the flying pitilli brothers

Cut It Out!

2012-01-24T12:19:00.001-05:00

TOM - I’ve been having fun experimenting with some collage elements in my work recently. I always find it refreshing to introduce a new technique that I don’t know much about in order to breathe new life into the work. Here are a couple examples of some of the work I’ve been cooking up with that approach. Hope you dig it!

Mother Nature's Son

2012-01-18T23:06:00.003-05:00

JAMES - Ok, so this is a new print that I'm really excited about, and I thought I'd offer a little look into the process of the creation of it.

The print is a part of the show "Every Mistake: Art Inspired by Beatles Lyrics" at the new Blank Space Gallery in Milford, CT, which opens this Friday night, January 20. Oh, and the first 40 people to enter the show, and the first 10 people to purchase $100 or more, will get a free print that I made (also Beatles inspired, of course). Details for the show are here: https://www.facebook.com/events/118222494959736/

Now, on to the process. This one is pretty involved, using some new techniques I've been working on, so I'll spare you the boring bits and mostly let the pictures do the talking.

I chose "Mother Nature's Son" since it's one of my very favorite Beatles songs (Paul, baby!) - and sparks such beautiful imagery in my imagination.

It all starts with a sketch, as always. But instead of this being just a big ole' drawing, it's really gonna wind up being a little world that I create out of construction paper and cardboard and stuff - so the sketch is just a reference for where everything should eventually wind up.

Then I made the model of the little world. It took forever, but lots of fun getting busy with the scissors. I made the model modular, so that each plane could be removed and photographed separately. This helped tremendously later on.

Then it was time to photograph it. I set up some lights, picked a lens, and snapped away.

This is what the final photo looked like in Photoshop.

Next I needed to draw the Mother Nature's Son, and all his little animal friends - as well as the lettering for the lyric quote at the top. Lots of revisions, as you can see.

Once I got all the drawings the way I wanted them, I scanned them into the computer and began to combine them with the photograph. This is a Photoshop screen-shot from when I was putting it together.

From here I made all the color separations to make a 9-color screen print. Films were made, screens were burned, ink was squeegee'd, and after what seemed like forever, the final screen prints were done. Here are some close-ups of the prints:

It's an 18" x 24" Nine-Color Screen Print, on 100lb White French Paper, a Signed & Numbered Edition of 85. They'll be available for sale at the show exclusively until January 27, in which case any remaining copies will be sold online. Follow me on Facebook or Twitter to keep up on them.

Thanks for reading (and listening, below)!

Four New Posters

2012-01-11T22:36:00.002-05:00

JAMES - I'm really excited to show off 4 new posters that are now available on my site.

The first two posters are for the always awesome Lucero as they did shows for their New Year's Eve Tour and their annual "Lucero Family Christmas" shows. The NYE poster is titled Angel On My Shoulder, Devil Inside My Heart and is a 5-color screen print, including Metallic Silver Ink for the wings, 18" x 24" on 100lb White French Paper, Signed & Numbered Edition of 145 - now available in the store for $20 each.
http://www.jamesflames.com/pages/STORE-LuceroNYE.html

The "Family Christmas" poster is titled Party At Steve's House! and is a 5-color screen print, 18" x 24" on 100lb Blue French Paper, Signed & Numbered Edition of 75 - now available in the store for $20 each. There are very few of these available.

http://www.jamesflames.com/pages/STORE-LuceroXmas.html

Next up is a poster for afro-rockers Toubab Krewe for their New Year's Eve Tour, and is titled Decoded. The print is a 4-color screen print, 24" x 18" on 100lb White French Paper, Signed & Numbered Edition of 150 - now available in the store for $20 each.
http://www.jamesflames.com/pages/STORE-ToubabKreweNYE.html

Finally is my poster for Kevin Devine's Fall Tour in support of his absolutely amazing new album Between the Concrete and the Clouds. I wanted this to be a continuation of the narrative begun in my last poster for Kevin Devine (see it here: http://www.jamesflames.com/pages/STORE-TheresAWorldAwakeOutside.html). This poster is a 7-color screen print, 18" x 24" on 100lb White French Paper, Signed & Numbered Edition of 175 - now available in the store for $20 each.

http://www.jamesflames.com/pages/STORE-BetweenTheConcreteAndTheClouds.html

Thanks as always for reading, and Happy 2012! Lots of new stuff coming up, especially for [Adult Swim]/Metalocalypse fans, and for all you Beatles fans. Stay tuned...

Drawing People In NYC

2012-01-10T19:14:00.001-05:00

TOM - As an exercise in artistic discipline and just plain ol' havin' fun, I've been carrying around a sketch book very regularly. On trains, at cafe's, in waiting rooms, bookstores, wherever. Over the years I have fallen in and out of this habit, currently I'm in it and having a good time. This time around, to avoid freezing up, I purposely buy really cheap, flimsy sketchbooks for no more than $3 each. The point is not to set out to make a good drawing or to have some sort of pretty object that I can carry around with me, the point is to make different types of marks, strengthen my eye-hand coordination and keep the juices flowing. I'm in love with these little sketchbooks you can get at the MUJI store in Soho. They're small, have smooth paper and super cheap, perfect. My current sketchbook is filled with some pretty bad drawings, but these are the few where I felt most confident in my approach, mainly because I wasn't thinking about the drawing when I was drawing it.

Thanks for reading and happy 2012!

Un-Blogged in 2011

2011-12-27T10:02:00.000-05:00

'Boxer 1' (Linoleum Block Print)

TOM - As 2011 comes to a close, I thought this would be a good opportunity to post some stuff that I haven't gotten a chance to post here on the blog. So often, I'm posting new work and process pics on my Facebook and Twitter, that I don't get the chance to post everything here. So, here's a quick look at some pieces that were un-blogged in 2011, hope you dig 'em!

