I feel like I’m on a roll here, with two consecutive Illustration class projects in which I am incredibly happy with the results. This week’s project was to create an image that could be used within an advertisement for a product of our choice, but without designing the ad itself. I decided to do something fun for my favorite beer in the whole world, Grain Belt. It’s only available in the northern midwest, so I cannot enjoy it whenever I please, as I once could, so this is my tribute. I wanted something that spoke of the history of the beer (the old neon sign, snapped while I was on a trip back to Minnesota) but also the very specific region in which it is available.

I’ve been working on this image for almost three weeks now from the thumbnail sketch stage and it still cracks me up every time. I think I might be using this as a promo post card image soon.

Once every few weeks in my Illustration class, we have an in-studio assignment, to be completely finished within the span of about four hours. Usually they revolve around some concept related to illustration. Yesterday’s had to do with “street art” as an alternate means of illustrating a concept. We had the class period to come up with a “social issue” relevant to Portland and create a piece of work on a giant piece of cardboard. I chose to speak on the topic of beards, something that has been on my mind since I have recently shaved (it’s getting warm out). It’s sort of a joke on how it seems like every dude in Portland has a beard, like that’s one of the things that the city is known for now. It’s also an homage to a conversation I had with my roommate a few days ago where she said in order to work at a coffeeshop in this town, it was nearly a requirement that you have a beard, or at least a mustache.

A few words on the details: I was able to snag a cheap HELP WANTED sign from a shop down the street and I found all of those now-outdated “SUBMIT” fliers in my locker at school, so I decided to use them instead of recycling. The little stenciled face underneath “32A” is a quickie two-color stencil I made of my Illustration teacher, after which I tried to get everyone in class to spray it on their piece (5 people did). Also, you may notice the smaller beard stencil that is sitting below my signature in the lower right corner. That’s actually a stencil modeled after my own beard which I miss terribly. I make reference to it because you’ll be seeing that stencil again next week in a use that is just as awesome as it is horribly disturbing, so keep your peepers peeped for that.

My latest assignment for my Intermediate Illustration class was to create a “seasonal magazine cover” illustration, representing both a city and season of our choice. I chose to represent an early morning Spring cleaning in Minneapolis, MN, where I am originally from. For those of you who don’t know, that is the Spoonbridge and Cherry, a huge Claes Oldenburg sculpture, and one of the most iconic images of Minneapolis. Even though the internet is chock full of the exact same photo, I was in Minneapolis a few weeks ago and snapped my own reference.

My most recent assignment for Intermediate Illustration was to create a series of one to three cover designs or pinups of a comic book character of my creation. I decided to create a sequential front and back cover design for Phil Bunyan. My plan right now is to do one or two more short Phil Bunyan stories and then ask other artists if they’d care to submit their own Phil comic; eventually to be printed by me in some sort of Phil Bunyan anthology. Let me know if you might be interested.

The final piece for my “New Markets” assignment is this painting of BeardBot #3 because taking part in gallery shows is definitely one of the “new markets” I’m interested in exploring. This painting is 10 by 12, gouache on a wooden panel. I took progress shots as I was painting, so check the animated GIF below.

Snazzy.

Ah, buttons, old reliable fallback, buttons. But what’s that? Keychains too?!

Here’s some more BeardBot stuff for the final week of my “New Markets” assignment for Illustration class. For my final, each of the four bots will be featured in a different venue in which they could, in theory, be used in real life. Hopefully you’ve already seen the plush #2 last week, so here’s a coffee mug design featuring #1.

And here’s how it might look on an actual mug.

Finally, here’s a simple t-shirt design featuring #4, being modeled by the also-bearded Charlie of the Threadless submission pack. I’m probably going to have to actually print up one of these for myself on of these days.

#3’s piece will be posted tomorrow along with some buttons and keychains I’ve already made.

Howdy! I just realized I haven’t shown any of the prints I’ve been making in my etching class, mainly due to the fact that I kept forgetting to bring them home from school. This one uses a process called sugar lift, where you can use a brush to draw on a copper plate with an ink/sugar mixture. Then you coat your plate with an acid-resisting ground, soak in hot water, and all of your sugary ink lines wash out. After that dries, run your plate through a process called aquatint which essentially creates a textured surface on just the ink lines, which is what gives you the rich black brush strokes, or lighter, depending on the time in the acid. (End BT’s Printmaking 101)

I plan on doing a lot more of this technique for the rest of the semester as it seems like the best way to make the final prints feel more consistent with my regular work. Also, this cowboy is sort of the first thing I’ve shown in a slightly new way of working for me; I’ve been doing a lot of drawings in my sketchbook that go straight to brush, no planning, no pencils, and I’m finding I really like the more confident brush strokes I’m laying down as well as the grotesqueness in some of the figures, resulting from not penciling anything.

