SLACKART

It’s been busy, busy lately. I’ve just finished some great assignments.

Recently I completed artwork for the Nissan QuashQai Urban proof campaign for TBWA-London. It was a lot of fun to create the graffiti style monsters. The ads ran in a very cool way, mixed in with the listings in weekly entertainment guides. You can check out all the ads and how they ran on Tbwa-London’s web site.

Keeping with the theme of monsters and cars. I just finished this fun piece for Ranger Rick Magazine. The illustration is for the “Readers Riddles” section. Kids write in and submit their jokes to the magazine, the editors choose the funniest ones for publication. This one deals with a T-Rex’s eating habits. It is great to have illustrations published in magazines that I enjoyed as a kid. I’ve worked with the folks over at RR for many years and it is always a pleasure to get a call from them. There is some fun stuff for kids on their web site as well as great resources for students and educators. Here is a link to the BIRD BRAINS game I designed for the site years ago with my good friend Jeremy Seitz.

This illustration was created for Boys Life Magazine. The article was a feature on green living. The opener was about Rishi Sowa’s, Sprial Island. A little floating personal paradise he created out of recycled water bottles. Along with this story there are other inspiring and entertaining stories of clever people doing things differently.

I just received my copy of Peel the Art: of the Sticker and was pleasantly surprised to see my work featured in the book. The book is 160 pages of pure sticker love. It is a compilation of the feature articles from the first eight issues of Peel magazine which includes interviews with Seen, Shepard Fairey, Buff Monster, N/Plywood, and many others. The book also features eight pages of sticker sheets bound into the book. Congratulations to Holly and Dave on this great publication and best of Luck with the new gallery space, ALIAS.

The cool cats over at BADGE REVIEW featured my Ick stickers + pins packs on their blog this week. The blog features a new badge by a different artist every day of the week. Be sure to stop by the blog. There are some killer pin badges, pin badge sets, and links to where you can pick up one, or five.

I have two new small paintings in the “Cute Attack” show at the Bear and Bird Gallery in Florida. If any of you live in the area be sure to head down to the opening.

NOW ONLINE: Sneak Preview of the work in the show!

Here is one of my pieces from the show.

If you have been following my blog you might remember my post on character based art. These are the first pieces to come out of the “character experiments” I talked about.

I welcome any feedback.

I’ve just released an artist set of stickers and pins featuring characters from
my monster card game ICK. These super cool sets are limited to only 100 packs in
three different pack variations: standard, bonus, and deluxe.

Each pack comes with 5 vinyl, UV coated, ICK stickers, with trading card style back printing, and 5 ICK pins.

Bonus packs come with 5 ICK stickers, 5 ICK pins + a signed and numbered, sketch card mini print.

Deluxe packs come with 5 ICK stickers, 5 ICK pins + signed and numbered, sketch card mini print + an original monster drawing ( a different drawing in each Deluxe pack).

Check em out here and GET ONE BEFORE THEY ARE GONE!

I’m currently in a show at DVA Gallery in Chicago with Jason Limon and Scott Saw. I’m very excited about this show. It’s great to be back at DVA with these two exceptional artists.

Opening: Saturday March 15, 7 -10p.m.
The show runs from March 15 - April 2, 2008
To view the show or to purchase pieces contact DVA Gallery.

Just finished four pieces for the Spooky 2009 bi weekly Glow in the Dark Calendar published by Die Gestalten Verlag. Here are two of them. When the lights go out, each images’ glow in the dark elements reveal a hidden narrative. 26 pages of creepy night time fun. I’ve left out the the glow details in these. Don’t want to spoil the surprise. I think the calender will come out in early fall. You can see images from the sold out Spooky 2008 here.

The past ten years have been a boom time for “the character” and “character based art”. As with any trend there comes a time when what was once unique becomes formulaic and blase’.

Characters these days can generally be divided into two categories.

1. The Sanrio style: big heads on tiny bodies, which makes every character look like a baby.
2. Any inanimate object festooned with little stick arms and legs, tiny dot eyes, and a finger nail clipping smile.

Both of these conventions certainly have proven themselves throughout advertising history, and that is why they are the most prevalent features of characters these days. Not only do they have “retro cachet” but they are easy to create and most importantly… THEY WORK!

Their power lies in their cuteness. You can put any object on top of a tiny pudgy body, or in front of those little arms and legs and we want to bring these characters home and tickle them. They’ve been used to sell just about everything from unhealthy food products, to cleaning supplies, and even machine parts. I have used both conventions in some of my projects.

Characters need to have personalities and say more than just, “I’m cute” or “I ‘m cool”. Especially now that characters have evolved from simple pitchmen into a category of artistic expression.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been cooking up a new batch of characters and making a conscious effort to push them in new directions. I’ve been focusing on creating and playing with shapes and features that don’t come with a ton of associative baggage. This has been really exciting and challenging. I’ve been taking a photographers ” You need to take a roll of film to get one good shot” approach in this early sketching phase, just putting as much down as possible, not editing, and going in many different directions.

We’ll see where this all goes.

My Recumbent Bubble Blower piece from the Frail show is being used in the WACHI FICHUZ! series #2 pack of artist trading cards. I just received my complementary pack and I’m super impressed! Series 2 consists of 50 different cards by a some of the best international character artists.

I never really got into trading cards as a kid but I got hooked on not only trading cards but also old obscure card games while doing research for my own card game ICK.

I’m just very excited to have trading card. I also received a pack of series #1 cards. I just haven’t decided whether I want to open them or keep the sealed. See, these are the goofy things you start thinking about once you start collecting stuff.

Here is my wooden postcard for the upcoming Mail Me Art exhibition and book. It is graphite on wood panel, with a thick coat of varnish. This thing was still off gassing when I handed it over to the lovely usps clerk. STINKY!

This is a LCS project and undoubtedly will be a huge success. I’m not sure how many artists are involved but from the look of the MMA site it is a real top notch bunch.

If you would like to be notified when the piece is available and when the book is going to be released give me a shout.