'Boxer 2' (Linoleum Block Print)

Illustration for Bicycle Times

Cover for Philadelphia City Paper

Illustration about Mayweather/Ortiz fight.

'Sonny Rollins' (Linoleum Block Print w/ Photoshop)

True Story

2011-12-19T12:36:00.000-05:00

TOM - I recently created a short, three page comic about a family I encountered riding the train a couple years ago. We never spoke, and I never saw them again, but for some reason, I never forgot them. It was one of those unexpected and positive experiences that sort of catch you off guard. Just from simply sitting across from them and observing, they changed the way I viewed parenthood and family life. Read the full comic here.

The original art from this comic is now up at LaunchPad in Brooklyn, NY, along with some very talented cartoonists work. Check it out if you're in the area. Thanks for reading!

Some Stuff From My Sketchbook

2011-12-15T09:28:00.000-05:00

TOM - I haven't posted any sketchbook stuff in a long time, so before the year is out, here's a small look at my current sketchbook. Hope you dig it!

New Print And New Art Show!

2011-11-21T11:22:00.001-05:00

TOM- Things have been really busy around here lately and I'm lovin' it! I've been cooking up a ton of new images for my upcoming art show entitled, 'We From Here'. The show is going to be a multi-media event, with all artwork provided by me and a musical component provided by my friends, Brian Bonz and Mike Strandberg. It's going to be a celebration of being Brooklyn natives as well as artists.

Last week I had a great time in the silkscreen studio, printing up a brand new image for the show. It's a five color print and it measures roughly 19x26ish. I'm really happy with the way this turned out, I think it really embodies an overall vibe of Brooklyn, at least through my eyes. Gotta love the hoop earrings!

Here are some detail shots of the print. These will be for sale( along with many other new prints) the night of the show, Dec. 2nd in Brooklyn. If you're not in the NY area, or can't make the night of the show, I am selling these online. If you're interested, please contact me at contact@thomaspitilli.com

If you are in NY on Dec. 2nd, then you should come to this, it's going to be a blast! All the info is on the flyer above. Hope to see you there, I think I'm going to wear a tie!

OC Weekly Cover

2011-11-08T18:34:00.001-05:00

TOM - Last month, I was contacted by Laila over at OC Weekly to illustrate a cover for them. I always enjoy working with OC Weekly and I was super excited to do my first cover for their paper. The story was a sad one, about a mother being deported back to Mexico, leaving her teenaged children to live alone in the United States and their journey through that experience.

There was a lot of emotion in this story and I knew I wanted to depict that sense of separation and longing as best I could through my illustration. Laila and I discussed some ideas over the phone, then I hit the drawing board and sketched some stuff up, here's what I came up with:

I was really excited to take any one of these to finals, felt pretty strongly about all of them actually. I liked the idea of somehow representing 'America' somehow as a character in the image, so I tried several attempts at that which I think forced me into a more graphic approach. Pretty obvious as to which one they chose:

And here's a look at the final art. I'm super happy with the way it came out, hope you are too!

I've been real busy lately, cookin' up a lot of new work, be sure to follow me on twitter and facebook for all the up to date happenings!

Thanks for reading!

MoogFest 2011 Print

2011-11-02T18:17:00.000-04:00

"Moog Mountain"
18x24 Three-Color Screen Print (Including Metallic Silver)
Edition of 75. Signed & Numbered

JAMES - I was psyched to once again be asked to create a screenprint for the SYNTH art show, as part of this past weekend's MoogFest here in Asheville. My piece, titled "Moog Mountain", is a 3-color screen print, featuring Metallic Silver ink and is now available on my website for $25 each: www.jamesflames.com/store/MoogMountain.html

Here's a shot of the print on display at the SYNTH art show:

And here are a few more photos:

Detail Photo

Get one now - $25 each: www.jamesflames.com/store/MoogMountain.html

Dallas Observer Cover

2011-10-24T10:54:00.001-04:00

TOM - A couple weeks ago, I was contacted by Alexander Flores of Dallas Observer to illustrate a cover for them featuring a whole bunch of accomplished Dallas musicians, including Erykah Badu and Rhett Miller of the Old 97's. It was a super cool gig and I was glad to finally get to work with Alex. Unfortunately, during the production of this cover, my computer crashed! Thankfully though, I was able to borrow a friends computer for the scanning and coloring of the final image and everything went to press right on time, whew!

Here's a look at some of the process that went into making this cover.

This is an early sketch idea. The cover called for pretty much, just a group shot, so placement and composition became my main focus. I wanted to have Erykah up front, she's probably the most well known of the bunch and also the most visually interesting ( I was really looking forward to drawing her fro!)

Then we decided on this one, I really liked the idea of having Erykah's hair somehow incorporated in the logo itself, as if the logo were etched out of it. After a few failed attempts on Erykahs likeness, I had to scrap that angle all together it and try again. I think a big part of growing as an illustrator is being able to admit when something just isn't working and being able to scrap it and start again, no matter how much time you already put in. If it's not working, it's not working.

I was simultaneously working on some interior illustrations of all the musicians and thought that version of Erykah would work much better on the cover. A bit more iconic and less of a full frontal shot. It worked!

Got to work on all the other characters and the assembly begun!

Trough several revisions and a broken computer, I'm very happy with the way it all came together.

Here's a quick look at another interior illustration I did of singer/songwriter, Sarah Jaffe.

