Samurai White

Quick Commissioned Flyer

2012-02-15T18:14:00.000-08:00

It's been a pretty crazy month-and-a-half. I've been doing that "living life to the fullest" thing and hanging out with some really great people, going to shows as well as playing shows, going to the museum and drawing, attempting to draw in bars, and chatting with my family a lot. This weekend, I'll escape to somewhere far and awesome. This is the happiest I've been in a very long time.

Speaking of going to shows, when I was in Miami for Christmas, I got a voicemail from my good friend James while I was playing "alligator fire extinguisher" with my nephew–this is where I point to a piece of furniture that's on fire, he uses his stuffed alligator's tail to put it out and then we high-five and he mispronounces my name. It's adorable. Anyway, he wanted me to put together a flyer for an upcoming show (less than 2 weeks from that day) and was willing to pay me. Always the hustler, I couldn't turn it down. I texted him from the airport and asked him to email me details asap.

The main thing about making a flyer is that you have to allow for distribution time. This means you should have finished artwork no less than 2 weeks before the show date so that images can go on facebook, paper flyers can be strategically placed and ads can be created. So at this point, I'm already late and I'm not sure what any of the bands sound like, save for one. This was gonna have to be a rush job.

Since I usually do flyer work for BLOWW, I already know what the show is going to entail and have a specific image involving a character in mind. For everyone else, I do research. I played music before I learned to draw, but I've always associated music with imagery (probably why I'm a better artist than pianist) so I listened to each band and jotted down notes about what the music looked and felt like.

There was another artist, Marc Pinansky, whose acoustic stuff I couldn't find online, so there were no notes about him. But all of the bands seemed to have a very overcast maritime sound to them, so I thought of a compass or an astrolabe, something radiating from the center. I looked up a couple pictures of astrolabes and I found one on creative commons, licensed for whatever use (important! always check image licensing and make sure using/modifying it is ok, especially if you are going to profit from it!), brought it into Illustrator and vectorized it. Then I added some coloring to reflect a Miami beach sunset.

That's a pretty tasty astrolabe. I set the type and now had to figure out how to arrange it. However, it was a pretty awkward composition for me. I don't do straightforward, Lucian Bernhard-style modern design very well–as effective as it is, I feel like it's not dynamic enough. So having a simple object (astrolabe) with some elegant type underneath it is not going to make me all warm and fuzzy, so I played around with this for an hour, ended up expanding the astrolabe and focusing on the diagonals of the arms. I simplified the colors so that the type didn't have to fight for attention against the astrolabe, or wear unnecessary outlines and drop shadows for legibility. I also added a secondary type in Copperplate as a contrast.

And there you have it! This took a total of 6 hours, start to finish, and the bands had a week and a half to promote. The show was absolutely wonderful and I highly recommend seeing all of these bands.

I have a couple more flyers in my queue; one for Billy Brown, a special edition to be raffled off for the Walter Fund, and two more for BLOWW. I have a painting that was accepted into an exhibition in May, so I'll be posting the process for that one shortly before the show.

2011 year in review

2012-01-18T20:13:00.000-08:00

Greetings from mid-January, 2012!

I was just checking my list of goals for 2011 and while I didn't accomplish most of them, I did do a lot of stuff that I'm very ok with. Let's recap:

I did not:
Read a lot of books. Learn sculpey. Get into two art shows. Build more choppers. Redo my website. Complete a sketchbook. Attend a medical illustration conference. Go to Belgium, Holland and Germany.

What I did do:
+ Created logos and icons for a mobile app
+ Got three posters into a juried show about HIV awareness and almost won
+ Fixed my bike
+ Restrung my Fender
+ Made several flyers, one for a high-profile show
+ Moved into a new apartment
+ Created the first rock-concert tour shirt for a scientific conference
+ Saw Manowar live
+ Met my favorite graphic novelist
+ Fought as Alice Cooper
+ Made the first heavy metal nutcracker
+ Won a full Adobe Creative software suite
+ Met my cousins, aunt and uncle from Cuba (and they are awesome!)

2012 is going to be sweet. Already, I have finished my first commissioned flyer and have put in some work on a new website for BLOWW. This year, I hope to:

+ Visit LA and Austin, TX.
+ Get a few more flyer commissions
+ Build 50 heavy metal nutcrackers
+ Redo the electronics and replace the humbuckers on my Fender
+ Finish the new BLOWW site
+ Finish the current sketchbook
+ Build a new website for myself
+ Spend more time with my family
+ Live life to the fullest

I'm keeping these small and somewhat attainable, so I can be open to any awesome opportunities. I'll be posting the process for the commissioned flyer soon.

Susie Skrew Turns 30

2011-11-02T19:17:00.000-07:00

I am incredibly frustrated.

I'm working on a new site for BLOWW on Adobe Muse and I've hit a massive wall. That program is still in beta testing phase, so it's a bit buggy and I'm not finding enough tutorials to help me accomplish what I want. Those that know me know that I am SEVERELY impatient when it comes to design. Currently, my problem is with the accordion panels and the news widgets; I can't figure out what the preset margins are, or how to add images within a defined space QUICKLY, and after a hackjob of fitting stuff in and basically going all out in div mode, the program started freezing. So, I had to stop. And to top it off, I still haven't been able to replace my keyboard, so the Q and W keys don't work and I am stuck using the keyboard panel to imput these letters. It sucks.

Called my mom, and dad is currently stuck in Japan as all flights back to the US have been delayed. While most people would embrace having a full day layover in Tokyo, we're talking about my dad here, who absolutely hates unfamiliar places and food. He's traveled all over the world and, nine times out of ten, would rather be home watching Star Trek with my mom. Mom's nursing a bad cold by herself and it breaks my heart that I can't just drive over and make her soup. I used to think that being 1,000 miles away from my parents would be awesome; I could live my life as I pleased and embrace all the opportunities that Miami could never offer me. And as much as I love my life and career, I miss them terribly and wish I could be closer.

I just slapped myself. Enough bitching.

Last year, my friend Lala turned 30. She booked a bar and set up a sweet show. Since I usually make all the BLOWW flyers, I figured I'd make a special one celebrating her character, Susie Skrew. As with everything, I had 80 million things going on—I had just gotten back from my grandmother's funeral, finished my website for a Flash class, started trudging along on the coloring book, and started work on the BLOWW flash site and the Planetoid flyer—so this was a multiple all-nighter kind of job.

I started out with a picture of Susie that embodied the sheer awesomeness of her character and painstakingly removed the background, using the wand and lasso tools. I included the save window because this is the only time the words "Susie Skrew" and "clean" will ever appear in the same sentence.

Then I did the usual tone and value separations by copying the image and using multiple brightness filters to highlight or hide tones. I can then layer the different tones in different colors, creating one of those sweet layered vector images.

Several hours of cleaning up shapes and consolidating color fields later (remember, this is last year; I am waaaaay better at doing this now in half the time), I imported a picture of her boyfriend. I already had in mind the composition I wanted, which I described as "reverse Manowar"; in Manowar art, usually there are a bunch of naked ladies grabbing onto the band members' legs while they lift glorious weapons. I wanted to have two versions of him doing this for two reasons: hilarity, and to hide the rest of her legs since I DID NOT want to draw her shoes. (see post on the hoe-down flyer) I had a friend take the picture of him at a party, with the excuse that I had to draw a bearded man holding on to something for work and with the amount of crazy requests I get at my job, this was dismissed as typical and nothing was suspected. However, the picture had an incredibly low dpi, so when I ran my filters on it, it imported really small and lacked details necessary to make a cohesive picture. So, let's draw some more!

I've made him a lot bigger, colored him in, and set up the background elements for the composition. I'm not entirely stoked on the background colors, but I've brought in a bunch of Art Nouveau chocolate posters for inspiration.

Ah, that is much better! You can see a slight difference between the right and left dude; I'm mostly working on the right and then I'll duplicate. Now, a closer inspection reveals that the dude is still not detailed enough and I'm not too stoked with his expression. He needs to be meaner and have that "you back off or I'll eat you" look. So I spent a bit more time polishing his features.

