Legends Of Rock #01 - Ric Ocasek

Bird 2: Rock Pigeon

The indefatigable Rock Dove a.k.a Rock Pigeon a.k.a “Pigeon” a.k.a a lot of awful names. The quintessential New York City bird is up for today’s small part of the large Birds Of Brooklyn poster set I’m working on. I hope you’ll keep tagging along as I uncover more of the avian element of where I and so many nature lovers call home (even though we should be living somewhere a lot more natural if we’re honest with ourselves). Thank goodness for Prospect Park.

Misspelled Characters: Captain Americat

New segment, folks, in which I imagine a world where careless writers pass along a minimally but catastrophically mistyped script to the artist who does his/her best to make the character function as intended. First up: Captain Americat.  No shield pictured because it is being used as a milk saucer.

Signature Woes

I changed my signature about a year ago. It was a big deal and I’m still coming to grips with how it deteriorates under pressure or time constraints. Time constraints here mostly mean impatience, because I can’t remember the last time I was given a certain amount of time to make my signature happen.  Anybody with signature woes knows what I mean when I say pressure. It has to look good.

Hey, it’s Friday.

Season 3 Episode 4 in which a man (dayjob: bellhop) believing himself to be a psychic, brutally murders tarot card and palm reading professionals. One of my favorite episodes - having competing parts humor and gore. The character’s name is referred to as “Puppet.”

This is part of an ongoing project to catalogue the villains from the television series X Files. Check out the others here!

Night Before Le Tour

The Tour de France begins tomorrow. This will be the first year I watch with any interest. I recently read the book It’s All About the Bike and it got me seriously into the idea of long tours. Learning about how these multi-day races began and what those first competitors suffered through made me look with a pretty critical eye on the modern Tour de France - with its teams of mechanics, daily massages and limit per day. In the old days (some hundred years ago), these men would ride as long as they possibly could (in extreme cases, up to three days without getting off the bike). They were often drugged up and half-crazed and some people died, so I suppose this had to be addressed at some point. Learning a little more about the course I’ve decided the daily set stages and all the pampering of the riders at each day’s finish line does not detract from the challenge of what must be an excruciating 3 weeks. So, I’m pretty excited to see some serious bicycling. I think also, they pee on the bike. Here is what I imagine each competitor will be dreaming tonight.

I was working on some icons for a live music app today and somehow I got to messing around.  What isn’t surprising is that skulls were the subject of my messing around. 

Process Post: Cover Art

Again, a view into the way I work for better or worse.  Process of the cover art for DJ Lani Love’s winter mixtape Snow To Stars.  Projects for Lani always get me to work in a more sleek, hip fashion.  Not much room for smiling pixelart or batmen, but I’d like to think I can do cool too. You be the judge (I’ve decided this is going to be pretty cool if I stick to it, but your confidence is highly appreciated).

Step 1 & 2.

Left: Extra rough sketch for the basic layout and concept. I went with the snow and stars.  Right: Less awful rendering of Ms. Love. Coolness tip: head slightly raised, shoulders slightly back? Coolness. Who knows why.

Step 3 & 4.

Left: Serious cleanup of the face and hair with a rough shape for the space-blouse.  Right: Her hair loaded the right side of the frame unexpectedly - so the sweet gloves and dropping the collar for a bit more asymmetrical balance.

Step 5.

Clean it all up.  Next step will involve the tough decisions of shading, color, text, etc.  

Bird 6: Northern Cardinal

Hello everyone, hope you had a great holiday weekend and that it was lazy and full of fine foods. Back on the birdwagon here. Today is a female Northern Cardinal, one of the prettiest northeast birds in my opinion. Haven’t shown much of a wing view yet, so here you go! The set is going well, many many birds still to go until I can even think about layout for the poster. Gonna pick up the pace a bit.

Rejected Tracks - The Sloest

This is one of many ‘rejected tracks’ in the Prescription Strength Hugs (my music-making moniker) archive. I recently stumbled upon this one and am not sure why it got axed, as I quite like it. Dug it out and illustrated the instrumentation and lyrics (which I typically hate displaying, but again, kind of liked them). Please enjoy.