Thanks for reading, more covers on the way!

"The Divide" Comic Book

2011-10-17T12:36:00.002-04:00

JAMES - Oh man, I can't tell you how psyched I am about this one. Last month I was asked by the folks at Mondo to create a 12-page full-color comic book for the upcoming Xavier Gens directed movie, "The Divide." Not only that, but it would debut at the New York Comic Con this past weekend, one of the biggest comic events of the year (and this part I didn't even know about until I was done drawing and coloring!).

The comic serves as the back-story of one of the characters in the movie, Wendy, and her mother - sort of setting up the events that take place in the movie, as well as a peek into the untold fate of "Wendy" beyond what the movie shows. I got to work right away. The pic at the top of this post is the cover. Here are some photos that show my process for the rest of the comic, step by step, focusing on a climactic two-page spread - one of my favorite scenes. Click the photos to see them larger:

It all started with these note pages, with the tiniest little sketches on them. The Director Xavier sent a very simple and rough outline of the story that needed to be told - so I had to figure out how to turn it into 12 pages and make it flow like a story. Everyone was cool with having no real dialogue in the book, so while it saved me having to actually "write", I did have to make sure the pictures could be strong enough to tell the story by themselves.

Next I made a better rough sketch of each page, which I drew actual size of the comic so that I could fee it out better (the final comic is a mini-comic - or "ashcan" - so I needed to take the size into account of how I'm going to compose my scenes).

Then I started drawing pencils for each page. I drew them almost double size - which is still kinda small for me, but after so many days in a row of drawing at that size, I was pretty locked in. I drew all the pages in pencil first before beginning any inks - this was probably the longest step in the whole process, because I was still making decisions about certain scenes and characters.

Next, it was time to put some ink on these pages. There are three acts to the story, and each one has it's own pace and vibe. The first act is very calm, domestic, and sad; the second act is all adventure (these pages are the end of the second act); the third act is cold and clinical. So while I kept my ink-style consistent throughout, I wanted to make variations for each act so that the style becomes an important voice in the storytelling.

Here's a close-up of the final inks for page 9.

And here is the final page 8-9 spread. I colored everything in Photoshop, and made all the necessary additions at this stage: the exciting panel borders on page 9, the sparks shooting out on page 8, the lasers for the guns, and lots of other stuff throughout the other pages. I kept my color palette very simple and consistent throughout - almost approaching it like I do with my screen prints - but I made good use of filters to set the tone again for each act.

This was one of the coolest things I've ever worked on, and I'm so proud of how it came out. Big thanks to Mitch at Mondo for putting this one together. The movie will be out in January 2012 (on my birthday, no less), and hopefully these comics will make return appearances at any future advance screenings. In the meantime, here's the trailer. Thanks for reading.

Gigposters Book - Volume 2

2011-10-14T13:42:00.000-04:00

JAMES - Ok, this is one of those things that just blows my mind. I just got my advance copy of the new Gigposters Book (Vol. 2), which I am excited to say has a couple pages of my art in it. And as I flip through the whole book, I feel so incredibly humbled and honored to be in the company of so many of my favorite artists.

For fans of Vol. 1, the format is the same - it's a large, oversized book with perforated pages giving you 101 ready-to-frame posters (as it says in the cover). You can pre-order the book now, and you get a free screen print with each order - trust me, you want one of these: http://gigposters.com/book/

Here are shots of my pages:

New Prints & Posters

2011-10-06T00:18:00.000-04:00

"Born Bad"

"Mixtape Make-Up"

"Asheville, NC"

JAMES - It been a REALLY busy end of summer, working on all sorts of exciting projects. I can finally start rolling out the first bunch - starting with these three.

First is my Garbage Pail Kids print, for the recent show at Gallery 1988. Those old cards and stickers were such a huge part of growing up for me, and it's no secret that I actually got my name from the original card (#317A) of "James Flames" - a little dude eating hot sauce and spitting fire. Well, when I was asked to be a part of the show, there was no question which character I would portray. The title of this one is "Born Bad", and I'll be damned if he ain't. The artwork and printing on this might be the work I'm proudest of to this point - the print is quite a killer in person, if I do say so. An 8-color screen print, 18" x 24" on 100lb White French Paper, Signed & Numbered Edition of 100 - they're available now in my store for $30 each: http://jamesflames.com/pages/STORE-GarbagePailKidsJamesFlames.html

Next is a poster I created for the Hopscotch Music Festival in Raleigh, NC. Featured as part of the "Posterscotch" poster show at Amplified Art Gallery, I thought I'd get a little sentimental with this one. The title is "Mixtape Make-Up" - an homage to the days when a $2.99 blank tape and an afternoon with your records offered a better alternative to the sappy "I'm sorry" love letter. The print is based on semi-transparent colors overlapping each other, including the Black, which is thin enough to see the colors underneath peaking through. A 4-color screen print, 18" x 24" on 100lb White French Paper, Signed & Numbered Edition of 75 - they're also now available in my store for $20 each:

http://jamesflames.com/pages/STORE-MixtapeMakeup.html

Last but not least is a print I created as a tribute to the town I've called home for the past 4 1/2 years, Asheville, North Carolina. I debuted these prints at the LAAFF festival in Downtown Asheville about a month ago, and it was great to see people connect with the artwork the same way that I connect to this town through it. Depicting the almost fairy-tale town nestled within the almighty Blue Ridge Mountains as the French Broad River roars to a waterfall end, these are all my favorite parts of living here. The hand lettering is the finishing touch to bring it all home. A 5-color screen print, 24" x 18" on 80lb Cream Spekletone French Paper, Signed & Numbered Edition of 65 - these are available in my store for $20 each: http://jamesflames.com/pages/STORE-AshevilleNC.html

Thanks for reading. I should have more new stuff in another week or two. In the meantime, back to work...

