Brew!

I met Greg Elizondo several years ago and easily came to the conclusion that he is a pretty swell guy; if I needed any further evidence of this it was recently delivered in the form of a personal invitation to create the first art print for the launch of his exciting new brand, Hoppy Press.

Formed jointly by Greg and Paul Finn, Hoppy Press is “an online gallery specializing in beer art for home brewers and beer lovers.”   Their goal is to “create beer art that really captures the spirit of homebrewers,” but also to create exceptionally high quality print products that will stand out from the cheap, flimsy digital reproductions that clutter so many walls.  To such ends, they worked with word-class screen-printers, Industry Standard, of Portsmouth, NH who helped ensure that the prints turned out top notch – using 110# French Paper and environmentally friendly soy-based inks made to last a lifetime.

For my part, I was really excited to work on something related to one of my newest passions: brewing up boat-loads of homemade booze.  My girlfriend and I have been brewing for a bit over a year now, successfully concocting a few patches of dandelion wine (under the names “Sunshine Fuzz” and “Raccoon Baby”), as well as a very fine India Pale Ale we dubbed “Two-Headed Boy”.  I think the most exciting part for me in terms of creating this print for Hoppy Press was the opportunity to work on some fun custom typography, and to combine that with simple yet lively shapes and textures.  I’m happy with how it turned out, and I encourage you to pick up a print if you feel the same; there are only 100 of them, and having seen the final product that Industry Standard put together I can say they’re worth every penny.

Enjoy!

Fresh Eggs!

Good morning and good day!  That’s what my friend Chelsea Martin – self-proclaimed “Granola Ginger” – says to her bevy of beautiful buck-bucks (chickens) each day when she sallies forth into a sea of hen nests in search of fresh eggs to collect and sell.

Recently, Chelsea commissioned me to create for her a chicken character and a mascot for use on her website, “Adventures of a Granola Ginger” wherein she relates photos, recipes, and fun stories from her budding farm life.

Please go check it out, as well as her Etsy shop.

Overboard.

This panther is beginning to turn out scarier than intended…

Ambush on the Potomac

Here’s a silly quick’n’dirty little thin I whipped up for a Threadless Alumni coloring book. You can bet your favorite crayon that I will post about this again when the book is ready 🙂

Pictures for the Future Books

Here are a couple illustrations I did for an educational publisher in Chicago.  Fairly happy with how they turned out, especially the swimming one.

Granola Ginger

Here’s a lil mascot I did for a friend of mine, Chelsea Martin, the Granola Ginger – self-proclaimed “feisty and sassy ‘ginger’, who loves news, politics, great food, sustainable living and social media.”

Zombies! Run!

Here’s an illustration I did for the Feb issue of Wired Magazine UK.  It was a lot of fun to make and it was exciting working with the folks at Wired UK.  The illustration is about a “story-driven zombie fitness game” that you can play on your mobile device — specifically while out running… from zombies.

Cheers!

Doublebreasted Appleblossom

I made a new Mighty Mitten print recently – It’s a robin / apple blossom combo, with some other Michigan iconography to boost its potency. Anywho! You can buy prints and stuff by clicking on the image below.

Fleshed out

Hello there!

I thought it might be nice to display the finished art that came out of the “Blood Bears” sketch I posted a while back. Pretty straightforward interpretation of the sketch, which is always nice. Anywho, enjoy. I hope it’s not too gross.

I’m in on a book!

Well, I mean I guess my name is IN it.  I don’t know if that counts… I don’t think I can say that I’m in a book if the mere presence of my name is my only contribution between the covers.  Y’all would probably call righteous shenanigans on the “IN-ness” of “me” regarding said “book.”

If I had a buddy who had, by virtue of his first and last names appearing in the correct sequence somewhere, even once professed to be in a book, well, I would wait till he was talking to a pretty girl at the bar and then butt in and say, “Hey, did he tell you that he’s in a book?  You should have him tell you about that book that he’s in,” and then watch him crash and burn.

Because I am eeeeevil.  Or something.

Anyway, regardless of the highly dubious nature of my bookish inclusion, I am most certainly irrefutably incontrovertibly unmistakably ON a galldang book.  Front cover, front and center.  Of course, by “me” I mean “something I drew,” which is probably better looking than me anyway.  So that settles that.

The book in question, I must admit, probably stretches the accepted standard definition a bit, at least in terms of any literary expectations you might have, but I’m happy about it anyway.  It is, of course, the Threadless Book.  Yes, that Threadless.  Yes, the website.  Yes, the website that sells t-shirts.  Sometimes my t-shirts.  Yes, they wrote a book about it.  Why?  Because they are turning ten years old and they figured it would be a neat thing to do.  Yes, this is the book I’ve been excitedly rambling on about for the past several stolen moments of your life.

So!  Would you like to see it?  I thought so!

