to his constant need to create angsty prose and art in his dream journal, Jareth is developmentally arrested. Give the guy a break, all he has to hang out with is goblins.

Show up and I'll say,"Oh hello there..."

Getting Frustrated

Oh hello there!

I really have no witty segue into this so I'll just jump right in.

I have a couple close friends who have been battling terminal cancer this year. In both cases, the disease  came on really quickly and has been super aggressive. With multiple treatments, diet changes etc, the cancer just seems to keep coming.

Our one friend, Stephanie, who's husband I worked with at Trader Joe's and became fast friends with, just passed over the weekend. Their battle with this disease was at once painful and really encouraging. They were always hopeful, never blaming God for their trouble and always being the ones encouraging others to see things the right way. It's been a real testimony to what real faith does in crappy circumstances.

These are the times when our dependence on Christ (for those who identify as Christians) becomes either stronger or tossed to the wayside. I've see awesome things go on in my friends' lives by way of God's faithfulness. Their faith and endurance has been on total display to my wife and I. They've just displayed a real selfless commitment to each other and the people around them. Their hearts have been joyful in the midst of terrible pain. Humor hasn't left them either.

I'm still feeling frustrated at the actual disease even though I've seen such a clearly good way of going through it displayed by my friends. I know there are better ways to deal with my frustration, but in a way, this still seemed appropriate:

Cats are clean...

Banzai Pipeline

Heavy waves with a shallow, super sharp reef break. The Pipeline break is treacherous in Hawaii.
According to the great and powerful Wikipedia: "it got its name in December 1961, when surfing movie producer Bruce Brown was driving the North Shore with California surfers Phil Edwards and Mike Diffenderfer. Brown stopped at the then-unnamed site to film Edwards catching several waves. At the time, there was a construction project on an underground pipeline on adjacent Kamehameha Highway, and Diffenderfer made the suggestion to name the break "Pipeline". The name was first used in Brown's movie Surfing Hollow Days."
By the way, Surfing Hollow Days is highly recommended viewing material!


Here's a Hawaiian warrior, charging Pipeline with no fear in his eyes.
I've been thinking about the 60's and 70's Ed Roth and Roth industries T-shirts that my dad started buying for me as a kid and how that look definitely informed my decisions when drawing characters or even designing. For better or worse, I love drawing this way.

Mongo the front pushing freak

Skateboarders today are pretty open to differing styles, fashion trends and even music choices. Gone are the days where you could spot a skater just by the clothes he wears or the music playing on his radio. Like most other subcultures, the skate scene is becoming more open to change. What distinguishes a "real" skater from a poser today, is what it should be...skills.

That being said, there is still one thing that pretty universally gets hate in the skateboarding world internationally: pushing mongo.

To push mongo, one must use their front foot to push themselves rather than their back foot. There are Youtube videos exemplifying the heinous behavior, websites devoted to hating on Mongs, and an overall bad attitude toward kids who prefer to skate this way. 

I've heard all the arguments against pushing mongo my whole life but you know what? I just won't stop. I can easily go back and forth between standard and mongo but I always prefer to push mongo in general.

available here!

To celebrate my terrible decision, I've made Mongo, the front-pushing freak. Now you too can celebrate your utterly horrible skateboarding with this mini print over at my Etsy.

Insert Chuck Norris joke

If you've never seen Lone Wolf McQuade, please treat yourself to the best Chuck Norris movie ever made. Lone Wolf gets buried alive in his awesome supercharged Dodge and has to escape. Look, I won't tell you what happens but the Dodge survives...
With all the Chuck Norris beard trivia flotsam floating around the internet over the past few years I wonder why this drawing hasn't already been made. Seems it wasn't and I needed to fill that gap- for you, the good people of the internet.
I bring you: Chuck Norris

Chuck Norris prefers to fight like a man--with his hands. Yet his beard is a ruthless killer, bound by no code but BLOOD.