Jet Propulsion - San Diego's Night & Day Magazine Cover

2011-10-03T23:54:00.001-04:00

JAMES - I was asked to illustrate another cover for the San Diego Union Tribune's "Night & Day" magazine. It's always great working with their talented art director Peter Nguyen, and when he mentioned the lead story was about the upcoming air show, my imagination started to soar - both figuratively and literally.

The main attraction at the air show are the Blue Angels of the U.S. Navy, who have some of the damn coolest looking jets of all time. So along with the cool paint jobs, I wanted to just convey speed - lots and lots of speed. So I started sketching like a wild man, sitting there making "shhoooommm" and "whoooossshhh" noises like a five year old. Serious fun.

Here's a close-up of the final cover artwork:

And here's a look at the final printed cover put together by the design team over at Night & Day. It's still available for the next couple of days in San Diego.

Dia de los Muertos

2011-09-27T16:22:00.001-04:00

TOM - Here is my contribution to a group show I was asked to be a part of, the theme being 'Dia De Los Muertos'. This piece along with several other artists work will be on display in Portland, OR at The Screaming Sky Gallery September 29 - October 23rd. If you're in the area, go check out the opening this Thursday!

Here's a quick look at my process for creating this piece. As always, it started off with a pretty rough sketch. I knew I wanted some sort of graffiti theme and after skateboarding all summer, I wanted to incorporate a skateboard in the mix somehow. Anyway, there was enough info in this sketch for me to get excited and want to add to more to it.

I brought it to a level of detail that I was happy with in the inking stage. I had fun trying to mimic the 'spray paint' look of the skull. I used dry brush to long continuous strokes, much like someone who's actually spray painting might approach it. The pattern on her sweater was inspired by patterns I've seen in an old Mexican pin-up book, Mexican art continues to blow my mind and inspire me.

Above is the flyer for the show with some of the details. If you're interested, the color print of this piece will be for sale at the gallery and the original black and white drawing will also be for sale(just not on display).

Thanks for reading!

Seattle Met Fall Arts Preview

2011-09-12T10:40:00.002-04:00

TOM- I recently got a chance to work together again with Seattle Met for their September issue. I was asked to illustrate the full page opening for their Fall Arts Preview. It was a really cool gig and fun to work on. The AD, Chris left it really open and gave me pretty much free reign on coming up with an idea, which I was really excited about. The motive was to somehow incorporate all the areas of the arts that the preview would cover; dance, fine arts, music, literature.

They originally had a rough concept of a ballerina, which I thought was pretty interesting and decided to try and play with that idea in my sketching process. Above is some of my brainstorming, trying to keep it as feminine as possible, but also graphic and exciting enough for a full page opener.

They decided to go with the third sketch, which I was pretty excited to draw. Here's a look at that idea a little more fleshed out, brought to a rough pencil stage.

I tightened the pencils up a bit more and inked it with a #2 synthetic brush on Bristol. My old and trusty electric guitar served as my model for this particular guitar (and most electric guitars that I draw).

And here's a look at how it all came together in the end. Chris hooked it up with a nice type treatment and the print version came out looking really great. Always great working with Seattle Met.

Don't let this post fool you, Fall is not here yet! We still got a couple weeks left of summer, enjoy it! As always, thanks for reading.

OC Weekly

2011-09-02T09:14:00.008-04:00

TOM - Last week I was contacted by OC Weekly to illustrate their feature story about the city council's layoff of nearly one third of the city employees. It's causing a bit of a stir in Costa Mesa and the Orange County Employees Association has called the move drastic and unnecessary.
In the sketching process, I wanted to try and capture the emotion and tension between the two sides. Two of the sketches also play with the 'pink slip' metaphor, I thought that might be a nice graphic and symbolic approach. In the end, both the art director and I were leaning towards the second sketch and the last, we ultimately went with the last one.

I was hoping that the idea of the council man trying to flick the city workers off of his agenda gets the sentiment across. Above is the ink drawing on bristol which I used a #2 brush to ink with. I knew I wanted to play around with color and mood, so I kept the drawing pretty open.

And here's the final image. After much trial and error with the coloring, I finally settled on this one, hoping that it get's the right mood and drama across.
And here's a little spot I did to accompany the article. You can read the article here. Thanks to Laila for the assignment, always fun working with the OC Weekly.

Thanks for reading. I know I've been a bit silent on the blog lately, but it's been a very eventful summer and there's a bunch of new things I can't wait to share, so stay tuned!

Blitzen Trapper Tour Poster - "The Man Who Would Speak True"

2011-08-25T01:27:00.000-04:00

18" x 24" Six Color Screenprint (including Metallic Gold), Edition of 160

JAMES - Blitzen Trapper has a new album coming out in a few weeks, and earlier this summer they went out on tour to debut the new stuff. I was psyched when they approached me to do the poster for the tour - this is now my fourth Blitzen Trapper poster, and they're always one of my most favorite bands to work with. The band's copies of the poster sold out while on tour, but I now have some copies for sale on my website for $25 each.
www.jamesflames.com/pages/STORE-TheManWhoWouldSpeakTrue.html

For this one, I decided to use one of their songs, "The Man Who Would Speak True," as my inspiration (awesome song, by the way - check it). Here's a quick photo rundown of my process for creating the poster. As you'll see, after the sketch was finalized, I hand drew all the color separations, then compiled each part into the computer to create my films for screen printing. As usual, I printed them all by hand in my studio - I used Metallic Gold ink for part of the outline, and it looks so sick. You can see the metallic effect in the photos at the bottom.