(my drawing is the three-eyed sea-tiger dude above the big yellow dot)

Below is Threadless founder Jake Nickell posing with a giant Threadless Book cover.

And, finally, here is the full illustration of my Sea Tiger monster dude.

The end!

More is more!

Two (2!) more designs up at Threadless now, bringing the live sub tally up to three (3!) for the week.  As always, I appreciate whatever love you can send their way.

Introducing Bumbles the HoneyBear and Chums, the, well… yuck.

And, of course, please don’t forget that PTR is still in action.  AKK-SHUN, Y’ALL.  Kapow and stuff.

Pop pun culture

Power Ranger + Texas Ranger = abomination.

New submission now highly vote-able over at Threadless.

Let’s go, team!  Hype it up, hype it up! Waaaaaaay up!

Busy as a Vespula squamosa

In the realm of “recent work,” much has gone overlooked this summer, but here are a couple projects of that are at least somewhat noteworthy.

The first is a hornet illustration for the Roswell High football team down in Roswell, Georgia, and it’s the first high school athletics mascot I’ve illustrated since I was in high school myself.  Fittingly enough, my high school mascot was also –you guessed it!– the hornets.

I customized a typeface for ’em as well.  I hear that hornets adore modified Dinova Black.

The other bloggable today is for a patch I did a little while back, which is noteworthy because I’ve never designed a patch and I’ve certainly never designed a patch to be used in the United States Air Force… !!!

Cheers to you, 440th!  Thank you, and best of luck!

The new-ness is new

New submission up for voting at Threadless.  Give it some love if you get a chance!  Thanks

Sneak peakin’

Here’s a new design I’m working on.  Any thoughts so far?

To the dogs, or whoever

So last Wednesday marked the beginning of a neat Threadless alumni group submission called Lyricize 2, in which Threaless alumns create tee designs inspired by a song, if you hadn’t guessed that bit already.

My design, called The Belly of The Beast, was based on the opening verse from Josh Ritter’s To the Dogs or Whoever (click for listenables):

Deep in the belly of a whale I found her
Down with that deep blue jail around her
Running her hands through the ribs in the dark
Florence and Calamity and Joan of Arc…

Yeah, I uh, substituted a KRAKEN for a whale or something like that. Scales–which I decided I NEEEDED–would have made no sense on a whale…

Puppy Chow!

It’s Aliiive!  The folks at RIPT Apparel have decided to kick off their Tee-rannosaurus Rex Week with my very own long lost Puppy Chow design.  But it’s only on sale today and today only, so get it while the gettin’s good.  Only $10!

Wreckin’ shit up

Child Star is now up for voting at Threadless!  Like Giraffaconda–which is still vote-able–I’ve been toying around with this one for a while, so it’s nice to finally have it finished and out in the world.

Even though he’s a no-good brat, please head over to Threadless and be kind.

Oh em gee

Seldom an animal is born on earth that is safe from the appetite of, wait for it…

A CARNIVOROUS GIRAFFE.

With, like, probably a dislocating jaw and stuff! Yeah. Good luck getting to sleep tonight knowing that at any moment you could be face-to-face with the hot, stinking maw of, one more time…

A CARNIVOROUS GIRAFFE.

Now up for voting at Threadless. So yeah, please vote 🙂

From another corner of the globe, a League of Dinosaurs…

I should have asked.  When he contacted me around Christmas, and told me about his improbably named enterprise, and told me about what he needed me to do, I should have asked Rob Farrell all about it.  “League of Dinosaurs?” I should have asked. “Where’d that come from?”

I didn’t ask.

And now, dear reader, neither of us will likely ever know how it is that an Ultimate Frisbee team somewhere in New South Wales came to be known throughout the UF-NSW:NS as the League of Dinosaurs.  I mean, there has got to be a half-decent story to go with that, right?  Or is it just me?

Anyway.  Yeah… you may have noticed an unexpected geographical reference in the above paragraph…  namely, New South Wales.  For any of my local readers who are thinking to themselves right now, “Isn’t that over by Milford?” the answer is no.  It’s in Australia.

Yes, that Australia.

So, how did a fellow living in The Mitten get mixed up with a fellow from the other side of the planet?  Easy.  The internet.  Gosh I love the internet sometimes!  Under other circumstances, the prospect of someone looking on the other side of the planet for a guy to fill some dino-illustration needs would be pretty absurd.  Apply Tube Technology to those circumstances, however, and it’s like instant Absurdity-B-Gone.  Presto!  Mitten meets Outback in no time flat, and for nothing more important than to draw up some prehistoric beasts to adorn the uniforms of some folks who like to run around catching and throwing a FlatBall™.

Speaking of which, the adornment in question:

For the record, I also like to run around catching and throwing a FlatBall™, I’m just not good enough at it to join any special league.

Also, this may qualify as my first international job, first intercontinental job, and first interhemispheric job, all in one.

Woo!!! 🙂