Watercolor paintings for the 2010 RoCO 6x6 show

*Dusts off the blog*

It's been a while since I've posted here. Work has been good and busy for a while and with the spring quarter wrapping up at RIT I'll have more time to make new things and show you what I've been up to.

For now, check out these three watercolor paintings I made for the upcoming 6x6 benefit show at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center (aka: RoCo http://www.rochestercontemporary.org/). I've been drawing a lot of Mad Ball inspired artwork lately (primarily black and white ink pieces to ramp up to making a new Eat World based project) but I wanted to try working with some brown ink and watercolors to see what might happen for the 6x6 pieces. Below are the results.

Green Face


Purple Face


Bug Eyed Face


The ink I used is FW Acrylic Burnt Umber, and used Peerless watercolors http://www.peerlesscolor.com/. I'm typically a digital painting/color guy unless I'm screen printing something, but I really enjoyed working between ink and watercolors on these (especially since I could do it from a coffee shop or on the move). I'm definitely going to do some more pieces using this method.

I believe my three paintings (and all the paintings at the 6x6 show) are going to be on sale for $20 each. Proceeds benefit RoCo. If you're interested in picking up one of the three, get yourself to the opening this July! http://www.rochestercontemporary.org/6x6x2010.html. I think I will make prints of these faces too when I get some more print-worthy illustrations together.

I heard they have over 6,000 submissions. There will be a pile of tiny artwork to see at this show, so it should be pretty fun.

ArtOrder: Krampus

I just finished this Krampus piece for the last drawing topic of 2009 over at ArtOrder.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone. Try not to get birched!

Webcomics, Orcs and Help the Hersheys!

Blog folks! How have you been? The year is almost up and things are going as well as I could hope. If you haven't seen yet, I started a webcomic a few weeks ago.
Head over to ImaginaryMonsters.com to check it out. The story is full swing featuring the adventures and mishaps of a disembodied slimy skull, and his necromancer and wizardly friends. Let me know what you think! It's been a lot of fun so far. I'm going to be keeping this blog active to discuss work/process/news (like usual) and ImaginaryMonsters.com will be more focused on my comics, and other things I make like books and posters. So stay tuned.

I'm getting super stoked for this January to arrive since Mike and Raina will be moving to R-Town. We're going to set up some shared basement screenprinting space and I'll be able to make some new killer screen printed oddities. Stay tuned for Eat World 2, some collaborative projects between Mike Turzanski, Tom Smolenski, and I, and who knows what else! I think we don't have any shows until next spring (MoCCA and Buffalo Small Press Book Fair), so we'll have some time to cook up a stack of awesome stuff for 2010.

Here's some recent work in progress for an Empty Room Studios concept art project focused on orcs. I've been making some big bruiser orcs to start with.




In other Empty Room Studios news, lately Rick and his family have been having a rough time making ends meet. Rocky Dohmen set up a blog to spread the word and hopefully help out Rick and his family. Please go check out helpthehersheys.blogspot.com/. I know the economy and the health care system has been rough a lot of us, but it is the holidays and if you can spare some support I encourage you to do so.

Stay warm everybody. The snow is coming down...

Crimson Daggers - new studies

Here are some more of my studies from the past four days. I'm really digging these still life paintings...expect to see more!

Crimson Daggers - daily studies

About a week ago Dave Rapoza posted about getting people together (virtually) to do daily drawing studies. I decided to answer this call to awesome and try to do some routine art push ups in addition to my work routine. Below are the studies I've done so far independently and with the group. We've been studying anatomy from Andrew Loomis and doing still life paintings. I'm stoked because I've been getting up between 6 and 7am most mornings since it started. I've been a night owl for a long time with morning envy, so it's been a nice change of pace.

These are sorted chronologically, oldest at the top, newest at the bottom (ending with the pear still life I did this morning).















I'm gonna stay brave and hopefully sustain the hour or two of morning study each day. Rock on!

Dune book club: SHAI HULUD

I write SHAI HULUD in all caps because I am PUMPED! I was talking to Smo earlier and somehow after reading Dune the first time I forgot about so many details in the story. It's like reading it completely anew and I'm getting frequently surprised. So stoked.

I took a stab at creating an image of a Dune sand worm / Shai Hulud. So frickin pumped about this! Just 3ish hours in Photoshop and a volcanic hot sand worm is screaming across my desktop.

Dustin Harbin is a prince for getting me to read Dune again. Check out the discussion here! http://www.dharbin.com/blog/2009/11/dune-book-club-week-03/

Imaginary Monsters identity redesign

I've been rocking the Imaginary Monsters name since my last days at college. What grew out of the final project I did at school became my future business name and brand. I finished up at RIT in 2005 and the logotype I made for Imaginary Monsters has been left relatively unchanged for nearly five years (apart from a few new color options). It has served me well, but over the past year I've been taking stock in where I am right now as an artist and as a designer, as well as trying out new work methods to try and see what the future of my work will be. I decided that my work has changed enough over the past 4.5 years that I should update the look of my Imaginary Monsters brand to better represent who I am to colleagues, allies, and future clients. So, I think I have it mostly situated: At the top is the original Imaginary Monsters logotype, born 2005. Below it are some crazy color iterations and the less elements black and white version. Now that I can see this I feel like this is what I wanted the I.M. look to be from the get go. I still liked parts of the original mark and the type I designed for it, so I decided to keep the top "Imaginary" section. This sort of represents where I'm coming from: most of my old work was very clean edged and vector heavy. Precise and accurate, but a little sterile.

The bottom type is a totally new addition. The bulbous, fleshy, gory, booger puke type is organic and sticky. This portion of type was hand rendered and it's much closer to what I've been doing with things like Eat World lately. Something more violent and aggressive is going on, but it's an energy I'm excited to have access to and continue working with.

I hope this new mark helps to excite more people about my work rather than disturb them. It unsettles me a bit, but I'm ready to embrace that uncertainty. Life and work are getting more exciting by the day, so let's adventure together! Ha!

If you have any comments about the mark definitely let me know! Thank you world.

Here's another rationale note too:
The new Imaginary Monsters logotype also represents what I was interested as a young boy and continue to gravitate towards now. It's deliberately modeled to look like a gross out horror toy brand from the 80s you somehow missed when growing up. The 80s were such a weird time when gross was cool and monsters were everywhere in Saturday morning television, toy stores, and cereal boxes. If it involved mutants, barbarians, ghosts and ghost busters, robots, or just plain monsters it was damn cool!

Now I'm ready for the renaissance.