VHS, Fantagraphics and Me

This is really cool! I'm going to be on a panel representing Scarecrow Video and VIVA VHS. We'll be discussing VHS and the art that covers them with a great assortment of folks at the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery on the 13th of December.

Friends of the Nib at Howard House

For all of December, drawing and paintings collected from 20+ artists that represent the Friends of the Nib will be on display and for sale at the Howard House Gallery in downtown Seattle.

Here are some photos that were taken by FOTN member Ed.



The window display that Tom Dougherty and I assembled from art featured in the show.

Cool Spaceship at Aster Coffee Lounge

The first show of Cool Spaceship designs is now up at Aster Coffee Lounge in Ballard. More shots of the exhibit at Aster can be found here on Flickr.

The reception will be on the 12th of December which is with happy hour prices on beer and wine during the Ballard Artwalk, with prepared shirts on hand with these 8 new designs for sale.

For a good look at the designs that are available to order go here to the Official Cool Spaceship blog.

Friends of the Nib at the Howard House

The cartoonist group Friends of the Nib has been invited to kick off December at Howard House Gallery in Downtown Seattle.

We were asked to have a show of our random sketches and unframed drawings. The show opens on the First Thursday of December the 3rd, and ends on the 5th of December.

Three days of beautiful raw and finished art with a cash and carry policy. The artworks will be moderately priced. You can buy something and take it home that day. Frame it and ship it to your mates or family members for one of the best Holiday presents ever.

Artists participating include: *Tom Dougherty * Bob Rini * Max Clotfelter * Max Badger * Heidi Estey * Mark Campos * Marc Palm * Stevie Van Bronkhorst * Ellen Forney * Jim Woodring * Jon Morris * Adam Watson * Kelly Froh * Scott Faulkner * Jen Ralston * Noel Franklin * David Lasky * Aubrey Mysterious * Kinoko * Sean Robinson * Dalton Webb * Dennis Driscoll * Carl Nelson * Bruce Bickford * Billis Helg * Jason Miles

Enjoy!

Annual Friends of the Nib Halloween Show

This year is a Freak Show themed show. This is going to be SO good. Banner art above by Mary Woodring.

I'm going to be having a diorama of a sideshow mermaid. Here's just the banner part of it.

Freak Show Banner

A digital banner which is just part of the Mermaid diorama that I'm putting together for the Friends of the Nib Halloween Show at the Cafe Racer.
Opening October 29th 2009

Grand Illusion Spook Show Trailer

Hot off the heels of the Sex Beast Attack! animation I threw together this trailer for Seattle's Grand Illusion's Spook Show Spectacular.

I used Photoshop and Flash 4.

Sex Beasts Attack! Seattle! Total Victim! scene 02

Sex Beasts Attack! Seattle! Total Victim! scene 02
Originally uploaded by swellzombie

Vulvoids Attack Alki Beach!
A scene from the 1minute 20 second animation submission to Seattle's amateur porno contest HUMP.
Watch this video on Vimeo. Video created by Marc J Palm.

Uploaded by swellzombie on 28 Sep 09, 11.32AM PDT.

Entertainment Show VS Cancer poster

The Entertainment Show is going up against Cancer itself with the might of Comedy, Movies, and Music!! This event is a benefit for our friend Chris Cavanaugh who is currently fighting off the bastard that is Cancer.

If you want to help, donate to Cancer Bites the Big One.

Also prints are available for sale. Any profits made will be directly donated to the Cancer Bites the Big One cause.



Image is based off of fantasy book covers. I used a pencil drawing of the battle, photoshop and painter to make it pretty.

VIVA VHS T-shirt!

With the ever increasing joy that this poster brings to people, doing a t-shirt is just obvious.

Contact me at: swellzombie@gmail.com for ordering.

One Nite Only Part II

A poster that I did for Kevin and Travis of the Entertainment Show fame. When I came up the the daredevil idea, this style of art came with it. It's not my usual way of doing things, but it's how I thought it would best be done. What Kevin suggested for the poster was "Simple and Epic". So... daredevil stuff is pretty much that. It was either this or dragons and unicorns. Cliche and tired. I also didn't want to use the red white and blue colors, that's why it's pink and green.

