Seth Macfarlane For NYLON

I'm not always the best portrait illustrator out there, but for some reason whenever i do them for NYLON they turn out pretty alright. This one is Seth Macfarlane, creator of "The Family Guy" and professional bro behind Wahlberg CGI and dude humor vehicle ted. If i sound excessively snarky
about this right out of the gate, please know that it comes from years of childhood ridicule rooted in such late 80s/early 90s ted prefixed fare as "Teddy Grahams", "Teddy Ruxpin" etc, or public luminaries of the Bundy, Danson, Kazinsky and Turner varieties (i'll never forgive him for colorizing Casablanca). Gonna be damn near 100 outside today kiddies. For those about to rock...etc...

Death By Audio Mural

So this has been a hell of a summer - many things afoot over in would be sleepy Greenpoint as exemplified by the last 96 hours' metropolitan tremor and the first hurricane of the season that i'm watching drift in over the roofs of North Brooklyn as i type. So yeah, lots of action over the last 3 months in the art, music and miscellaneous departments, much of which will show up here with the attendant and typically verbose write up. Werd. 

One of this summer's projects that i'm super excited to finally share is the mural i painted over 2 days at Brooklyn's Death By Audio, one of the all-time great DIY art and music venues. A few years ago, the fine folks who manage the place began commissioning artist friends, (mainly from bands who play there often) to paint murals on the walls inside the space, and i was invited to contribute something to the walls opposite the stage that adjoin the back room to the main performance space. 

As a lot of the other pieces are relatively colorful, i knew right out of the gate that i wanted to do something stark and black and white. I was also keen to free-hand the piece with some India ink in the vein of some large pieces i'd completed almost 10 years ago at the tail end of art school but had seldom revisited since. 

Content however, was a problem. I find that a lot of illustrators and designers (myself very much included) can get both very excited but also a little gun-shy when confronted with a piece that's not only well beyond the scale of your typical editorial illustration or book jacket and also not quite as disposable. And on an old-timey Catholic guilt level, friends of mine run and maintain the venue: i wanted to be sure i created something that they (more than anyone else) wouldn't be repulsed by, sick of in a few days etc.  After hemming and hawing over ideas one of my friends who looks after the place remarked that he liked the Hokusai-derived waves i often  incorporate in my work, which was the suggestion i was looking for. A lot of the other pieces have kind of a monstery quality to them and i definitely wanted to tap into that without getting contrived. Adding a subtle, sinister eyeball to the sketch below solved pretty much all issues.

From there it was just a matter of executing the final piece. I spent a day on each side, having to prime the wall first and let it dry, then going back in with some pretty thick Japanese brushes and some ink. Thanks again to Edan, Gavin and everyone else at Death By Audio for the gracious commission and the chance to contribute some art to my favorite music venue!

Notes: Death By Audio is far and away one of the best DIY music venues going. If you're a music fan and find yourself in the greater NYC area with a night to kill, i highly recommend it. It's one of the last great venues where on any given night you can be utterly clueless about any of the bands on the bill and probably see and hear something totally unexpected and amazing. It's located at 49 S2nd between Wythe and Kent in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Check out the calendar here.

Also, please pardon the lofi iPhone photos, it was all i had available at the time. Better shots coming soon, i swear! Thanks for reading!

Priming the walls.

In progress, the fills were done with ink as well to keep the black consistent and give it a more painterly feel.

The finished piece. 

Panda Bear's "Tom Boy" for NYLON

Last month i got a call from NYLON magazine to do a full page illustration of Panda Bear from Animal Collective to accompany the review of his forthcoming solo album "Tom Boy." Not terribly accustomed to being called for portraits, i was thrilled that the direction was pretty open ended, the only real stipulation being that the piece feel "painterly." It having been a while since i sunk my teeth into some gouache, this was exciting. 

I was very familiar with Mr. Bear's "Person Pitch" album from 2007 and was given a one-time use preview stream of "Tom Boy" to listen to while working on the illustration. From what i could assess from that one listen, the new record dialed up the melancholy undertones and slowed the tempos a little from the previous release. More than ever, the music reminded me of a bizarro world post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys, which in turn set me scrambling through my record collection for the Beach Boys comp "Endless Summer," one of my favorite illustrated LP covers ever. I've attached a jpg below - how cool/creepy are the weathered Wilsons hiding in a psychedelic surf jungle?

Using this as inspiration/homage i concocted the following sketch. The other conceit of this design was that it would grant maximum leeway in terms of nailing the portrait by obscuring a lot of the face with psychedelic flowers. 

This was then translated to the final below:

Coming off the Fashion Week process and some design related work i've been up to, it felt really great to do something of the "hands dirty" painted approach again. Thanks for reading!

Animation Time Waster

My good friend graphic designer Anita Chacinska dropped by the studio late yesterday and we devoted another 30 mins to a super short animation of an ex-president being struck with a food stuff in an exotic location. #2 in our on-going series is Richard Nixon being struck with a pineapple at the pyramids. Enjoy!

From The Sketchbook.../Turkey Day

A baboon skull study in ink, gouache and spray paint. Trying to get back into more consistent sketchbook work and this was a fun lead off. A few big posts next week after the holiday, but for now Happy Thanksgiving everyone!