Whoa! That is exactly what I want! My sleep tally is about 12 hours for the whole week and I'm hallucinating, but I gotta get it together. I consolidated both dudes, gave the left one flowing hair (and a different shirt), and quickly drew the subjects of the circle, which were a cache of Susie's favorite things. I also went in and added more details to Susie; makeup, shadings, nail polish. Setting the type took all of 10 mins. Add an inverted S design for the background to add texture and BAM! I can finally go to sleep.

Thanks for bearing with me. I feel a lot better now.

WORST FLYER EVER

2011-10-22T23:35:00.000-07:00

...well, maybe not. It started with a really great idea, but a lot of things went wrong while I was trying to make it happen. It's always good, as an artist, to keep records of all your work, good and bad, not just so that you can document your progression as an artist, but to also document your mistakes so that you can remind yourself of what transpired and grow from the experience. You can't view your mistakes as a hindrance, or as failure, because that only fosters doubt. An artist plagued with doubt is weak; your voice and point of view are less powerful and it becomes very apparent in the work.

SO! Life lesson over, let's talk about how this debacle began. BLOWW had a show coming up and I was talking to my partner-in-crime, Lala, about what to draw. Lala matter-of-factly told me she wanted a wrestler squeezing a unicorn. Who am I to argue with genius? As per usual, I went to the oyster bar, ordered 24 oysters on the half shell, and proceeded to sketch this masterpiece.

Let me just say that my waiter saw me drawing this and brought me an extra dozen, on the house! The next phase involved me getting some reference art and drawing the unicorn. I was on a big Don Hertzfeldt kick, mainly watching this a lot, so the aesthetics were influenced by the hallucination sequence. The sun was a nod to him, and with all influcences/references, you don't want to use too much so that it overpowers your work and ventures into the realm of copying.

Not a bad start, but ideally you want to sketch out all elements of the composition initially and then refine individual elements. This is a learning exercise, so it's cool. Let's add a wrestler!

I wanted the wrestler to look gross and out of shape, like that dude that says "Yeah, I was pro in highschool," and then eats an entire plate of loaded potato skins and sweats through the entire meal. That guy. So, armpit stains, a weathered beige tank and spandex pants that showcase loose thighs were all a must. (LOOSE THIGHS! Someone start that band!)

Now we got some nice folds in the tank, some shading on the arms, a lot more detail in the face. Ok! Let's refine the unicorn!

I've gone in and shaded the unicorn, further embellished the wrestler, all done with either the pen tool or by drawing shapes and multiplying them out. This is when things start going awry. At this point in my life, my favorite boss had told me she was leaving my company, and my direct boss also gave his notice, AND I was trying to finish my coloring book, so I was working 14-16 hour days. I'd get home, eat a quick meal, take a fast shower and then get back on the computer to finish this drawing. I was also working on the website and cranking out several merch items, so my time was limited. Add to that the fact that my programs weren't legit, and I had to keep restarting them. I had planned to add some black outlines in varying lineweights, so I figured I was near completion...and then my wacom tablet stops working. SERIOUSLY??? Now, I have to draw with the mouse?

Another aspect of being a designer is knowing when to stop. There are three main scenarios that constitute stopping:
a) When you are satisfied with it and nothing else will improve it (this is a good thing)
b) When your hands and mind cease to communicate and anything you try to do will harm the work (usually when you are tired and sleep deprived)
c) When your technology fails after you've worked on it long enough for it to be passable (it's not going to be awesome but you've suffered enough)

Option C should only be taken at the most dire of situations, because these works will inevitably haunt you. Murphy's Law of Design states that the work you like the least will be the one that people end up referencing the most, the one that shows up first in Google searches and the one that gains the most exposure. I have several of these and keep them some of them framed at my desk, next to the good works–they help give me the final push I need when I am near the end and need to get Option A. Barring any catastrophes, it usually works.

I set some hap-hazard type, exported the image to my work computer and cropped it. It's pretty awful; the lineweights don't match, the grass is lackluster(I had wanted to draw in a bunch of blades and some happy flowers), the sun is whatever. I'm at the end of my rope and it shows. In retrospect, I should have scrapped this digital image and drawn it on paper with colored pencils. But, it is what it is, and while I'm not proud of it, I know what to do next time.

Tune in next week/month/whenever for the Tengu Go process.

black metal bloww shirt

2011-10-16T20:35:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, I figured BLOWW could use a more manlier, more metal shirt. We have several shirts up for sale; a white one with the logo, a red one with Guzzlielocks, and a baby blue one with Muffy. But no black shirt. I find black shirts to be more desirable, since you can pair them with everything and they are inherently badass. While I was making the Pep + Prep posters, an image popped in my head of a skull with the BLOWW fists on the ends of tentacles (medusa fists) and I just had to make that happen.

Charles Stone III gave a lecture at RISD a while ago(he did all the WASSUP commercials and Drumline) and talked about the importance of documenting ideas. Write them down, draw thumbnails–even if they have nothing to do with the project at hand–and catalog them until the right time. This sketch sat for a good four months before I could work on it.

I found a skull image online and started drawing in the shadows and crevices. I wanted to have the letters of BLOWW to be the teeth, so I brought in a skinny grunge sans-serif (Epidemia) and fit them in so that I could work around them and connect the jagged upper palate and mandible to the letters. I placed the BLOWW logo fists up top for comparison.

After a lot of refinements, I figured I'd put in some beginner tentacles so that I could start connecting and subtracting. I drew them with the paintbrush and expanded them and also started playing with the idea of them branching out a bit (see bottom). However, I couldn't visualize the fusion well enough to render the tentacles to my satisfaction. So I scrapped the tentacles, used a fist from my imagebank and altered them to match the roughness of the skull. I thought about connecting them with sinew to the skull, but after moving them around, they made a rough flower around the skull, which I liked immensely, because it juxtaposed the beauty and fragility of a flower with the violence of a fist. (oh hai, art words!)

And, there you have it! Welcome to gorgeous violence!

BLOWW and The Meatmen

2011-10-13T19:59:00.003-07:00

So, here's the situation: you just moved in to your new place, got everything set up as awesome as your time and your budget will allow you to, and just as you're ready to relax, you get an email from the really nice booker at the club you're playing in three weeks, kindly asking where the flyer you promised him is.

(trombone sound)

If you're me(and you are, cause this is TOTALLY about me), you freak out, give him a comfortable deadline (2.5 days) and blow off all your plans to crank this thing out. And if the time constraint isn't enough to give you a minor coronary, it HAS to be good, cause you're opening for a huge band and (hopefully) several hundred people will be exposed to you and your work.

(I get my beta blockers ready, along with a bottle of Riesling)

Since time was of the essence, I had to swallow my integrity and go with a modified rotoscoping to get this thing done. I usually pick BLOWW characters to grace the flyers according to their appropriateness, so this time, it was Mami Salami, a character I play–essentially a Cuban butcher based on my mom. My mom is a spry, jovial lady who, despite her small stature and meek appearance, is a complete badass with the machete and often misinterprets sayings and directions due to her rudimentary English vocabulary. Mami is an homage to my mom, and as a safe bet should she ever want to attend a show(less embarrassing than my other character).

Here are a bunch of pics from a photoshoot with Chris Haynes.

You can see the keyboard viewer to the left hand side, which is because I spilled beer on it a while back (while designing the last BLOWW shirt) and my Q and W keys no longer work. (typing this post is a bitch). So, after much deliberation, I chose the photo that would best work in the composition I had in mind and began the work.

I did a couple black and white separations and did a rough tracing of the picture. Usually, I do tracings with an 8-bit gray, so that the colors are easier to separate and redraw. I wanted to stick to reds and blacks to go with the bloody butcher theme.

Now, I've started to add more reddish tones and start redrawing the hair. I could easily spend a week just fine-tuning details, almost to the point that the original tracing is replaced by freehand squiggles, but I'm short on time and angry that I'm missing a metal show and a lot of my friends. At this point, I set up filler type and a couple shapes in the background to get a feel for the composition.

I've got some type in there that I like better, accommodating the date into the cleaver so that I have more room for the rest of the information.