VIVA VHS

I recently finished this poster for Scarecrow Video's upcoming VIVA VHS show at the Northwest Film Forum.

With around 100 different scans of over-sized VHS box art I made a collage of some of best or most interesting bits off of them. Then framed it all up with a classic grid and put together a pseudo-airbrushed logo for the event.

Here's a list of the covers I used. I wish I could have designed this for a mural, there are so many great covers that I wanted to use.
Also, these are all available to rent at Scarecrow Video

America 3000
Assisi Underground
ATOR the Fighting Eagle
Avenged
Avenger X
Black Six
Blind Rage
Blood Voyage
Brain 17
Cannibal Island
Chimpo's Wild Animal Safari
Clue According to Sherlock Holmes
Conqueror of the World
Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon
Duel of Champions
Equalizer 2000
Executioner of Venice
Executioner's Song
Exterminators of the Year 3000
Fabulous Fleischer Folio
Falcon
Fangs
Fast Money
Fear
Fearmaker
Feast for the Devil
Filmgore
Flying From the Hawk
Frank & Tony
Frankenstein '80
Freedom Road
Galyon the Indestructible Man
Gang War
Ghost Dance
Gold Wing
Guerrilla Girl
Headless Eyes
Heroes in Hell
Hollywood Clowns
Hot Touch
Human Duplicators
Kingfish
Metallica
Metiche Y Encajoso
Ms. Stiletto
One Shoe Makes It Murder
Riding High
Safari 3000
Thirteen Chairs
Succubare
Zombiethon

What My Future Looks Like

Somewhat foetus-like

Taxidermy Squirrel forms from VanDyke's Taxidermy Supply

My new heat press for t-shirt transfering. I'm going to be making shirts like they're out of style. Maybe they are...

Star Trek Custom Laptop

So I spent the girth of my day off putting an old school Star Trek control panel on my laptop. Magic of plastic!

Creature of the Week submission 01

So for Conceptart.org's Creature of the Week challenge I came up with this nasty little bugger.
The idea for the creature was "Cthonic Psychic Sucker". That's all you had to go on so above it the final and below are the initial steps I took to get there.

Here's a description of this guy too:
"One of many creatures that are birthed from a greater Cthuthian creature that produces various offspring fit for gathering psychic energy. This leech-like creature works as a receiver and carrier of psychic energy. The worm finds a host rich in psychic energy. I first latches itself to the host, using it’s upper and lower tentacle-like areas. Protruding from the opening at its head are psychic sensitive mandibles that extract bio-electrical energy. It receives energy through the bulb located at the center of its frontal orifice. That energy is then held in glands on either side of its upper body. Once enough energy is received, it leaves the host alive or dead then returns to its “mother” and unloads its found energy. After unloading its energy to the “mother” the rest of its organic matter is then reabsorbed and recycled into another Cthunt worm. "


my first sketches, just fooling with ideas

the sketch that I felt was about right

this was phase 2, placing colors

phase 3 tighting colors and details

Drift Art Show

Drift - an art show at the Cafe Racer. Opening Thursday May 14th 2009.
Read more about it on the Stranger's Slog!

This show is going to be cool. The Friends of the Nib got together and put in a bunch of really great drawings and some paintings. These are going to be put up all over the front area of the Cafe Racer as if it was our studio. Ideas abound! Good or bad, thrown all over the place so that one's eyes can pinball around the room and be totally over stimulated. Most everything will be up for sale with prices ranging from $5 to $50. So please stop by and get eye full.
So this will make the 3rd art show I have work in this month! I'm all over the place. I tell ya' though, it's like feast or famin. First it was APW's On the Record, then Muppet Rawk and now Drift. Each one will be displayed till the end of the month.
Below are a few pieces that I came up with today for the show. I referenced some photos that happened to be taken by Coop. I was just searching for "girls holding things" on Flickr. and found some hot women holding vinyl toys. Who'd have guessed it was Coop who took the pictures?