Sketching begins. A few other ideas tossed away after I settled on this one.

Final sketch.

Enlarged pencil drawing, getting everything in place and ready for ink.

Inks for the shepherd and cloak, as usual done with my trusty #2 brush.

Lettering squigglies and shading drawn separately. I used a very soft pencil for both of these so that these particular parts would have some texture to them on the final print.

Assembling the parts in Photoshop, and preparing the films for printing.

Final print!

Close-ups.

Thanks for reading. Lots of new stuff coming along after Labor Day - it's been a BUSY summer. Stay tuned.

Juxtapoz!

2011-08-17T11:40:00.003-04:00

TOM- Super psyched to see a little write up about my work on Juxtapoz! Check it out here: http://www.juxtapoz.chttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifom/Illustration/monday-mornings

Friends with Pee Wee Herman

2011-07-30T15:36:00.002-04:00

18"x24" 8-color screen print

JAMES - The always amazing Gallery1988 has just put on the tribute of all tributes - to Pee Wee Herman! And I am so excited and proud to announce my piece for the show - it's an 8-color screen print (hand printed as always), with an edition of 100 which are signed and numbered. The opening was last night, and from all the pics I've seen, there is an incredible amount of awesome artwork in this show. There's been some good press already as well - including LA Weekly, who included mine in their top 10 favorites from the show: http://blogs.laweekly.com/stylecouncil/2011/07/pee_wee_herman_tribute_gallery.php

The prints are now available at the gallery's website:

http://nineteeneightyeight.com/index.php/sf/francis.html?limit=all&SID=a60775ae6b896833870368a383cdf71b

detail shot

Willamette Week Cover

2011-07-21T09:44:00.007-04:00

TOM - Here's a cover I illustrated for this week's issue of Willamette Week in Portland. The cover story is about this crazy, rich dude who, to make a long story short, has a record of assaulting people and wound up terrorizing his next door neighbor with all sorts of dramatic displays of aggression. The article included accounts of him erecting a large fence, flashing bright lights into his neighbors window while blasting conservative talk radio and chopping down his pool house to then set fire to it. This shit would never fly in New York, just sayin'.

I decided to try and get all those things across in the sketches, feeling that fire, chainsaws and fences were all good elements to making a really dramatic cover. Although the art director and myself were excited about them, the editor felt in might be a little too over the top and 'comicy'. We settled on something a little more simple, while trying to keep it menacing; a creepy neighbor peering over his fence with a suggestion of flashing lights in the background.

Here's a little look at the drawing process and the progression into the colors. I drew the figure and the fence separately so that I could have the option of where to place the fence in the final.

This is what the final art looked like before the logo and text were added.

We also used a variation as an interior opening for the story.

If you're in Portland, go pick up a copy! Thanks for reading!

Original Reservation

2011-07-14T09:39:00.004-04:00

TOM - Lately, I've been experimenting with drawing on different surfaces. I guess it's an attempt on my part to keep things fresh and new, a way to experiment on personal projects, hopefully finding new approaches and techniques that can carry over into my professional work. That's always the goal at least.

Drawing on newspaper seemed like it might be fun. As an editorial illustrator, I've done alot of illustrations for newspapers, but there seemed something interesting about creating my own images on top of an otherwise illustration-less page. The text and newsprint create an interesting texture underneath and could also add an interesting narrative to the illustration.

In this case I chose to create a drawing based on a song by Burning Spear entitled, 'Original Reservation'. The song talks about the early tribes that lived on our land before it was known as The United Sates. I've been wanting to use that song as an inspiration for a drawing for a while now and so I used this experimentation as an excuse. I thought the weather section in the NY Times with the map and all the charts might work as an interesting backdrop/texture, as well as add to the narrative.

Above is a quick look at my process. I coated the newspaper with a thin layer of white paint, then drew the figure directly over it. Threw it into Photoshop to manipulate it a bit, added some color and some text and there you have it.

Hope you dig it! Thanks for reading!

Oh Alice, What Have You Done?

2011-07-08T10:47:00.002-04:00

American McGee's Alice: Madness Returns
18" x 24" Five Color Screen Print. Signed & Numbered prints from an edition of 250.
$40 each.

JAMES - Hello everybody! Today I'm proud to release my poster for American McGee's new video game masterpiece Alice: Madness Returns, which is the sequel to his modern, twisted and way cool take on Alice in Wonderland. This print was part of the recent show at Gallery1988 celebrating the release of the game. Get one here in my store: www.jamesflames.com/pages/STORE-AliceMadnessReturns.html

I'm pretty psyched about this one. First, I got to work with Gallery1988 again, which is always awesome. And then I got to work with master printers D&L Screenprinting, who lovingly brought this to life in print form. It looks so sick in person.

I only have 50 copies of this edition available - and these copies are indeed signed and numbered. Big thanks to Mitch from OMG Posters, and Jensen at G1988 for putting this together. The whole show looked amazing, some really incredible artwork all around - so glad to have been a part of it. Here's a link to a great video of the whole event (you can see my print a few times in it), which seemed to grab the attention of Jay-Z - whoah. http://g1988.blogspot.com/2011/06/alice-to-hov.html

Here are some detail scans of the final print:

Available now in my store: www.jamesflames.com/pages/STORE-AliceMadnessReturns.html

Roses

2011-06-30T09:47:00.003-04:00

TOM- 'When I'm down, I just draw some roses, on a pretty piece of paper'

Those are lyrics to a song by Mos Def, entitled 'Roses'. I used those words as a jumping off point for this new illustration. I think it's a really great song and it always sparks some visuals in my head when I listen to it, so I thought I'd finally realize it on paper. I had fun and I hope you dig it!