Hours later, I'm on my second bottle of wine and I've cleaned her up a great deal–I've elminated the red tones in her attire, the apron is simpler, the blood marks more apparent, and I've redrawn the sausages (which were originally DIY sausages–a bunch of hotdogs hanging on a fishing line). I've also structured the sausages to loop at you in order to contain the band and venue information. If you don't have space, make some space. Bonus points for sausage use? I'm a nerd.

Usually towards the end, I become thoroughly consumed with the project (and meeting the deadline) that I take very few breaks and don't document until I have a final image. I was better at this when I was a smoker, cause I'd take a picture before going outside. But lungs > process. As you can see, I found a sweet drippy typeface for the sausage information (someone start that band, please), added some shading, drew in the hair (what my friend calls Nathan Explosion hair), placed the date on top, and added a texture to the background (more sausages). I kept the background a nasty green to contrast nicely with the red and peach tones.

I'm done, right? I can go to that sweet metal show now and high-five all my buddies, right?

NOT SO FAST! The sponsor just emailed and he totally wants his logo on the flyer, as big as possible. And within the next couple hours.

(seriously, bro? I could be drinking BEER!)

In the design world, this happens frequently and in order to be worth anything as a designer, you have to be adaptable to last minute requests. The key is knowing when and where to compromise, and when to stand up for your work. In this case, I said no prob, messed around with the composition, fit some more type into the cleaver, and sent the file over.

And there you have it. A bit cluttered, but everyone is happy. And, if you are in the Boston are on Oct 21st, get over to Church and see a sweet show.

Tune in next week(month?) as I either go through the process of the Worst Flyer I Have Ever Done or the process of the BLOWW Dude Shirt.

September!

2011-09-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

So far, September has been ridiculous! I successfully moved, got promoted at work, started working on a new app, busted out a sweet flyer, met Craig Thompson (and gave him a coloring book), and got a sweet deal on a flight to Atlanta for Thanksgiving.

I'm going to see a hand surgeon tomorrow (later today?) to assess the damage I've done to my hands by spending 15+ hours a day drawing. While I'm not completely stoked about this, it sucks being in pain all the time. [Painfully] crossing my fingers for non-invasive surgery.

My studio is almost complete; I had to set it up quickly so that I could crank out a nice flyer for the upcoming Meatmen show in October. I managed to watch all 2 seasons of Party Down (utterly hilarious) while doing so. I need to get my hands on a flat file, a futon, 2 guitar stands, and some clippy lights in order for it to be complete. The goal is to create a nice space where my buddies can come over and play music or draw or make things while I am chained to whatever I'm working on. No more staying up till 4am singing Manowar by myself!

My to-do list for tomorrow:

+ Visit hand surgeon/talk her out of surgery
+ Get batteries for my camera
+ Get staple gun/more couch fabric from that kick-ass Iranian lady's shop (the cheapest!)
+ Sort utilities
+ Go to that sweet antiques warehouse I like
+ Make hair appointment (5 months overdue)
+ Grab bike frames from Fort Schfifty
+ Organize shelves in the studio
+ Hang knickknack shelf/arrange knickknacks
+ Arrange KISS/Sin City figures in Shadowboxes
+ Make foods

Once I get the staple gun and load the camera with batteries, I can begin document my couch upholstery project. I've never reupholstered anything before—and, as usual, I'm winging it— so this should be incredibly entertaining. Good thing I have a fuzzball to distract me with leg attacks if I get too frustrated.

Moving!

2011-08-20T21:01:00.000-07:00

Whoa. Last time I checked in was March.
..heh

I'll be moving to a new apartment in a couple weeks, which is scary and exciting as this will be the first time since college that I'll live without roommates. I was lucky enough to find a whole apartment–not a studio–within my budget that actually shortens my commute time to work. I'll even have a separate workroom, where I can comfortably paint, design, and build various things. Once I have everything set up, I'll be posting new projects and process documentation. I'm also going to attempt a few home decoration/DIY posts, as I'll be reupholstering a couch and a chair, building a fireplace mantel shelf, restoring a lamp from 1920, and other exciting, Tyler Durden-ly, matching furnishingly goodness. I guess turning 30 makes you sprout a Martha Stewart thumb.

AND, I'll finally be able to talk about secret project #1: the logo and icon design for TenguGo, a sweet app for Android and Iphone that helps you learn Japanese and Arabic. TenguGo Kana for Android has just been released, so you can go to their site to download this free app.

I've also done some work on some sites, made a few flyers, designed a shirt and embarked on a couple more secret projects that I'll be struggling not to talk about.

Prep and Pep against HIV

2011-03-13T17:57:00.000-07:00

After a whirlwind week and a half, I'm done with side projects for the time being. The iphone app icons were accepted, so once it's officially launched, I can post the process for that. I finished the special issue at work and my dad made an unexpected visit for a day and a half--and it was awesome, except for slight food poisoning from our snack at the Subway at Union. So no dad and Vonn steakhouse time. But we did hit up the MIT museum, which is my favorite place to take dudes, and he had a great time naming all the individual electronic components of whatever gadgets and missles were on display. I also saw Manowar live! It was epic! They played Battle Hymns in its entirety and Eric sang Heart of Steel in German. I'm now preparing for our March 26th show and taking it easy.

So, let's take a minute to switch to serious mode. An old buddy of mine is involved with an organization called Search For A Cure. SFAC is currently trying to raise awareness about PEP and PREP, which is a preventative anti-viral therapy that is successful in reducing the transmission and proliferation of HIV. You take the pre-exposure prophylaxis (an anti-viral cocktail) +/- 72 hours before possible exposure, and then the post-exposure prophylaxis up to 72 hrs after getting exposed. These treatments have been known to eradicate the virus in people who have gotten exposed (antivirals tend to disrupt the ability of a virus to replicate its RNA, which is crucial in the first 72 hours because the viral levels are still low). PEP and PREP have been around for about 20 years and are accessible and effective.

SFAC recently announced a poster contest in order to raise awareness about the availability and effectiveness of PEP and PREP, so I figured I'd be a doofus not to enter. This was a pretty bare-bones competition; no constraints were given, no text was mandatory, you had to read through their materials and decide the best way to present the information in a way that is captivating and informative. So, I began this process with thumbnails and idea lists.

Thumbnails/list, graphite on tracing paper

I was thinking about the concept of armor, added protection, fortification. I thought of a Spartan phalanx, battling against space invaders, an umbrella in the rain, an HIV gun barrel target.

Then I thought about a cross section of people, one loaded with the anti-virals, the other with HIV. PREP and PEP as Supermanesque heroes high-fiving; a mass invasion of HIV with one person having a protective coating. A target practice dummy. This process took about 3 days, on and off. I ultimately decided I would continue with the two people, the gun target, and the person against a mass invasion. I looked at WPA works posters as inspiration; this era is particularly fascinating to me because of the widespread Syphillis propaganda–gorgeous posters done on a very grim subject.

Due to the knobby and complex shape of the HIV virus, I decided against having hoards of them in the background–it was needlessly complex and they were hard to make out, unless I made them different colors and then I risked a gnarly rainbow effect. So I figured I'd place a large virus behind a person that has PREP and PEP coursing through their body.

This one took very little time to produce; an outline of the virus serves as the target outline. I based the concept on the popular saying, "Well, I dodged that bullet." I'm pretty sure many people feel that way after a negative HIV test.

I had a blast making this one. It is loosely based on that neuron-kissing cover that I did, but rather than showing interaction on two levels (physical and neural), I'm showing viral composition within the humans. I kept the silhouettes relatively androgynous as people can get offended if it's a specific race or gender that has the HIV (or any disease, for that matter; these are things you learn when doing editorial medical illustration.)

On all three, I used Futura (Insignia on the first one) and kept the colors in the aqua/orange/red family, so that they would be eye-catching, but not too jolly or bright. The conference is taking place on March 26th at the Fenway Health Center in Boston, MA. You can also check out their website for more information.

HOdown

2011-02-21T18:02:00.000-08:00

Oh, hi Mark.
Somehow, the movie, The Room, has become the topic of tangent conversations that have dominated my long weekend. I spent part of it with good friends, part of it organizing, and part of it finishing the BLOWW flyer.