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Cheap Thrills with Muppets Rawk

So after weeks of preparation, research, sketching, inking and coloring... I'm finally done with my piece for the upcoming Muppet Rawk II group show at Ouch My Eye Gallery.

View LARGER HERE and with notes that link to the Youtube clips I used as reference.

For this show artists had to take an existing rock album cover and re-image it with Jim Henson's Muppets. You could use any Muppet and it the art had to be 12" x 12".

When I got to join in on this I searched a little bit for some cool covers. The previous show had some gems in them see here. I knew that I had to do something really cool. So when I ran across Cheap Thrills over and over in lists of the "best rock covers ever". Someone had to do this cover with Muppets! I wasn't sure if I could really do it, but I thought I'd bite off more than I could chew and do it myself.




Last month was the busiest I've ever been. I chose to paint 5 vinyl records by the end of the month and do 4 weekly comics, plus I threw on a cover for a demo CD for the Seymours. On top of all that recreate Robert Crumb's Cheap Thrills cover with Muppets. What the hell was I thinking? Whatever it was it worked. I made it and I feel fucking great about it.
Currently one of my own favorite pieces and one of the most ambitious pieces I've ever done.

I want to THANK:
Tom Dougherty (for leading me to this event and all the encouragement that he gave me along with the great pat on the back when I was done), Ouch My Eye Gallery (for even having this great idea for a show), YouTube (whom without all those references would not have been made possible. I like the Muppets a lot, but I didn't know enough to fill all those titles and word balloons), Angela Stork (for loaning me her original Cheap Thrills album cover for me to make transfers from. Have fun out east.), Annie's Art & Frame (for framing it for me quickly and cheaply), and obviously Jim Henson and R. Crumb who have always been influences.

"Art on Record" APW gallery pieces

NOW AVAILABLE FOR SALE ONLINE!

At the tail end of last month I was invited anonymously by APW gallery in Long Island to participate in their "Art On Record" art show. The deal is, you paint on a vinyl record. Nuff' said. So to represent myself the best I can, I chose to do gross weird erotic mutant women. Why? I don't know. I'm a weird-o... I had other ideas but I ran out of time. I'm also doing a re-creation of a famous album cover with Muppets. So I had to knock something out by the 27th.

Music to Mutate By...

All pieces are acrylic on vinyl, measuring 12" x 12".

Below are the original drawings that I did. I drew them in my sketch book and it turned out they were the perfect size for the records. So after laying down the gesso on the vinyl I covered the backs of these drawings in pastel and transfered them on to the record. I had to do this twice, once for the original outline which I filled with a flesh tone and then again so that I could get the details. I used photos of a beautiful model named Jenya D for reference. She's one of the most terrific MET-ART models out there. I appologize to her and the photographer for creating such gross versions of their work.

And... this isn't my first mutated erotic women set. I did some strange art on glass a few years ago that featured similar things. Take a look at my Flickr page for pics of those.

CD cover for the Seymours

My good friend Satchel Jones out in New York, has a relatively new band called the Seymours with his friend Becca. They're getting ready to promote they're new demo and Satchel asked me to put out some artwork for it.
They say that they're very fond of skunks and old rotary telephones. So with that in mind, I came up with the above image.

Covered Blog Submission

I found the Covered Blog via Drawn.ca and it got me really excited to do one of my own. So I looked through some covers at Cover Browser. I had thought about doing something with monster or superheroes but then I found Girls' Love Stories. These were just classic and different from what had already been "covered". So I chose issue 139. I liked the colors and instantly imagined how I would keep it stylish and then highten the realism. I like the Mary Jane Watson looking girl on the original but wanted to have a cuter, less melodramatic female. I also made the decision to make the towel blank. I like the design on it, but I felt that it was just way too happy and distracting from the color scheme.

I went at this recreation with everything I had. I did pencil drawings of the girl, the background folks, then pieced them together and colored them in Photoshop. I then traced all the graphic aspects in Illustrator.

I thought I'd throw out the original sketches as well.