Work Horse: Grace Jones + Joan Jett

La Vie en Rose

Neon Angels on the Road to Ruin

Two of my illustrations will be hanging in a group show at the Sequential Art Gallery + Studio in Portland from December 1–26, 2016. The opening will be on the 1st, so please come out to support me and my co-workers from Dark Horse Comics! See the poster, designed and illustrated by the fabulously talented Rick DeLucco, at the end of this post for additional details. 

These are personal illustrations done in my spare time. I dig music, and I dig apocalypse video games and tales... Grace Jones and Joan Jett are two music personalities I admire and have long wanted to take a stab at the likeness of. Here I've mixed them with imagery from the Fallout universe: Grace with the aggressive and deadly Assualtron robots, and Joan with the ever loyal canine companion Dogmeat.

I'll let my hero, Grace, take us out with a mantra for this year. :)

poster by Rick DeLucco

The Ghost Ease

The Ghost Ease

This is an album release poster I made back in February for The Ghost Ease, commissioned by Banana Stand Media! Check out the video below for their excellent song, "Gemini Rise".

I actually created this illustration around Halloween 2015 - hence the spooky vibes. I was listening to the You Must Remember This Podcast, which had an episode about America's first gothic sex symbol, Theda Bara. She was known as "The Vamp", and was an early Hollywood silent film femme fatale bringing men to their knees in such movies as "Sin", "Destruction", and of course "Cleopatra." Fox Studio publicists built up her image to be as exotic and mythical as possible, going so far as to claim her name to be an anagram for ARAB DEATH. Despite this, she was actually a bookish lady - typecast into the witchy-woman roll for the rest of her life.

I'm going to close out with this quote, which is admittedly concocted by the Fox Studio star-builders of her time to support Theda's "big, bad, scary feminist" image - yet still I dig it:

"V is for Vampire, and it stands for vengeance. The vampire I play is the vengeance of my sex upon its exploiters. You see, I have the face of a vampire but the heart of a feministe."

Theodosia Burr Goodman (Theda Bara,) July 29, 1885 – April 7, 1955

Banana Stand PSU Posters

Two "sister" posters I illustrated and designed for shows thrown by Banana Stand Media at Portland State University. The Shook Twins show already happened... but Portland State of Mind Music Festival 2015 is still coming up as of this post! For more info check out the PDX.EU website, or the Facebook Event page.

If you're curious, these monkeys are based on Golden Snub-nosed Monkeys. I'm not making this up. They are real, and pretty damn great.

watch me WIP

Woolen Men

The Woolen Men

Here is an album release poster for The Woolen Men that I created in December 2014. This is another commission from one of my favorite clients, Banana Stand Media!

I have quite a collection of old photographs in my home. They're mostly kept around from when I was doing a lot more collage work. Now-a-days I sometimes use them as reference material. I have a particular series of photographs depicting very sober looking soldiers, posing on a stone fountain covering in creeping vines. They are smoking, and mostly glum shots. I wouldn't quite classify their gazes as the traumatized "thousand-yard stare," but I'm left with the feeling that they are looking into their own futures. Perhaps expecting that outcome. These were photos I acquired while living in Michigan. From their shoulder sleeve insignias, and the help of a few choice Internet search terms, I've learned that they are all soldiers from the U.S. 32nd Infantry Division, which consisted of soldiers from Michigan and Wisconsin. Here's an interesting tidbit from wikipedia about the origins of red arrow insignia:

It was the first allied division to pierce the German Hindenburg Line of defense, and the 32nd then adopted its shoulder patch; a line shot through with a red arrow, to signify its tenacity in piercing the enemy line. It then became known as the Red Arrow Division.

The band's name, The Woolen Men, got me thinking of these old photographs. So I dug up my morose soldiers in hopes of incorporating their demeanor into the illustration. Here is a scan of one of my favorites, Mac.

Sincerely Yours, Mac

Red Arrow Insignia

Double Dragon

Double Dragon

COMING AT YOU WITH INCREDIBLE NINJA ACROBATICS: a really late posting about a poster I designed and illustrated back in May!

This was another collaboration with the fine folks at Banana Stand Media. This time for a series of secret summer shows they are hosting at the Double Dragon Bar in Portland. I'm happy to say that after the poster's debut, it got some love on Portland Mercury's Blogtown "Poster of the Week" feature!

It may be pretty obvious to gaming nerds why there is a video game theme here... originally I was asked to do something pretty simple: draw two dragons. Which is fun n' all, but after hearing that the event was at a bar called the Double Dragon, my mind went straight to the video game connection. Therefore, I requested to do a sort of homage to Spike and Hammer, the martial arts bros you play in the 1980's game series, Double Dragon. Design inspirations came from the classic mail-order NES Konami posters of the time, as well as a promo ad of the brothers, back-to-back, showing off their guns.