Initial setup, Illustrator
Typeface: Dirty Headline

As you read in the previous work-it-out post, the theme for this show is a hoedown. We have some extra special country fusion bands (well, one is more Rockabilly), so I thought it would be great to have a girl riding a fist like a mechanical bull. So, first I gathered all my reference materials and laid them out on my enormous screen. You can just barely eek out a shot I took of myself to get the angles of the body and look at some of the shadows. The fist is something I drew for another flyer a few years back and I blocked in her body with simple shapes. While I'm usually against rotoscoping, sometimes I'll roughly rotoscope in order to figure out the proportions if I'm short on time (which is essentially the modern man's version of the camera obscura) but then flesh everything out by hand based on reference and observation.

I then started blocking out shadows with a solid black, with very little color to help see the body in depth. After a good trial and error session (and a beer), I started drawing in the hair in my usual style, first with the brush tool, then blocking in color. The type is still rudimentary at this point.

All the hair is blocked in and I'm happy with it. I've added a couple things, like a couple cards (Slim Jim covers the Ace of Spades by Motörhead, so it's a nod to them) and blocked in the fist so that it would be a bit more abstract. I've arranged the type so that it frames her a bit better and all the information can fit. I wanted to have her barely grasping the second W, as it's usually stressed more in our cheer (we are wrestlers after all, give me a fkkn W!)

So now, we're at the point where I step away, because I'm not 100 percent happy but all the meat is there and it's all a matter of seasoning it properly. Here's the work-it-out image from the last post; you can see that I've added some stars, tilted a couple things and brought in secondary references to better figure out what I want to do.

Going through the list, I've implemented almost everything, except making the hand peach and green. I also ultimately decided that the call out was stupid and exchanged that with the word Saturday, in the same blue of the date. The supporting bands are cut out of the paper strip as the headliner (us) is "printed" on. I also drew in her shoe, which I left for last as I absolutely despise drawing shoes. Sidenote: I own less than ten pairs of shoes; 6 of them are combat boots. Shoe shopping ranks third in least favorite activities, second to getting a root canal and listening to Bob Marley.

And here's the final result. The girls are happy and I can move on to the next project, which is a T-shirt design. I'll be throwing in a poster for HIV awareness for a contest that just popped up, so stay tuned. And if you're in the area on March 26th, come check out an awesome show!

work it out

2011-02-15T19:41:00.000-08:00

I'm in the middle of finishing up a flyer for the March BLOWW show, which is themed as a hoedown. I've been struggling with this one a little bit, mostly because my wrist has been killing me and I'm balancing a freelance project with it, but also the position of the girl was a bit tricky to get right. It's been three weeks, on and off, and just now is it starting to take shape. As it may be another week before I post this, as well as the other project, I wanted to show what I call a "work it out" progress shot.

During my time at DASH and RISD, my teachers noticed that I was too compulsive, trying to do 80 things at once, so they suggested I stop midway, critique my own work, write a list of what needs changing and adjusting, take a break and then attack it. In other words, take a bit of time to work it out. Here's a lil screen grab:

As you can see, I have my references to the left, artboard in the middle, and the critique is on the right. The main idea for this was to have a girl riding a fist (the fist being the BLOWW icon) as if she were in a rodeo. There is still about a good week's worth of work on this before I can be happy with it.

Planetoid / BLOWW flyer

2011-02-11T19:55:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to post this forever! I am a behemoth about process documentation, but this flyer has been tainted with nothing but misfortune since its inception, for for the time being, I only have two steps to show. But before I go further, let me say a few words about Planetoid.

I first saw them perform in 2008 for my friend Steph's birthday. A buddy described them to me as a cross between Black Sabbath and The Meters, which–ok, that sounds pretty weird and unpalatable, but bear with me–ended up being a ridiculously accurate description. Theirs was a rock heavily laced with funk, the hooks were great, the subject matter awesome(they give a shout out to Alpha Centauri, which ruled my 8-year-old world), the stage present a bit awkward (cause, well, they're aliens and they were just acclimating themselves to this planet. They have since improved.) I highly recommend grabbing their cd or checking them out live.

Now, back to this art process business. As you can recall from my list of awesome/not-so-awesome things about 2010, I lost my sketchbook, most likely at a bar. This contained the preliminary sketch of the flyer, which was inspired by the minimalist Star Wars posters, the Lunar Adventures poster, and Paul Pope's Shakedown poster. There is another sketch kicking around and when I find it, I'll add it in. When I am designing and illustrating, I tend to look at a lot of things that have the feel of what I'm going for, but the end result is not going to be a direct copy or stylistic copy.

Very often, I will draw my preliminary sketch at a bar, usually after work, during happy hour. This is sometimes challenging as, this being New England and all, I am furiously trying to eat as many dollar oysters as possible before the 6pm cutoff time. My personal record? 42. It helps if you have a speedy waiter and chucker. But I digress.

So here I am, quickly drawing out a sketch before the waiter comes back with another dozen oysters. From here, there are two possible options:
a) scan the sketch and start the drawing
b) use the sketch as inspiration and start messing around with illustrator

I went for option B, as I still wanted to explore some composition/typography fittings. Here is one of the compositions I did, trying to fit the type into the tentacles of the monster.

This was pretty quick and sloppy (just how I like 'em*); and I wasn't too thrilled with it because I would be adding other elements (a Flying V, a spaceship, Ninja Ho and Ginger Tonic, a vacuum cleaner) that would mess with the space and maybe compromise the type. But I did want to keep the monster yellow against a blue to teal background, and I did want it to look like a watercolor(or close enough to it).

I am right now kicking myself for not taking any inbetween process shots so that you can see that the gradients on the monster are all hand-drawn. Remember, I'm a carver, when I draw, I don't render, I carve, so I made all the crevices in the monster's face by layering different opacities of the same color, using a method I learned while studying architecture: Controlled Squiggles. All the grass and foliage you see in blueprints? Controlled Squiggles. It took about four hours and a tub of Ben Gay to give the monster a salamander pattern, more time than it took to draw the guitar, spaceship, and ladies. I wanted to keep the type looking comic-booky, but not over the top, so I used Badaboom, Unmasked, and Sniper.

As a comparison, I'll post the process for a flyer that totally sucked, but somehow retained all of its process stuff. But that'll be next week! I gotta go back to drawing icons! And listening to Angelo Badalamenti!

*i kid

True

2011-02-01T18:23:00.000-08:00

I got some very good news last week that I can't share until a formal announcement is made. Needless to say, I was incredibly stoked and had one too many Mary Pickfords to celebrate and have since been nursing a bad cold.

I had an excellent talk with my dad over the matter and he always has great perspective on things.
Dad: In 1985, I was 30. I had 2,000 in the bank and was in a ridiculous amount of debt. In 1986, I was 31, I had 8,000 in my hand and no debt. In October of that year, I had 350,000 in my hand, and way more than I could fathom in the bank. What is the moral of this story?
Me: Find a shady activity that allows me to accumulate wealth super fast?
Dad: No, silly, find something that you can do well and go forward with it. Because as long as you are doing your best, no one can take that away from you.

It's very true. This is a man who went from being dirt poor to becoming a millionaire, being bankrupt, working on boats, then programming submarine lifts, having a heart attack and cancer to then going into remission and becoming the head controls engineer for a nationally recognized company.
I've never gotten a free ride to anything; the only such thing was school, but I worked my ass off to earn that(and I'm still paying off whatever I borrowed in order to live and work comfortably). I've had a vast amount of differing jobs–sometimes three at a time–of which I was able to glean certain skills off of to help me go forward. My personal motto? I will never starve. I think it goes hand in hand with the immigrant mentality that one day, everything will eventually be taken from you. All you will have left is your ability to adapt and survive.

Two weeks until I can unveil the project I've been working on. So far, the feedback has been great and I can't wait to show all the process work. It's all based on ukiyo-e prints, so it's very dear to my heart.

Currently drawing a flyer for the upcoming BLOWW show. We are playing with country fusion bands, so the image is that of a cowgirl riding a fist (the BLOWW icon). You'd be surprised at how much porn I had to sift through after googling "cowgirl" in order to find a dressed cowgirl riding a rodeo horse. My fault for not trusting web filters.