Seriously, everybody, do it. This tiny print combines normal line etching and aquatint on the letters and tires.

A happenstance collaboration with my roommate. She threw this tiny copper plate with two crossed feathers into the print studio’s junk plate bin, I found it, recognized it as her style, and added the lettering and the dodo.

This is an aquatint etching of a photocopy transfer of the skull, from the skull wearing a bike helmet poster I posted last week or so. I decided to experiment and started scraping away the aquatint texture…

…until I got to this, step two in the process. I went even further, making the lettering and the skyline crown pop a bit more, which I will show once it’s back from the teacher.

If anyone might be interested in buying any of these prints, let me know, I should get around to printing a small edition of each one soon.

Here’s a very basic drawing of the four main BeardBots (as mentioned earlier). This is just to give an idea of the basic look and size relations of the first four bots. I’ll get more in depth on things in the coming weeks.

More in depth, like this! It’s a prototype plush doll of BeardBot #2! He’s about 8.5″ tall and cuddly as the dickens. For the school assignment that these are related to, I’m going to create some sort of finished piece or usage concept for each of these four, and perhaps a special #5 I’ve got in mind, so expect at least one painting, and some t-shirt designs and whatnot coming in the next week. BeardBots.com is still under construction, but one idea that I had a long time ago that has now merged into the whole BeardBot concept is the idea of custom BeardBots; you pick one of a few basic body shapes and whatever style of facial hair you’d like on your bot and I’d make a custom plush. Does that sound like a good idea to anybody out there?

All right, they all feature facial hair of some variety, so they’re not completely unrelated, but mostly. I finished a two-page Phil Bunyan story to submit to my school’s upcoming comics anthology, but I drew it big, so I can’t scan it properly until I go to school on Wednesday. Until then, here’s a teaser panel. I have a big comic to do for the upcoming RCC anthology too, and a lot of Baby Otto almost ready to roll out, but if I can find the time before March 1st, the deadline to submit, I have another two-page story starring Phil that I want to go along with this finished one. If not, I’ll do it eventually.

My current assignment in my Illustration class is called “New Markets.” The idea being that we go beyond print illustration and come up with a brand or a character that can be used everywhere. While sketching ideas, I realized that one of the most well-responded to (and fun to create) things I’ve ever posted here were my series of tiny paintings of robots with various styles of facial hair, and I knew I had my characters. They can be toys, used as apparel designs, watches, buttons, etc. I came up with four initial bots, each with unique hair, as well as a special edition fifth bot.

Taking things too far, as I usually do, I figured I might as well just come up with a name for the whole set, get myself a domain name, and build up a site for these guys. I came up with a list of names away from a computer, so I couldn’t check whether they had been taken or not, but as it turns out, the most straightforward, easy to remember name that i thought of, still totally available! I haven’t been this happy since I found out www.asslesschaps.com was still floating free (used to be mine, seriously, but no longer). I am now the proud owner of www.beardbots.com! (There’s just a blank page there right now, but I’ll let you know as things get further along.) Feel the furry excitement.

And here’s a quick ballpoint pen self-portrait, drawn from a mirror wall in a cafe as I was drinking coffee and waiting for my breakfast (biscuits and gravy) to arrive; looking as much like a young, homeless, genius as I can.

Something a little bit different from me today. Along with our normal assignments, my Illustration class has studio assignments, where essentially all work must be completed during regular class work time. Our first one was dealing with poster art. We had a few hours to sketch out an idea last week and then we had most of the class period this week to construct a 17″ by 22″ poster that incorporated at least one use of lettering, illustration, and either traditional or digital collage. It was a good challenge, some people did not succeed. I decided to focus on bike safety as a topic, and this originally was going to say “Start wearing a helmet TODAY” on the bottom, but it turns out the lettering did not have to be quite so specific, so I just kept “Too Late.” I also set out to create a poster that would be ready to screen print, if I chose to do so later.

My concept was that after you die in a horrible bike accident is the only time when it is “too late” to start wearing a helmet, but I get the feeling that my meaning may be misconstrued, once the 17″ by 22″ version gets hung in the hallways at school next week, due to the fact that I go to a school that lost a current student and an alumni to bike accidents last semester. It’ll be interesting to hear the feedback.

On a side note, I totally want to start a bicycle gang now, and have this skull dude be our logo. Who wants in?!