Jake the Snake Roberts

Here is another of my favorite wrestlers from childhood. Jake "the Snake" Roberts is the creator of the DDT (essentially, you grab a dude's head like you would for a suplex, and then proceed to plow it through the mat by dropping onto your own back while still holding said dude's head). He was always kind of scary and mysterious to me but not necessarily because of his snake Damien.

Browncoats brown

I've been doing fun little challenge on Instagram: geek photo a day

Follow all the fun photos people are posting by searching #geekphotoaday

Here was today's theme: Browncoat brown. If you're unfamiliar with the Browncoats, I suggest you buy a Firefly DVD or watch it on Netflix. Enjoy!

The foxes he's carrying are a nod to the show's abrupt cancellation.

Finished up an old sketch

Cleaned up that Undertaker sketch I posted a little while ago. I've decided I'd like to put together a character design portfolio. I'm not sure where that'll be hosted. Any ideas? I'm leaning toward my Behance portfolio but am open to suggestions.

Viking time

Here's a little work up of that drawing from yesterday!

Morning sketch

Morning sketch for a painting of my grandpa as a viking shot caller. Yeah, they had those. Still have major kinks to work out but the potential for goodness is there. See you soon!

Undertaker sketch

Here's a quick little sketch of the pro wrestler, the Undertaker. I hope to tune this and a few more of his "friends" up and update again soon.

the Undertaker is ©WWE

Swing your arms from side to side...

...c'mon it's time to go do the Mario!

Oh hey there, whatcha doooin'?

Anywho, I just painted the brothers Mario for PaletteSwap!

Here's the uncropped version of the painting.

While painting this illustration, I was thinking a lot about what it would be like for two Brooklyn-based, Italian plumbers to get transported into the Mushroom Kingdom. These two guys (brothers) know nothing of the crazy, upside down world they've just found themselves in. There's evil mushrooms, dragons that fly in mechanical clown heads, and mutant fire-spitting plants- and the only thing to make it any better is all the gold lying (or floating) around. But there's no store to buy stuff, so you can't do anything with it! You just get to try again if you happen to fall into a bottomless pit. Yay you!

So in terms of the Mario brothers' posture, there's a bit of irritation and unhappiness there. I figure that my brothers and I would probably be pretty irritated with our new home rather than go around joyfully stomping the life out of evil mushroom people.

It's been a while since I made a painting for PaletteSwap (here is a link to my old PSwaps). This time I wanted to go for a classic! Super Mario World was and continues to be one of my favorite SNES games. I love so much about it: the explorable, ever changing world map, the secret ways of beating levels, the art and the adventure. I remember playing it with my own brothers and just poring over different ways of beating the levels...I played it consistently years later with my (now) wife. It's a go-to classic and I can't wait to play it with my kids. Although their built-in cranial micro processors may not be backwards compatible. Gaaahh technology...FOILING MY PLANS AGAIN!!

Ahem, sorry about that. Here's my PaletteSwap:

I found a really nice, clean, high resolution image of the original SNES box sold in the states and mussed it up a little with the powers of Photoshop to give it an older feel. Enjoy!

Super Mario was created by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka

Super Mario Bros. and all related material is copyright Nintendo

Some Etsy custom orders

I recently had a pretty cool Etsy order from a very cool girlfriend who has a very lucky boyfriend. She wanted to surprise her man for his birthday and she had seen an old wooden cutout of Randy Savage that I made long ago. Asking if I could make another AND a Ric Flair was like asking a if I'd like like another cinnamon roll cake for my birthday....yes I would like that very much thank you. 

If you're wanting to order some custom wrestlers, why don't you head over to my Etsy and send me a conversation?

Process shots:

These are hand cut, hand painted, ready to be hung on the wall original pieces of art. They are painted on 1/4" birch panels and they're fun to have staring at you. Albeit, I only get to see them staring at me for a couple days before I send them off. 