If you don't know it, check out the whole song here.

Thanks for reading and have an awesome holiday weekend!

Whole Lotta New Stuff!

2011-06-28T23:41:00.000-04:00

There's A World Awake Outside
Kevin Devine @ Hotel Cafe, Los Angeles, CA.
18"x24" Seven Color Screen Print. Edition of 125.
$20 each.

At Dawning (The Remix)
18" x 24" Five Color Screen Print. Edition of 80.
$25 each.

The Swing, The Soul, The Truth
Set of 3 Prints. 8"x10" each, Two Color Screen Prints
(with Glow in the Dark Accents). Editions of 75 each.
$25 for Full Set of 3.

Full Bloom
Alexander and Fam (Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros)
18" x 24" Three Color Screen Print. Edition of 175.
$20 each.

Knuckle Sandwich (The Remix)
8"x10" Three Color Screen Print (including Glow in the Dark body).
Edition of 70.
$10 each.

JAMES - Well now, here's a ton of new stuff - I've been a busy beaver, and figured I'd drop all these at once. They are all available right now in my store: www.jamesflames.com/store.html

I have brand new posters for Kevin Devine's recent residency at Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles, and for Alexander and Fam (the "Fam" is Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros) who recently played a series of shows in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Washington D.C.

Also, I've got a couple of remixes - redesigns of a couple of popular sold-out posters that people ask about all the time. Some new color tones, newly drawn details, and even some Glow in the Dark stuff. At Dawning (The Remix) and Knuckle Sandwich (The Remix) are hot to trot.

Finally, I have a mini-print triptych - three 8x10's with Glow in the Dark accents. The Swing, The Soul, The Truth is my homage to all the legendary players who have passed on.

Here are some close-ups and stuff:

All available here: www.jamesflames.com/store.html

American McGee's Alice: Madness Returns

2011-06-09T01:49:00.003-04:00

JAMES - Here's my print for the "American McGee's Alice" show at Gallery1988, Los Angeles. I'm so honored to be asked to contribute something to the show, which celebrates the release of the new video game -- and if you've seen any of the other work for the show, you know I'm in really strong company.

These will be available Thursday, June 9th at the gallery for the public reception. Then they will go for sale online on Friday, June 10th at the Alice website: alice2store.com.

I'll have much more info to share, and photos and sketches and stuff, after I get back from Brooklyn (leaving in a few hours) -- I'll be at the Renegade Craft Fair this weekend at McCarren Park in Brooklyn! Back to my hometown to do a little representing. I seriously have a ton of brand new stuff to debut this weekend -- T-shirts (three designs!!), a new triptych print, a couple of other new art prints, and a couple of new posters, too. I'll be at booth #193, so come on by - I'll be there all day Saturday and Sunday.

Just one of the new t-shirts...

Tan Lines

2011-06-08T11:25:00.004-04:00

TOM - Here's a continuation from my last beach post. If there's one thing you see quite a bit outside this time of year, it's funny looking tan lines. Guys look like they have painted on shirts and chicks have those bra strap imprints, gotta love it! Anyway, that was the inspiration for this new piece. I know, I know, my art is soooo deep.

If you're curious, here a quick look at my process for creating this one. As you can see, it started off as a real rough ball point pen sketch.

It's hot and sunny out there people, get out and enjoy! Thanks for reading and I'll talk to you soon!

Roc-Roc-Rockaway Beach!

2011-06-02T10:21:00.002-04:00

TOM - Summer is in full swing here in NY and I'm loving it! My favorite time of year for sure, full of bike riding, outdoor events, and of course, the beach! My particular beach of choice here in NY is Rockaway beach in Queens. Yep, the one The Ramones sang about. The image above is one of more to come inspired by summer, so expect to see more 'beachy' images soon. Thanks for stopping by!

Wayne Coyne cover for Dallas Observer

2011-05-20T13:03:00.000-04:00

JAMES - I had the extreme pleasure of being asked to illustrate a cover for the Dallas Observer featuring the one-and-only Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips. The issue is out on the streets now - and if you're not in Dallas, I highly suggest reading the interview online here (and there's also a great photo-story about the record pressing plant Wayne uses - see it here).

Working with Art Director Alex Flores was way awesome - he consistently has some of the best 'weekly' covers in the country (proof here - total quality every week), and he really brought some great stuff outta me. At his request, I chronicled my creation process of the cover as best I could. Following are some photos of how it all came about:

Sketching Begins

Sketching Continues

Final Submitted Sketch

Final Pencils Begin

Inking Begins

Inking Continues

Final Inks, Ready For Scanning

Cleaning Up Inks

Adding Colors

Creating Vector Elements

More Vector Elements

Finishing Touches

Done Deal!

Anyone curious of the finer details: The ink drawing was done on this really nice Drafting Film (.003 thickness), using a Winsor & Newton Series 7 #2 brush and Dr. Ph Martin's Black Star Ink. Digital work was done using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Thanks for reading!

It starts with a sketch

2011-05-19T14:17:00.005-04:00

TOM - Thought I'd use this time to share some process 'before and after' type shots to show how I usually start an illustration. There's always a sketch, in fact before the sketch, there is often a 'thumbnail drawing', a really small scribble like drawing which usually only I can make out. From that thumbnail is where the sketch usually comes out of. Here is a look at a sample of some from the last few months...

Sometimes the sketch acts as a blueprint which I could then build upon and change as much as I feel it should...