Bring it, 2011!

2011-01-10T20:17:00.000-08:00

The lymphoma and leukemia benefit was a huge success! I had a blast rocking out with my friends, whom are all in excellent bands–Tijuana Sweetheart, Buried in Leather, Razors in the Night, and Acaro. Everyone represented to the fullest, my painting was well received (along with a painting from my good buddy, Ktron) and I walked away with a photo session from Meco Photo. Always great to have a crew of people who will fight the good fight alongside you!

Moving right along, I've gotten the first commission of 2011: a logo design for a smart phone app. Can't say more about it yet, but the premise sounds awesome and I get to draw something I enjoy while drinking my favorite beer–Great Divide's Samurai Ale.

Saturday, BLOWW is playing a show at the Middle East Downstairs as part of Fusion: Her HRC. It's a benefit, so we'll have a short set, but we'll be representing throughout the night and have plenty of calendars on hand to sell.

I'm also in the process of setting up an Etsy store in order to sell the dredlock falls (cyberlox) I've been making as part of my grand scheme of going to Amsterdam in the spring. I'll post the link once it's all set up.

Finally, I geared up during that snowstorm on Saturday and went to this creepy little music store in Porter Sq and bought some sweet D'Addario XL 0.10 strings for my Fender. I restrung it as planned, but then noticed that it wasn't registering on my Korg. After removing the pickguard, I found that the pickups, knobs and switch were coated in some gnarly goo (Coke? Beer?) and the circuits didn't look so hot, so the problem is an internal electronic one. Currently, I am researching some options on replacing the inner guts of a Stratocaster, so should I choose to do so, you can look forward to a post on dismantling, repairing and restoring a 98 Squier Strat.

Hope everyone's year is shaping up nicely. It's early yet, but good to have a nice jumpstart.

2010 to 2011

2010-12-31T13:06:00.001-08:00

Happy New Years!

I can honestly say that this year has been the best and worst of my life. I've had a couple years like this, all scattered and padded between just ok years, but it's good to do an assessment and then look forward to a whole new year of goals to annihilate.

2010: The Good

+ Being in a video for Fear Factory. Although, I'm in it for a nanosecond, I did get some sweet camera time in the Making of video.

+ Several paid freelance projects, especially one for a big publisher. Always good.

+ Modeling in a fashion show. Despite the fact that I was still in grieving mode, I put those modeling classes I took at age 13 to good use and rocked it.

+ Designed, produced and PUBLISHED a coloring book on cell biology.

+ Got assigned a new office with a conference table AND a window.

+ Got interviewed as an expert (!!!) for an upcoming book on bioinformatics.

+ Won the wrestling championship belt. Yes, it was in the cards, but man did it feel good.

+ Designed and implemented the BLOWW website.

+ Designed our 2011 calendar. First large scale project I've done independently and it's awesome.

+ Adopted my cat Beef. He's the best!

+ Finally got to see Slayer and Megadeth in concert. One of the best concerts I've ever been to.

2010: The Bad

+ Spent most of the year broke.

+ Fought a lot with those close to me.

+ Spent the first eight months in a hellish living situation. People are still not talking to me because of the outcome.

+ My two favorite bosses left for better opportunities.

+ Lost both my grandparents. I'm still not over this.

+ Didn't get into the Society of Illustrators show.

+ Had my car broken into. Both my ipod and my sketchbook were stolen. Luckily, the car was not damaged.

+ Broke my bicycle.

Argh. I think 2011 will be ok. These are the things I hope to accomplish:

+ Finally fix my bike and build a couple more choppers.

+ Read at least 10 books and at least 2 of them in Spanish.

+ Learn how to sculpt with sculpey. I want to make miniature geishas and samurai.

+ Restring my Fender Stratocaster and practice it at least twice a week. I have a pocket studio now and it plugs into headphones, so there are no excuses.

+ Get into at least two art shows. With the attention I'm getting for that Protége Moi painting, it shouldn't be as hard as last year.

+ Redo my website so that it is beyond 10 static images.

+ Try to get another coloring book published. Or at least something as cool that will get me one step closer to being a medical illustration rockstar.

+ Draw in and complete a sketchbook.

+ Attend a medical illustration conference.

+ Go to Holland, Belgium and Germany with my best friend.

These are quite lofty, but as long as no one dies, my cat doesn't get sick, I do not require another root canal, or get fired, it should all be relatively feasible.

Famous last words? Happy 2011.

Protége Moi

2010-12-30T23:04:00.000-08:00

I know I've been promising a post on how I did the flyer for the BLOWW/Planetoid show back in August and it I'm pretty sure it won't happen this year. It's not that I didn't try; earlier, I made a jpeg from the intermediate composition from my work computer and then promptly forgot to upload it to the photoserver, so rather than do a half-assed post, I'll end this year with an awesome post.

If you know me personally, you know that both my grandmother and father had lymphoma. Grandma had malignant lymphoma and was in remission for 13 years. My father had metastasizing lymphoma and has been in remission for the past 7 years. So when a friend sent out the word that she was setting up a benefit concert and raffle to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, I figured I'd contribute a painting.

Preliminary sketch.
Gesso, colored pencils and graphite in converted book on Venice.

I wanted to paint a girl holding a heart, with the hair drawn in my usual radiating style. I like to paint hair this way to symbolize the energy that radiates from a person, creative or otherwise. Unlike the self-portrait on my webpage, in which the hair is stylized to frantically shoot outwards, this girl has a more reserved, compressed hair to give a sense of cautiousness. I wanted to frame her nude body with loose Art Nouveau swirls and show just enough skin to approach the line of desirability, but stopping short to stay vulnerable.

First progress shot.
Graphite and acrylic on clayboard.

I scanned the above sketch, added the title/refrain, printed and transferred it onto clayboard. Then I started very lightly blocking in shapes with shades of blue and purple.

Second process shot.

I'm pretty sure there was an intermediate step between this one and the last, but I'm not sure where it's hiding. This is after some crazy shading and lots of layering. Since I tend to paint by carving (building up layers, then digging into them with color, then building back up again–I know, it's crazy but that's how I was sorta taught), at this point, there are about 10 or 12 layers of paint. I'm most likely crazy, but to me, it's the most enjoyable part.

Finished painting

So, 20 layers later and one tub of Ben Gay, I've finished the sucker. I wanted to give it a darker, yet luminous appearance (similar to the lamps by the Abbesses station in Paris), so I gradually darkened the background and lightly outlined the main silhouette in red, added some black outlines and then added final blends with colored pencils.

So there you go. If you are in the Boston area on January 7th, drop by Church and help support a good cause. This painting will be in the raffle, among other amazing art by local artists.

Despite the fact that it shows a weency bit of boob, I've dedicated it to my grandmother, who passed away in April while still in remission. She was made of steel with a marmalade heart; built yachts with her bare hands, remained conscious and stoic while a surgeon removed a mass from her chest—without anesthesia, and fought every illness with the courage of a warrior...but she couldn't bear to be without my grandfather.

Here's to 2011: more art, less death.

I'm back and ready to fight!

2010-11-30T19:34:00.000-08:00

Georgia was unbelievably awesome! I am sad that I didn't get to hang out with the Neon Armor Body Painting crew a second time, or get to shoot more with Linda, but it was still very enjoyable hanging out with my parents. They are the best parents anyone could ever hope for (even when I was a teenager and fighting against them, but now I feel bad cause they put up with my gothic ass) and I can honestly say that I long for the day that they will be an hour's drive away(at the most!).

Anyway, the flight back was good, Beef* is still being Beef, work is still great and the craziness never stops. But I wouldn't be who I am if I wasn't always working on something. Which brings me to the monkey on my back for the past couple of months: The BLOWW calendar.

We had been planning a calendar for the past two years. Originally, it was to be a compilation of many of our photographer buddies who took amazing pictures during our live shows. In keeping with the BLOWW image, I designed this preliminary that would accommodate a massive show pic, some of the sequences leading up to it, a photo of the featured wrestler and a bio/anectdote tying everything together. It looked like this:

Malicious Mile Heidi vs. Sophie Suture. Copyright Samurai White + BLOWW. Photos by Chris Haynes.

