Faces of 2020: "Refreshing My Anxiety"

First portrait in the series that I started right around Election Day. Man, that first week of November was a wild ride, huh? I had this paper towel I was using to clean the paint off my brushes while working on another project and I kinda liked how it looked when I was done working, like some human head twisting and coming apart. Kinda how I imagine a lot of people felt glued to their tv's, computers or phones back in early November. 

 

Faces of 2020: "Static Sensations"

Second portrait in the series. Along with George Romero's "...of the Dead" series, David Cronenberg's Videodrome has been on my mind a lot as well. It's one of those movies where you can understand if audiences viewed it as some far-fetched science fiction in 1983 because watching in 2020 feels like it was made for our current relationship with technology/media.

 

Faces of 2020: "I Can Almost Taste The Freedom"

First piece I'm posting in a series of portraits I've been working on the last month. I watched all of the George Romero "...of the Dead" series over the summer and a lot of the ways he critiques rampant consumerism in the form of a zombie apocalypse has been on my mind a lot lately. I think, just short of eating people alive, we came about as close as possible to resembling the zombies in Dawn of the Dead this year.

 

Soul Clap & Dance-Off at SXSW!

Right after I finished the Soul Clap & Dance-Off 11th anniversary poster I immediately got to work on this one for the 7th annual SXSW Soul Clap & Dance-Off closing party. Woof! Some marathon studio time this past week. Miss Lavelle White gracing this new one and she'll be doing a live performance at the closing party. When I was wrapping this up I almost put some bats carrying off the records on this one but after I ate a whole bag of chips and thought about it, I decided to hold off. Maybe I should have but it's almost comical how many posters for the city of Austin, TX have bats on them. Also, for the fans out there, I hope you'll notice we chose the yellow and brown color scheme from the Duke Records labels. 

I Won't Be Needing You Anymore

The battle of the modern cowboys has been completed! This one went through a lot of revisions and idea adjustments over the 4 months I was working on it. It bounced all over the place from purely focusing on one subject such as masculinity, business, technology, advertising, appropriation, or nostalgia and I think it managed to nestle in somewhere among all those things in the end. Enjoy all the process pics below.

Down on the corner

Still keeping the dream alive with the bodega cat drawings. I'm trying to shake it up a little bit so things don't get too repetitive here. In college I was turned on to Ronald Searle's cat books and later on I noticed Ralph Steadman had done one as well and I'm pretty sure Edward Gorey placed quite a few cats in his illustrations. There are probably a bunch of other illustrators I'm not aware of that have some affinity for drawing them as well. I guess illustrators and cats just have some weird, magical bond, or maybe it's just that we appreciate a pet that lets us work as long as we please.