...other times, the sketch really has all the information it needs, then the challenge is trying to maintain that energy and essence in the final...

...other times, it's just a matter of only using certain elements of the sketch and changing direction and expression to make a stronger image.

Hope that was somewhat enjoyable. If you liked this, let me know, I have tons of folders full of process sketches that I can keep posting periodically.

Until next time!

The Eraser

2011-05-19T01:37:00.003-04:00

click to see bigger

JAMES - My Mogwai posters are now available through my site: www.jamesflames.com/store.html

So psyched to make something for this band - they've kept me alive at 2am many a long night. So killer. This poster was for the Pittsburgh show on April 27 during their current trip to the US. It's a s7even-color screen print, including a Metallic Gold that I used as a finishing touch. 18" x 24" full bleed, on 100lb White French Paper, Edition of 100, signed & numbered. They're 20 clams each. Here's a close-up scan:

I was tweeting the printing session as I was making these. Below are the shots of each color as they were printed and tweeteded (the first four colors were done on day 1, the last three colors the next day). If you're on Twitter, follow me @thejamesflames.

Light Grey

Yellow

Magenta

Aqua

Dark Grey

Black

Metallic Gold

Group Show in Brooklyn!

2011-05-12T09:52:00.000-04:00

TOM - This Saturday I will be participating in a group show with some fellow friends and artists here in Brooklyn. I will have a few brand new drawings on display, including the black and white piece shown above. I might even have some prints of the colored version as well... If you're around this Saturday evening, come by and say hi!

Here's all the info:

A THEMEless ART show opening RECEPTION

Featuring the work of:

Brittany Bartley

C.M. Duffy

Greg Hedderman

Neal Iannone

Thomas Pitilli

At LAUNCHPAD -- 721 Franklin Ave. BK, NY
Saturday at 8:00pm - Sunday at 12:30am

OPENING RECEPTION will feature LIVE prose and poetry readings by authors and writers along with LIVE music

Hot off 'The Press'

2011-05-09T21:11:00.004-04:00

TOM - Here's a quick look at some recent illustrations I've done for the NY Press. The topics of these range from husband hunting, to 'self love' in a bathroom stall, to Ripley's Believe it or Not. What a life. Until next time!

Mask

2011-05-03T12:10:00.003-04:00

TOM - Here's a new piece from a new series I'm working on...More where this came from coming soon!

Communication Arts Illustration Annual!!

2011-04-25T12:20:00.001-04:00

JAMES - I'm very excited to announce that my above poster for Lucero's US Tour last year is currently featured in the Communication Arts Illustration Annual 2011!

I just got the issue in the mail today, and I'm honored and humbled to be in the company of so many great and talented illustrators. The issue is currently on newsstands for the next couple of months, or you could order it online here.

Portland Monthly Illustration!

2011-04-25T08:27:00.006-04:00

TOM - I forgot to mention in my last post, but I am back in NYC! It was great living in Portland this winter, but it feels great to be back in my city. While still in Portland last month, I got an opportunity to work on an illustration for Portland Monthly. I had a great time working very closely with the art director, Michael Novak on this illustration. I went through a couple rounds of sketches for this one and there was quite a bit that went into solidifying this idea, but after all was said and done, it was totally worth it because both Michael and I were really happy with the way it turned out.

The article was about the contridiction between Portlands 'green image' and the undeniable truth that the Columbia river, with all it's trade between Portland and the Pacific has the potential to lead the world in the transportation of dirty energy.

Whoa.

We wanted to show the juxtaposition between the classic portlander/enviro and the pollution that the large amount of cargo ships are causing. Above is some of my thought process. I was trying to incorporate ideas of smog, carbon footprint, the 'portland rose', bike riding and of course, the ships.

After that first round, the dimensions of the layout changed, so I went ahead and did another round of tighter sketches in the new vertical shape. As it turned out, we decided to go with a variation of a sketch I did from the first round, incorporating the prefered mode of transportation in Portland, biking, vs. the pollution causing cargo ships in the background.

I worked out the idea and composition a bit and this is the sketch that finally got the go ahead.

Like I said earlier, I'm super happy with the way the whole thing turned out and Michael did a great job with the final layout.

Thanks for reading and Happy Monday everybody!

Nerve No More...

2011-04-19T18:57:00.003-04:00

TOM - After two years of illustrating a weekly sex column for Nerve.com entitled, 'My First Time', my run has come to an end. I had quite a bit of fun illustrating the section over the years and decided to put together some of my favorites of the series. There was over 90 of these to choose from, so I had to narrow it down quite a bit, I hope you enjoy the look back as much as I did! More new stuff on the way!

An Interview with James Flames - on OMG Posters site

2011-04-01T12:01:00.002-04:00

I'm so honored to have been interviewed by the great OMG Posters blog today! Read it here:

http://omgposters.com/2011/04/01/an-interview-with-james-flames/

Lover or a Fighter?

2011-03-21T14:33:00.005-04:00

TOM- A couple months ago I did a quick illustration for Seattle Met Magazine. Apparenly the UFC was coming to Seattle for the first time ever and the aticle was wondering why UFC organizers have taken a sudden interest in peace-loving, ultra-liberal Seattle. The AD, Benjamen Purvis wanted to sort of mimic an old boxing/wresting poster, but adding a bit of a twist to stress the peacefulness and liberal leanings of Seattle. It was fun and here's a quick look into the process...

The Sketch.

The inks.

The final layout.

Thanks for checking in. Happy first day of spring!

Sketch Video!