Despite the fact that we are ladies who accomplish A LOT given that we have dayjobs, other gigs and lives, the images weren't collected on time and this project fell through the cracks. There is only one of me and I had t-shirts to design! So, when the Pennsylvania Dutchess was able to arrange a shoot with the Aston Martin New England dealership AND promised us the use of a Delorean, it had to happen. So we got the great Eleni Kay to shoot some Testino-worthy images and I cleaned up the design as I wanted it to still remain grungy, but have a tad more elegance since we were hanging out with cars worth more than our college tuition.

Ninja Ho and an AC Bristol. Copyright Eleni Kay(photos) and BLOWW.

We are selling this calendar for $15. For more information, contact info{at}blowwboston{dot}com OR samurai{at}samuraiwhite{dot}com.

Also, thanks to everyone for the feedback on the BFTP series. I'll be rescanning some of them(still working out this hosting/sizing biznass) and will be periodically adding more.
I'll be posting the Planetoid flyer next, cause that was really fun to draw, despite my hand cramping up every 15 mins.

*Beef is my excellent cat who thinks he's a dog.

BFTP5: Nine Inch Nails

2010-11-26T21:25:00.000-08:00

Here's the last BFTP for this week. I leave sweet, awesome Atlanta for Boston on Sunday and am going to spend the rest of my time here hanging with my family and getting into trouble. I do want to get into a regular posting schedule (preferably less text/more image), so these BFTPs will pop up every now and again. This one is an integral to understanding me as an artist and a person.

Well, 15-year old me.

Cezanne really enjoyed painting round things, especially fruits. Picasso liked his many women, Mr. Reusch liked drawing Metallica(just peek into his sketchbooks), and I liked drawing Trent Reznor. Actually, no. I head-over-heels LOVED drawing Trent Reznor. 15-year-old me, frizzy dyed red hair, still raw and bitter from being picked on in middle school; his music was the sonic equivalent of all the acrylic anger I splattered on my canvases and masonite. Drafting was way more enjoyable with those buzzsaw guitars, algebra was only tolerable with synthesizers blasting. And his face. He didn't have the kind of face that I was supposed to like: very narrow, pale with a crooked nose and cupid's bow mouth, un-Cuban, perfect. So I drew him as much as possible during my time at Design and Architecture Senior High, to the point that he became a motif in my works. Here is the first drawing I ever did of him, in a sketchbook given to me by the advisor of DASH, who convinced me to fill it out and audition for the school.

Trent Reznor, after a photo by Matt Mahurin, graphite, 1995

Looking at this, it's not much more than an ok-quality sketch that I probably spent an hour-and-a-half on(but who cares? House of Style was on!!*). This led to me drawing more of him; I'd go to the bookstore and pick up the latest copy of Rolling Stone or Details, hoping he'd be in there so I'd have another pose to draw. Eventually, I got better.

Trent Reznor, after the 1997 cover of RayGun, gesso, newspaper, acrylic, gouache, 1997

There are at least 10 others, including a Jan van Eyck copy, which have survived only in slide form. This whole drawing rockstars obsession continues to be a part of my life, as I figured this was the closest I could ever get to being a rockstar.

*By the way, how COOL was that one episode of House of Style where they had Sybill Buck talking about how much she loved the Melvins?

BFTP4: Aerosmith

2010-11-25T20:23:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

After the ridiculous amount of food, the usual jam session with my dad, and the long nap, I checked all of my accounts online and realized that I did not make it in to the Society of Illustrators Illustrators 53. I am a little bummed out, but at the same time, this was my first time applying to something like this and I'm sure they're a lot harder on digital work than they are on traditional works. I get stronger every year, so I'll try again when the opportunity arrives. I am also getting more comfortable with establishing a web presence; my old job traumatized the hell out of me, so it's been a long process.

For a limited time only, check out this issue's Snapshot on the Cell homepage, drawn by me. Scroll down to the bottom and click to download(it's free until the next issue goes live, then you either download the next one or pay for this one). SUMOs are essentially protein modifiers that are involved in processes like transport, apoptosis, and transcriptional regulation. Pretty cool, huh?

So keep the above in mind as I tell you about today's BFTP. Right around the same time that I was busting out those awful architectural floorplans, I was also developing my musical palate. I was raised in a house of heavy metal; my mom is a die-hard KISS fan, my dad played guitar for the burgeoning Miami heavy metal bands of the 70s(Trapp, Pearly Queen, the Antiques, etc) and when the rock wasn't pouring out of one of the many record players, it was shooting out of my dad's electric guitar. So, at age 11, I became obsessed with Aerosmith.

Now, my parents are awesome, but they were very strict when I was young. I was not allowed to hang out with what few friends I had(unless there was a parent there) and I soon got accustomed to spending my Friday and Saturday nights blasting Aerosmith and feverishly painting their logos on a makeshift drafting table (mom's ironing board) with tempera paints from the dollar store. Here's the best one that I could find:

Aerosmith Logo, tempera paint and marker, 1992

Ridiculous!! Just imagine a lil' 11-year old me, with massive glasses and crooked teeth, belting out One Way Street while painting this on an ironing board, Thundercats playing off of the betamax hooked up to my small television. So, when the aforementioned industrial arts class required us to reproduce a logo that was to be silkscreened onto a mirror, I couldn't resist.

Aerosmith Logo, marker and colored pencils, 1994

Here is the initial drawing done for class, which I then traced, streamlined, cut out of rubylith with an exacto, steamed onto stretched silk, and screened onto a mirror:

Aerosmith Logo, ink on mirror, 1994

It's a little goopy, but not bad for a 13-year old, huh?

Tomorrow will be the last BFTP for a while (I haven't even gotten to my X-men drawings, cause they're hilarious, but should be properly scanned) and I am still trying to decide what to show.

BFTP 3: Architecture

2010-11-24T14:27:00.000-08:00

Ok, so many of you don't really know me well enough to know that at one point in my life, I wanted to be an architect. This was something I was discussing with my brother earlier, while sifting though our collective stash of comic books that my parents placed in a huge tupperware vat with my work from high school. The conversation went like this:

Me: Hey Juan, remember when I wanted to be an architect?
Juan: I remember when you wanted to be an astronaut.
Me: Every kid wanted to be an astronaut.
Juan: I didn't.
Me: (sigh) Everyone EXCEPT you wanted to be an astronaut.
Juan: Being legally blind exempts you from NASA.
Me: Yeah, so I switched to wanting to be an architect.
Juan: ...and now you draw guts.
Me: Shut up! My job RULES!

As the story goes: When I was in middle school, I wanted the full middle school experience: woodshop, art class, home ec, industrial arts, etc. There was a wheel you could take that had all four of these, and so I did. I was never a conventional thinker, so I obviously failed home ec and woodshop, but I took a liking to industrial arts and the teacher was incredibly supportive. That was when I discovered that I really liked drafting.

However, I was unable to focus on details. Windows, anyone?

And I was more focused on doing cool things with lettering than I was on thinking about the general structure of what I was drawing. That "See me"? That was a stern lecture that I was given on why one should never use Uncial capitals when drafting floor plans. There is a time and place for Medieval lettering, and architectural drafting is not it.

It was much better when I stopped trying to show off my calligraphy skills and focused more on where the electrical outlets went. Despite these shortcomings, I was accepted into the prestigious Design and Architecture Senior High, where I still (under severe delusion) insisted on majoring in architecture.

My professor was Ms. Johnson and she was not thrilled with me. Moreso, she was not thrilled with the fact that every floorplan I conceived and drafted had to accommodate a dungeon that was used for torture. I only listened to Nine Inch Nails and Ministry while I drafted, so adding a torture room seemed appropriate. Apparently, the world of architecture does not agree with me.

My advisors(our high school had advisors!! When you're 14, you don't care, but this 30-year-old is amazed that we had advisors) told me that it wasn't the proper career path for me, so I figured I'd give interior architecture a try. I wasn't awesome at arranging things in a pre-determined space that I could not add a dungeon to, so my furniture arrangement was very uninspired and lackluster. Even my professor thought so.