Kindergarten Cop Father's Day Greeting Card Now Available!

Oh hi there! How's it goin'? Alright, awesome.

I'm just talking to a blinking cursor now. ...Kind of like Doogie Howser M.D. Ooooo NPH.

The one main difference between good ol' Doogie and I, is that he liked to make some kind of prolific statement about what he learned in that episode and all I'm going to do is talk about an abusive detective. An abusive detective that goes deep undercover as a kindergarten teacher to find a bad guy.

Honestly, I'm not even going to talk too much about the movie. If you haven't already seen Kindergarten Cop, words just won't do it justice. Seriously though, you should throw this on your Netflix, and get ready for some early '90s action-comedy featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger at his (some say) finest. It's also directed by Ivan Reitman, who made Ghostbusters!

There's a ton of sayings that would have worked well for this card, but for some reason my wife and I constantly say, "Who is your daddy, and what does he do?" to each other...in the most random situations possible. So, it just felt right. Also in the running were, "It's not a tumor!" and "I'm a cop, you idiot!" but I felt like the first one was too insensitive for a get well card and the second phrase would only pander to rude police officers. Sooooo...

Wait, maybe I'm missing a market here.

Anyway, Father's Day is coming up and since our beloved phrase involves the word "daddy", I figured this was a good fit. Plus, it's hilarious.

You can purchase this card for you dad here! I can also make 8x10" prints, but those are available upon custom request.

Love Cat

Oh hello there.
Sooooooo...my wife goes through this pretty much every day.

I hear about how the cat is constantly up in her business constantly so I thought I'd document it for posterity. Check out and follow my wife's blog to see what she was trying to work on!

Nerd Alert

Is it weird that I feel uncomfortable with everyone throwing around the "nerd" term? Allow me to explain: I don't mean that I'm uncomfortable because its really mean or derogatory. I guess I feel like I can't jump on board when people just add nerd after whatever thing they're obsessed about. ie: I'm a total _______nerd. 

While that may be true in some cases, I feel like people are jumping on the nerd bandwagon. There are a lot of people around the old internet these days claiming nerd genes without really striving for that peak of isolated, obsessive, really-good-at-what-you-do nerdiness. 

Look, I understand that there is a really solid philosophical argument for nerd-dom branching into every area of society but I don't think it applies when a person is only going half speed into their chosen nerd path. Ok, ok...I need to pipe down.

Ok, I'm piped. At any rate, I drew this guy and I love him. Thanks to the fantastic Mr. Frenden, that's Ray Frenden to you folks, and his marvelous brush pack for Photoshop, this little digital drawing was done in a jiffy.

 Here's just a simple version of him. He's sad because he knows that people only spend an average of under 5 minutes looking at a given blog post per day. Stick around, maybe he'll cheer up.

 

A little animation of how I worked it up with those Frenden brushes.

Maybe I'm a little bitter. I need to check that I think...

Hump day

Maybe your Wednesday is feeling just about the same...

May the 4th be with you

I drew this little Yoda for you on Star Wars Day!

Ryu and his lil Hadoken

So it turns out that I really like making these. This one uses the original animation from Street Fighter 2 plus a couple in between frames for a better flow. It was hand drawn and animated in Photoshop CS5. I worked at 300 ppi at 800 pixels square and then shrunk it down when I was finished for ease of loading online. Hope you like it!

While you're at it, go on over to my Tumblr and "like" or reblog it. It's a good way to know if these are something that people would like me to keep posting or not.

Dragons on the move...

I was playing around today with the old NES sprite animations for Double Dragon. I used their funky, 3 frame walk cycle to create little cartoon guys. Who knew it was animated gif day?! The background was thrown together rather hurriedly so I may go back in and  tune up the drawings while I fix the background. Then again, they may just stay like this as an excercise. Feel free to use them as avatars as long as you link back here or give me credit. :)