Prince of Dogs Print, Monogrammed and Watermarked Paper, and a Book!

Well, I spent all of yesterday making this print, so being able to laze around in bed and write about it now feels pretty good. The prince of dogs doesn't really reference anything, but I guess it's part of a story in my mind. To me, it's about finding something awesome out about somebody that you never would have thought would be there. Fun fact: this is the first time I've used my own unaltered handwriting in a print. I wrote the words in the banner as a placeholder, but I ended up liking how they looked in my handwriting, so I went ahead and inked it in.



Changing gears, here are some watermarked pieces of paper I made by attaching a fun foam watermark (hi tech, I know) onto the mold before the paper sheets were formed. Perhaps it says something about my ego that all of them have my initials on them. Looks like I need to start writing some letters!



Here's the same guy on lighter abaca paper:



What kind of animal is this? I honestly don't know. A friend suggested "foxboar."



Here is some paste paper that I made and hand-stamped (which explains the wonkiness of the little skulls, I suppose.)





Here is a book I made recently. If anyone has any suggestion for what to fill it with, I'd love to hear! I have a couple ideas, but I'm a bit at a loss, as I feel like this is one of the girlier looking things I've made. I made all of the paper in this book except the cover paper. The first and last pages are cotton rag paper (shown in a previous post if you're interested) and all the middle pages are abaca.







Aaaand a Monday figure drawing bonus:



Whew!

Rock Idols Print

Hello everyone! Here's a print I did a few weeks back. I wanted to do something based on the concept of idolizing rock stars. The middle part is a few sheets of mylar I printed on, and the "frame" portion is regular paper. I love music history, so this was super fun to draw. I feel like the design and color choice could have been a lot better, but hey. Clockwise from the top, it's John Lennon, Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, Sid Vicious, Nancy Spungen, David Bowie as a sphinx and Ziggy Stardust, Jimi Hendrix, Iggy Pop, Elvis Presley, and Kurt Cobain.



And details of my favorite parts, Iggy Pop and Sid Vicious:

Entomological Lunch Trays

All right, to put a cap on last week's series of guerilla art, here's one last project: lunch trays printed in the theme of perhaps my favorite of all scientific branches: entomology, or the study of insects. I borrowed three trays from my dining hall for awhile, printed these three beetle specimens (the Pleasing Fungus Beetle, the Goliath Beetle, and one type of Tortoise Beetle) onto it, and returned them to the wild for dining hall patrons to enjoy. Here's what they look like:



And here they are being returned to the dining hall wilderness:



The tray return:

Street Art Beehive!

Here's a mini weekend update, hurray! So about a couple days ago I went around downtown and grabbed a bunch of the band/apartment/new album out posters. Then I screenprinted on them, and last night, I returned them to the wild. I printed a beehive with bees on one of the big poster kiosks, and I scattered smaller posters printed with bees on them around the rest of town. It made sense to me, with the kiosks being kind of a cluster of information while little lone pieces of information were floating around town solo. So here we go:

Here's the big kiosk with the beehive:



And the cooler, "at night" shot:



I probably put up around 20 "just a bee or two" posters, so I didn't want to put pictures of ALL of them up here, but here's a sample:







Sorry, Rita:

Figure Drawings and Tape Cover

Hello again! Before I start this post I wanted to say thanks to everyone who's been commenting...it's really nice to get feedback and to know people are reading. You guys rock!

That said, I thought I'd try to classy this blog up after Monday's toilet paper post with art that's a little more "traditional." Here are some figure drawings I've done recently; these took anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes and were drawn from life. I feel as though figure drawing is one area I need to improve upon...that said, getting up the motivation to work on it is like pulling teeth.

This model kept falling asleep...not so good when all I was drawing was her face, haha!







This poor woman never got a proper face:

Changing gears, my chum Alex, who runs DIY tape label Foxpop, asked me to do line art for a tape cover for musician Little Fyodor. I was asked to draw him riding on a bomb...this was super fun to draw. Looks like a lot of Tank Girl influence snuck in there.

Look out for more street art adventures and prints this week!

Toilet Paper as Street Art, Paper Pulp Painting, and Wrist Cuffs from Ties!

Hello everyone! It's quite dreary in Georgia today, which makes it the perfect time to lie around, read comic books, and update my trusty blag.

I've always been a huge fan of street art and graffiti, so I was pretty excited when I received my current screen printing project: find objects outside, in public places, etc., bring them back to the studio, print something on them, and put them back where I found them. So here is the first in a series of probably 4 things that I have rescued, modified, and returned to its natural habitat. Today's street art treat is my very own hand-printed toilet paper. It has long been my dream to be so repulsively rich that I can hire somebody just to fold all of my toilet paper into intricate origami, but, assuming that probably won't happen, I went with the next best thing and printed origami instructions on a whole roll of toilet paper. The idea is that you follow the instructions on one sheet and fold the actual origami with the sheet below it to make your very own origami cat face. Here's the roll of paper, waiting in a public bathroom for somebody to use it:

(yes, there is even a cat taking a swim in the toilet there.)

A closeup of the instructions (unfortunately, my favorite part, in which the participant is implored to "use" their new creation, got cut off):

The result of folding one of the sheets:

Truly, I am a classy sort. Look out for more modified objects throughout the week! In other news, here is a paper pulp painting I tried out recently. All the pigment is added by squirting dyed paper pulp directly onto a freshly formed sheet of paper (the thin black lines are made of thread.) For a medium that seems pretty difficult to control, I had a lot of fun with this...it was like kindergarten all over again. I wanted this to look a bit like a grimy poster you'd find in a venue somewhere...



And one more thing before I enjoy the rest of the rainy day: here are some wristcuffs I made a long time ago but have just gotten around to uploading. They're made from the ends of neckties and buttons that I found in a lot of random places:



So long!