I remember my great-aunt having a sign in her window which said this. I was telling my neighbors about it today and it inspired me to mock up a poster.

Lesson

Quick illustration I did for this week's Illustration Friday. The theme was "lesson."

Rock and Fashion

(this really looks better bigger; go on, give it a click)

My friend Angela Holstrom, formerly of Angel Eyes, started a new brand recently -- Frankie Four. She is having a launch party on the 14th of this month, and asked me to design the flyer, which I did today. Wonderful will be bringing their brand of sunny, melodic psychedelia to the show, along with Weezer cover band, Teezer. And if that wasn't enough, my wife Erin will be one of the gals modeling swimsuits! Really fun stuff, so glad I got to be involved.

Comic Labs

(click to embiggen)

My pal Kevin Cease designs websites catered specifically to the stand-up comedy crowd, and wanted a t-shirt to promote his company, comiclabs.com. He had conceived a character already, sort of a mad-scientist-y guy, but other than a few basic details (green skin, fangs, cybernetic eyeball, lobster claw), he gave me carte blanche (French, meaning "white carte") to do pretty much whatever I wanted with the design. He loved everything the first time around, from sketch to final product, with no revisions. What a dream client. Anyway, if you're into the stand-up comedy scene (or heck, even if you're not) and in need of a website, go check out Kevin's site here.

United State of Electronica!

I just did the cover art for the new U.S.E. single, "Japan Song," which you can check out here. It's a great tune and all the donations go straight to Japan through MercyCorps. From the band:

This is our love song to Japan, written during U.S.E's first Japan tour in spring of 2005. When the tsunami disaster struck in March, we gathered together with friends and family to record this song for our beloved brothers and sisters throughout the Land of the Rising Sun.

Consider making a donation if you dig the song, or if you haven't helped out yet. Thanks!

Drawing is hard

Trying out some new brushes for inking. Opened up flickr to get some inspiration, and one of the first images was my buddy Eric, making a weird face. I didn't do a very good job of conveying his expression, but it's something like...slightly comical thoughtfulness. Something that is always kind of difficult for me is capturing the angle of someone's gaze. For example, here it looks like Eric is looking directly at the camera, but in the original photograph, he's looking slightly up, as if he is thinking, or in mid-eye-roll.

Also, you might notice that the whole thing looks slightly stretched, vertically. It's because I was seated back in my chair as I drew it, so I was looking at the paper from an angle as I drew. When I finally moved to a position where I was looking directly down at the drawing (too late to start over, of course), I realized it was a little funhouse-mirrored. This happens to me way too often.

Ink in sketchbook; tinted in Photoshop

Venom!

Wow...going through some stuff in my studio and I ran across this 10-year-old drawing I did of Venom, for a long-since abandoned project I was working on with these weird guys I met...well, it's a long story, but I will say that the concept was a book of poetry based on Marvel characters. Apparently Marvel had some interest! Although, I never saw any proof of this. Anyway, the idea here is that the alien symbiote, Venom, chooses a human host from his closet, much as a human might choose an outfit. Ooh, spooky. I was really trying to shoehorn my style into something Marvel might publish. It's always sort of weird to see myself drawing like this. I'm not sure I have the guts to post my drawing of Wolverine cutting paper dolls...

Dancing Dinosaur

More sketchbook stuff. Ink and watercolor.

Evil Valentine

Detail from the sketchbook. Ink, watercolor, and gouache.

Based on a non-sequitur joke my buddy Kyle says in his stand-up comedy. Drawn and colored in Photoshop.

Kyle presents Justin