And that was the first time I'd ever gotten a D. I feel fortunate that my school had the resources and the personnel available to sit me down and explain to me that I obviously wasn't good at this, that I showed promise in other areas and that I should explore them. Thus, I changed my major to graphic design. Oddly enough, my first real job involved drafting floorplans for banks, so I was happy to have this experience, but although I could crank them out super-fast, I was never really happy doing them. Hence the drawing-guts-for-a-living-thing.

Everything works out for the best. :)

blast from the past #2

2010-11-23T17:27:00.000-08:00

I am keeping my word!! Woo!

For this installment of BFTP, I would like to celebrate my little brother.
26 years ago, he was brought into the world to ruin my life(or so I thought–this was around the time of the cookbook scribblings). Several years later, I realized that he served a greater purpose than eating my Tinker Bell lipsticks. He was to be my victim, er, model for the many paintings I had to do in high school.

My brother at my aunt's house, demonstrating evil tea gestures.

Due to his unwavering hatred of these paintings ("Bone*, you ALWAYS make me look depressed!"), only one has survived.

Juan Ponders Final Fantasy IV, 1998
Acrylic, modeling paste, speedball ink, pastel on canvas

And he hates this one just as much as all the others. I'm 17, and just discovered Egon Schiele, but man, I did a crappy job emulating him. Besides totally inventing the wrist cankle, I can't tell where his other arm/hand is going. Granted, this painting is 10 years old and it's darkened throughout the years, but that's no excuse for the dwarfed upper arm. On the bright side, I did capture the essence of "Can I Go Now?" exhibited in my brother's face during his sittings.

Back when my parents lived in Miami, the first thing I usually did after unpacking was to unearth this painting and hang it in the living room, much to my brother's chagrin. He would often hide it after I left, with the added bonus of placing his shoes** on my bed. Now that they no longer live under the same roof, finding this Juan is less taxing.

*My brother's nickname for me. Ivonne = Eye-Bone, or just Bone.

**I absolutely HATE shoes having contact with my bed linens. I mean, seriously, those soles are filthy! The rest of my room may sometimes look like the aftermath of an H-bomb, but my bed is always pristine.

hahahaha

2010-11-22T21:40:00.000-08:00

I laugh at myself.

"Sure, I'm on vacation, I'm gonna get stuff done! For me! For once!!"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

So, as per usual, everything goes awry. The BLOWW calendar, which I thought was completely done, ended up needing an extra spread, so I–on my super slow and sad '05 MacBook laptop, more on this when the calendar gets printed and I get to rant about its production–compiled two new pages and sent it off. Finito.

Did I mention that I was putting the finishing touches on this thing while in the waiting room of the Kennesaw Center for Cardiac Surgery? My awesome Georgia vacation had a tiny little pocket of sad: my father's defibrillator replacement surgery. Surgery is always scary, however minor, but I have to commend the surgeon that took care of my dad; he removed the machine, tested the wire, installed the new defib, put my dad into cardiac arrest, had the machine revive him, and neatly stitched him back up in 45 minutes. He even chuckled when I shook his hand and called him a Punjabi Ninja (dude's from Chandigarh! how cool is that?). Dad was super groggy, but otherwise ok and is now back to working on his Mustang.

Anyway, even with that little speed bump, I was able to tweak my website, make a head-full of dredlock falls, participated in a photoshoot with the great Linda Costa, caught up with my best friend Pierre, and even learned to play Swords in the Wind by Manowar on piano.

One thing I did promise was a blast from the past. And, oh man, I found some excellent gems in there. So let's go!

Here are a couple pages from my mom's Reader's Digest Cookbook. It is the Spanish edition, printed in Mexico, and it's full of my infantile scribbles. According to my mom, this was my favorite coloring book, second only to her medical journals. Here are a few excerpts, taken with my iPhone as I didn't bring a scanner with me.

beginning of the meat section, pen + pencil

section about selecting and buying cheeses, pen and pencil

on how to make pies, orange crayon

Tomorrow, my brother arrives from Miami, so the post (AND THERE WILL BE ONE!) will be brother-themed.

day 1

2010-11-15T23:12:00.000-08:00

ha! no blast today!

i spent most of today sleeping, conducting business on behalf of BLOWW, and giving my website a tweak. samuraiwhite.com.

tomorrow?
we'll see.

sweet home...georgia

2010-11-13T23:21:00.000-08:00

I had the worst flight experience ever*, but I'm "home." It's in quotations as Atlanta isn't really my home, Miami is, but my parents have lived here long enough that it feels familiar and comforting, but not second-nature. But I will say this: it feels really good to be able to sneak around at 1 am, find my dad's secret stash of Honey Bunches of Oats, and eat it in bed while watching Thundercats.

Regardless of geography, my childhood bedroom remains intact and most of the art that I made while in highschool/college resides in that closet (except during Halloween, when my mom turns the living room into a haunted house and uses my paintings to "make it all freaky." Thanks, mom.) So, this upcoming week, I'm going to try to do one post a day that has a blast from the past. Can I do it? I'm technically on vacation and my biggest worry is were is scheduling a massage in Woodstock, so it should be feasible.

*What made it so bad?
a) six people cut in front of me while i was in the security line. they were led by the TSA agent to the spot in front of me, so I couldn't risk being strip-searched by complaining.
b) the girl that sat next to me on the flight grabbed my magazine from MY seatback pocket. When I said, "Excuse me, that's mine," she said, "Oh, I know. I'll put it back." Then I looked at her and said, "REALLY??" and she shrugged and put it back. Then I told her I would have let her look at it if she ASKED before grabbing it. On top of that, they made you pay for what should have been complimentary beverages.
c) My layover was in Ft. Lauderdale. Really? To go to Atlanta, you stop in Ft. Lauderdale? Why tease me with the concept that the rest of my family is 30 mins away only to make me get on ANOTHER plane...that is delayed.
d) The terminal where the gate was located only had a sub-par Nathan's fast food kiosk. My burger was dry and non-palatable. Some guy stared at me while I greasily stuffed bland fries into my tired face.
e) Some dude had the gall to sit in my seat and then give me a "Yeah, so..?" when I told him he was in my seat. I told him to move, luckily he didn't put up a fight.
f) The train that takes you from the terminals at Hartsfield Airport got stuck for 15 mins inside the tunnel.

Fighting the good fight part 2

2010-10-20T19:13:00.000-07:00

Well, it's Wednesday and I'm sick. The weekend was that epic.

The match in Fitchburg went extremely well, despite some minor setbacks. First of all, we had no proper stage, just a bunch of mats in the middle of the rink(we were the halftime spot for the Central Mass roller derby match). Secondly, they could not fit a full set of drums in the car, so we had to settle for a wood block and a cymbal. Third, about half of were sick.

So, in typical BLOWW fashion, we sucked it up: I found a nook where I could store my props, we got our announcer's son to play percussion for us(and he killed it), and we otherwise sucked it up. Because of the lack of drums, we couldn't do the dance-off, so the ballerina and I free-styled it for a bit and while it was scary ("Hey, I'm gonna throw you now," is kinda scary to hear when you're not that prepared), it was a great improv and the crowd loved it.

A few days later, we discovered that a dj from WAAF had brought his daughter to see the derby and was so pleased with our show that he spent the next day--ON THE AIR--raving about us. This pleasantly falls into my deep-set belief that you have to take and make the most of the opportunities that come your way because you never know who will be there.

And afterwards? We managed to break the Russel House Tavern's record for most oysters ordered in one sitting. (60...really? I've managed to house 36 in one sitting, so it seems a little weak.)

In other news, I just recently filled out my application for Illustrators 53. Now, to choose a cover and a page from my coloring book to submit. Once everything is in, I may just celebrate at my favorite bar with a dozen kumamotos. :)

Fighting the good fight part 1

2010-10-16T00:43:00.000-07:00

As I type right now, it is 3:43 am and in approx 15 hours, I will be wrestling in Fitchburg, MA, as the half-time intermission for a roller derby game.

More on this tomorrow (or Monday, however fast I recover...)