Spike + Hammer

I don't think there was ever a Konami Double Dragon poster specifically... Feel free to school me ninja-style if you know better.

The shows are taking place every monday from June to September 2014, with a special unannounced band taking to the stage around 8:00 each evening. For more info here is a write up in the Portland Mercury. If you are around P-land, you should check it out! It's an awesome venue for seeing some local bands in a cozy setting, while sipping the hell out of a Ginger Margarita on a warm summer night. I will mention that this bar also has some seriously fantastic Miso Gravy Fries that I get mad cravings for now... but they don't sell this item on show nights. *whimper*

Special thanks goes to my friend Sara Proctor for nailing an impromptu modeling session in the Dark Horse parking lot, and also to Jesse Gregg for reminding me about those rad Konami posters! Thanks again to Aaron Colter, and Banana Stand Media for allowing me to get fun with it. (Some of you may recall my Arrested Development themed illustration of Buster Bluth that was also commissioned by Banana Stand. I wrote about it here: MotherBoy XXX )

Peggy and ED-E

Peggy and ED-E

This was a commission for the editorial director at Dark Horse, Davey Estrada, who has a rather awesome on-going custom of asking artists to do portraits of his favorite musicians. He tells me he's been gathering on and off since the seventies... That is a collection I'd like to see!

Aside from picking a musician we were both interested in, I had permission to art freely on this one. Davey leans towards Jazz, while I have a habit for New Wave... but it was easy for two music lovers to find common ground. When he brought up Peggy Lee I got excited right away. I have a lot of Peggy in my library, partially thanks to video games. That's right. Video games!

Sounds strange, but the first Peggy Lee tracks I ever purchased were those I heard while playing the post apocalyptic RPG Fallout: New Vegas. Nothing like being attacked by monsters in a post-nuclear Nevada while listening to Peggy croon about lost love. I should note that she isn't an actual character in the game... but the sound track is SO good it's practically it's own character. I can totally picture her in this world. Singing in run-down bars. Boozin' with the radiated ghouls. Getting jazz-sassy over a drink of gin. Layin' down hard truths: "If you were prepared twenty years ago, you wouldn't be a-wandering from door to door."



As for the floating robot in corner? Well, that's ED-E. Also known as "Eyebot Duraframe Subject E." The only model of it's kind to survive the "Great War" that brought the Fallout world to ruin. Originally designed as a sort of mobile radio, but latter repurposed into a weapon. You find him broken down in a small town in the wasteland, and bring him back to working order. ED-E was my favorite companion in the New Vegas game. Why, in a time when the human population has been downsized dramatically, would I choose to wander the wastes with a floating piece of scrap metal that can only communicate via beep-boops? I try not to dwell on the whys. Simply put, trust no one. 

I like to think that in the wake of a nuclear exchange Peggy Lee too would go the way of the lone wanderer. She'd ditch the band dynamic (humans being squishy, unpredictable companions at best) in favor of the easily portable, armor plated, one-man bandstand: DJ ED-E MON-E, dropping the beats while PEG-E rocks the mic like a vandal. Besides providing the sick tunes, ED-E would also double as a body guard because he's a mean laser-slinger with a thrilling battle cry:



Anyone else play the Fallout games and have a favorite companion, or tune to adventure too? I'd love to hear about it. I'll leave you with one more song from Miss Lee that wasn't in the game, but would have been suited to the post-apocalyptic landscape. It demonstrates why I think Pegs would be a survivor. She'd be the lady leaning on the bar, sipping a martini and taunting the burgeoning mushroom cloud with a raised eyebrow and a clearly unimpressed, "Is that all there is to an apocalypse?"



Special thanks to DAV-E for the fun commission!

pencil

Motherboy XXX

Make love in your own hand, MOTHER!

On May 26th Netflix is giving the world new episodes of Arrested Development. On May 8th come out and celebrate this fact with the rest of Portland at the Arrested Development Returns party at Holocene. There will be live music, chicken dance-offs, and Arrested Development themed artwork for sale from local artists... such as me! 

To commemorate the occasion I've made this portrait of everyone's favorite Motherboy, Buster Bluth, featuring Lucile, loose seals, and varying degrees of "juice" addiction.

A few weeks back, I was asked by Aaron Colter from Banana Stand Media if I'd like to sell a print in this show after we had swapped terrible Prince puns over Twitter. (I mean really, they were barely funny.) Which reminds me, I would like to take this moment to thank Prince. He's done so much for me over the years... from supplying the go-to karaoke classics, to landing me cool projects via twitter. What a guy. Aaron's alright too. Thanks man!

Read more about the show at PortlandPulp, and invite yourself to the party on Facebook.