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!