!!!!

2010-09-30T12:13:00.000-07:00

My coloring book on cell biology is officially published!!

About frickin' time!

2010-09-29T20:55:00.000-07:00

I got a flu shot today and I'm pretty woozy, but I FINALLY designed a business card that I like for myself. I am my own worst enemy when it comes to designing for myself; I am super picky and super finicky and constantly change my mind about what I want. This is why I don't have a working site, because I've gone through at least 20 different revisions in the past 7 years. I had put up intermediate sites while I was searching for jobs, but never anything I was too attached to.

However, I've been trying super hard for the past couple of days, in between weddings, performances, crazy work deadlines and the usual social obligations to come up with a design.

I've taken the GW anniversary cover image, meshed it with a scan from my japanese-bound pre-France sketchbook and combined it with the typeface I adored as a teenager, Din 1451 Engschrift* to make something that combines my love of fine art, scientific illustration and Nine Inch Nails.

**That was the type used in the liner notes for The Downward Spiral

Even Steven?

2010-09-21T22:10:00.000-07:00

I should have stayed home and done laundry, sorted my shoes and came up with a game plan to fix my chopper.

Instead, I went to wish my friend Sophia a happy birthday by embarrassing myself at candlepin bowling.

At least I got four iterations of the HATH record label + logo done before 7. Even steven?

OOF

2010-09-18T23:04:00.000-07:00

Today, I:
-woke up incredibly early (9:00 am, unusual for a Saturday)
-practiced for the Sept 24th show
-amended an old flyer quickly and haphazardly in Illustrator
-drove to Providence
-hit all of my old RISD haunts and put up said flyer
-drove from there to Salem to eat delicious foods
-drove back to Boston
-made some edits and adjustments to the BLOWW site(www.blowwboston.com)
-hugged my cat for 20 mins without getting bitten (new record!)

Those that know me know that I absolutely HATE having to half-ass things. I will often forgo eating + sleeping in order to make sure that any work I produce is the best possible representation of who I am. So when faced with having to make a new flyer for the upcoming show(one of the two bands on there dropped out and I didn't want to harass the girl that made the flyer because I couldn't make time for it), I opted for reusing an old flyer rather than slapping something together (at least it was designed and visually powerful.) The original flyer is from 2008, when I started experimenting with making compositions out of rotoscoped images. It's kinda chunky and not fully realized, but it has a fist and one of my favorite people in the world, so it will do.

As for the BLOWW site, it's a work in progress. I had been working with a friend of mine who is highly versed in CSS to code a CMS site in order to take the burden off of me(so that I can work on cooler things like t-shirts and other merch), but it was a very slow process. I had to balance working/learning sessions with practices, freelance work, and other obligations, so that project has been on hold for quite some time. After taking a flash class, I whipped the site up in three days(well, the evenings after work for three days) and have been reworking and amending bits and pieces of it when time allows. The concept of the site is simple: our announcer, Nash Deville, will jot down things he sees in our matches in a Moleskine notebook and brandishes it during our shows to jog his memory. I figured it would be neat if the site was his book, containing his snarky notes mixed in with our information; this way, it could be informal and still informative without resorting to the usual splash page and "coming soon" message that most interim sites tend to have. My own website is an excellent example; it has not been modified in 5 years, so I better get the ball rolling on that one, especially since my first published book will be hitting Singapore in a couple weeks.

CONSOLIDATE!!!

2010-09-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've come to the realization that I have three blogs, two twitter accounts and two websites that I DO NOT MAINTAIN. This is obviously a problem.

I've avoided keeping a regular blog for quite some time now, partly because I don't have the time and partly because I'm terrified of being too accessible/people knowing too much about me.

However, I am a huge monster about process work; I keep meticulous records of sketches, drafts and revisions, noting almost every step and keeping a clear record of the entire thought process in case I need to revisit the project. I have always believed that art--be it drawing, painting, sculpture, design, etc.--is the tangible result of a thought process. I need to be showing this stuff.

On top of that, I have my fear of my extraneous art and activities destroying my legitimate career. I moonlight as a rock flyer designer, wrestle, and partake in whatever odd venture comes my way (Fear Factory video appearance, anyone?). The job that gives me health insurance is a more buttoned-down, serious art job that does give me the flexibility to be crazy at times, but overall demands austere professionalism. I have always lived with this dichotomy; offsetting the corporate with the subversive, and unless a bunch of rockstars decide to establish a Raygun type of scientific journal, I will continue to be stuck in this position. A proverbial modern-day Spiderman, if you will. Except that my Spidey sense tingles for the absurd.

Point being, it's time to stop being a wuss and own up to the otherwise awesome stuff that's been going on in my life. I refuse to discuss the personal and/or disgusting details of my life and I refuse to comment on anything other than the art I produce, in respect to my employment. I am an artist and I'm quite tired of sneaking around with my accomplishments.

But I digress. And man, that is a long digression to a relatively simple topic: I apparently own samuraiwhite.blogspot.com, as well as this account(probably because I activated this one not realizing that I owned the other one) and now I have to consolidate the two. So, hopefully this beefsamurai account will soon be samuraiwhite and I can cross it off the list. I am also SamuraiWhite on twitter, but for the time being, it only has one post about enjoying a Sapphire gin martini. Once I figure out how to do so from my phone(easy?), I can update more frequently but I promise no bowel movement updates (hi, half of Hollywood!)

I am going to try to update this thing more often. But for now, here's a list of the things I have done in the past couple months:
-made a ridiculous art nouveau show poster for my friend susie's birthday
-wrestled as Dio (and won)
-fought a ridiculous battle royale and won the championship belt for my character
-acquired a cat, accordingly named him Beef
-ate raw oysters and enjoyed them immensely
-applied for an art show then neglected to provide slides and thus did not get in (happens)
-FINALLY got to see Slayer in concert
-finished my very first science coloring book

That is all for now. Enjoy your weekends. I will be posting flyers in Providence, then driving to Salem for a dinner, then eventually going to Nahant for a wedding.

Two Socks Discuss Loss

2010-05-24T15:56:00.000-07:00

Very recently, I made a flyer for a theater performance that my roommate directed called Two Socks Discuss Loss. She wanted something whimsical and text-booky, while still evoking the underlying sadness that the socks spoke of. So I whipped this little dude up in an hour, in Illustrator, used the darling Futura that has graced the alphabet above classroom chalkboards across the world and kept the socks minimal yet not too cartoony. Everyone was very stoked about it and the play did very well, which is really all that matters.

progress

2010-05-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

In the past month and a half, I:

-effectively submitted drawings to the 'Press, but didn't get the gig. Just sent the invoice; I'm pretty bad about that stuff sometimes.
-finished my flash class and generated a half-decent website. I say half cause I need to finish the secondary menu and professional work section, so it's not showable for now.
-completed a corporate logo
-lost someone I love very much, and subsequently embarked on a gnarly road trip from Atlanta to Miami...and back.
-set up and delivered the business cards for BLOWW. Hopefully the ladies will be happy with this.
-modeled in a fashion show
-made a sweet flyer for a theatrical performance

Can you say exhausted?

I've been wanting to post the process for the DNA I drew recently, as it was a very unique experience. Very rarely do people in science request a pen/ink freehand drawing, so it was a first for me and an odd problem since I am used to carving with paint rather than drawing perfect lines. People can start to place bets as to when I will post this process, but I can guarantee that it will be after I post my secret flyer project.

In the meantime, let's take a moment to remember Ronnie James Dio and the awesomeness he brought to our lives. I only got to see him live once, with Heaven and Hell (opening for Judas Priest), and it was fantastic. Perhaps the only man ever who could rock that hard wearing a burgundy velvet tunic.

sweet jesus!

2010-03-24T21:49:00.000-07:00

i forgot i had this thing!!!!

i've been crazy busy as of late. working on a website for BLOWW, a personal website in flash, finishing up logo work for a colleague, just submitted a bid and prototype for a textbook job, making t-shirts...ridiculous!

i'll be posting up some process work soon, which is the main reason why i set this thing up.

in the meantime, let's put on some Bootsy Collins and jam this DNA.

-samurai