Shoe (Undead Illustration #1)

A dead sketch for a piece commissioned over the summer about "the running shoe of the future"... though sacrificed on the altar of budget negotiations and misunderstood emails, i really loved this drawing. The idea was that you know, it being post-2012 and all, Quetzalcoatl is back and tearing things up with an army of various horrifying monsters and mankind's only real choice in foot wear, let alone running shoes, is a viscous black paste that congeals on the sole of the foot, shielding it temporarily from the jagged and unpredictable volcanic surface of the earth of the future. Somewhat unbelievably, the client was on board with all that, but shot the whole thing down when i attempted to renegotiate the $$$. These things happen.

Three Aztec Warriors/Saturday Afternoon Free Timez

Killing time in the studio with Kim on Saturday afternoon with collaborative collages... "Three Aztec Warriors."

Vans On The Run

In the last week of September I got a call from Alexandra Zsigmond from the New York Times Op-Ed desk with a (dare i say it) exciting job regarding the rise of semi-legal private transit services in the face of public transit cut backs across the city. As per usual with Op-Ed gigs, time was tight but thanks to the marvels of modern technology i was able to get most of the sketches done in a pocket sketchbook while waiting for Pavement to come on stage at Central Park.

Once i had a rough idea of how the piece was going to sit in the blissfully unconventional shape...


... it was then just a matter of populating it with buildings and vehicles...






...which were kept pretty clear and tame in the sketch phase. Once the sketch was approved however, the vehicles had room to get a little more interesting in terms of line and mark making.







I really, really used get bummed out when i had to draw cars or trucks. I lived in fear of having to draw machinery, a total drag... now however, i crave this stuff... Anyway, a slight tweak of the layout later and voila:



...one of my favorite pieces of 2010. The final piece is available in more detail here.

Almost Album Cover

A few weeks back I got a call from the folks over at the Decon Group to put together some comps for an upcoming record by Gangrene, the collaborative outfit of Oh No and The Alchemist. Their upcoming record is called "Gutter Water" and true to both the name of the group and the title of the album, the art gang at Decon wanted something appropriately dank and grimey. This presented a unique challenge in that, while I certainly trafficked in gritty and gross back in the halcyon days of 2002-2004, it had been a while since I visited scuzz country. A quick trip back through the external hard drive and some old sketchbooks produced some self-reference from the age of post-collegiate id:







Having been talked out of a Willem Dafoe-esque method approach that would've required consuming nothing but black coffee and keeping myself awake for at least 36 hours in an effort to recreate the mind (thanks darling), i supposed i was ready to start... contrary to popular belief i'd learned a thing or 2 about Photoshop in the ensuing years and set about creating a watery cluster-cuss of detailed line drawings in as close to a digitally faked glue and tape collage as possible. Some of the ingredients:







And the end result:



I also did a version based on this old Cyclops drawing that i thought deserved more exposure:



Sadly, as you may have guessed from the post title, neither comp made the cut. It was, however, an entertaining use of a few hours trying to channel some methods and ideas that i never in billion years thought anyone would ask for again. Shine on you crazy something something.

WELCOME BACK/FOR THE FIRST TIME...

...er something like that... the Unclaimed Freight blog will LIVE AGAIN, with a new focus on process, pieces of interest that are unlikely to wind up in the general portfolio, experiments of note and whatever else I may have the time or inclination to write about. "Yeah, yeah, we've heard this before..." you say, skeptical reader, but i assure you, blogging as it were will be attacked with a renewed and improved vigor heretofore unseen in this corner of the cold and vast reaches of the internet...

Anyhow, thanks for reading and stay tuned...