2011-03-18T01:37:00.003-04:00

TOM - Here's a recent video I took of myself sketching the drawing above. I recorded this on my phone, so the quality isn't the greatest...I had fun though, I love being able to speed up the video and pretend I can draw that fast! I'm hoping to do more of these in my spare time and I'll be sure to share them when I do. Hope you like it!

Moving right along...

2011-03-16T12:17:00.003-04:00

TOM - It sure has been some time since I've lasted posted here! I assure you, it has been a very busy and exciting month working on some really cool projects that I can't wait to share!

Until then, be sure to check out my Facebook Page and follow me on Twitter for all the latest updates!

Have a great rest of the week, I hope it's spring-like near you!

Seattle Met Illustration

2011-02-24T00:32:00.006-05:00

TOM - Last month I created an illustration for Seattle Met Magazine about a new line of streetcars that might be installed in the city. The art director, Benjamen Purvis, had a vintage train poster idea in mind as a fun way to approach this article. After he briefed me on what he had in mind, I went ahead and...

...did this sketch. I looked at a bunch of vintage train/travel posters and tried to capture that quality as best I could. Some of my favorite illustrations happen to be old advertisment illustrations from the 50's and 60's, so I tried to keep that vibe in mind while drawing this.

After the sketch was approved, I tightened up the drawing and threw some ink on it. I knew Benjamen was going to add the tag line in at the end, so I threw this mock text in, just to see how the composition would work with text. Then it was on to Photoshop where I colored the piece and then...

...Benjamen did a great job with the text, I think it really works much better running along the bottom like that. The overall design of it came out really well and I'm very happy with it.

If you're in Seattle, be sure to pick up Seattle Met, it's a cool mag. This particular issue was last months, but I have another illustration in this months issue too, which I shall post about shortly. Take care and thanks for reading!

Illustrated Spokecards!

2011-02-20T13:17:00.005-05:00

TOM - After being out here out here in Portland for a couple months now, the one thing you start to see more than anything is bicycles. Still, with all those bikes, I haven't seen many spokecards, at least not any spokecards with sexy bike girls on them! That's where I come in...

I made these pretty recently and I'm glad to say, they're getting a great response out here. I'm really happy with the way they turned out as well. So, if you ride a bike and want a 'Sexy Bike Girl' to rock on your back wheel, you can check these out on my Etsy, or on the 'My Store' section on my website.

Or, if you happen to live in the Portland area, you can find them at Memento on Hawthorne as well as a shop called Mag Big, also on Hawthorne. Have a great Sunday!

Save A Secret For The Moon

2011-02-17T23:35:00.001-05:00

JAMES - 4th and final day of "Process Week"! Today I'll go back to basics to show a new black & white poster I made for a couple of local Asheville bands, Warm the Bell and the Cheeksters.

And as an added treat, any orders from my store for the next two weeks will receive one of these babies for free! www.jamesflames.com/store.html (and don't worry, anyone who's placed an order in the past few days, I've already included these with your order).

Original Pencil Sketch

This little sketch barely measures an inch square, but all the information I need is already in there. I get excited when I know I'm gonna have a lot of soft brush strokes to draw - so I scanned the sketch into the computer, to blow it up to the final working size, 11" x 17".

Blown-up Sketch and Lightbox

I print the blown-up version onto two pieces of regular 8.5x11 paper, and tape them together. This will act as my guide - I tape it underneath a fresh sheet of bristol paper (I use Strathmore with a Vellum finish), and place them both over my lightbox and begin drawing.

Final Pencils

Here's what the final pencil drawing looks like. Everything's pretty much in it's place, but I made a couple notes before inking - one you can see are the arrows below the lettering, reminding me to bring all those letters down a bit.

Sometimes I'll ink directly over the final pencils, but I'm also kind of a neat-freak (at least with drawing - not so much in the rest of my life), and this page was Dirty! The lines had been worked over so much - lots of deep pencil marks and lots of erased areas. So I got yet another fresh sheet of Bristol paper, taped it above this drawing, put it over the lightbox, and re-drew the whole thing one last time with soft pencil strokes - just enough to suggest where the inks will go.

I know that sounds like overkill, but it's become a habit by now, and I think the final work is always the better for it.

Final Inks

I reach for my trusty #2 Winsor & Newton brush and Black Star ink, and do some quick brush exercises. I always do a little warm-up before I start inking - gets me nice a loose and gets my brush in good shape. Then I begin. With this one I started with his shirt and body, which would be most of the thinner lines on the whole poster - I like to work from thin to thick. (the hair of course is the funnest part).

The hanging letters were outlined with some markers - just for a little ease. Once it was all inked, I used white ink to do the final lettering up top and the stars, as well as to cover a few areas that I decided shouldn't be so dark.

Finally I erase any remaining pencil lines, sign it, and decide it's finished!

Detail Shot

Thanks to everyone who read any or all of these posts this week - I'm always glad to share how these things go down. And I figure if I ever come down with amnesia or something, I'll at least have these documented to remind me of how I used to do it all. Yeah, I know...real pleasant thought.

I've got some more exciting projects in the works, and I'll be dropping some more process posts very soon. Stay tooned! In the meantime you can subscribe to this blog, 'like' my Facebook page, or hit up my Twitter to keep up to date with the latest.

A Harlem Hand, A Harlem Heart

2011-02-16T23:00:00.003-05:00

JAMES - It's Day 3 of "Process Week," and time to unveil another brand new piece. Pictured above is the art print version of A Harlem Hand, A Harlem Heart, which goes on sale in my store today - $25 each at www.jamesflames.com.

I also made an accompanying poster version (pictured below) for my good friend Brian Bonz and his amazing band the Major Crimes, for their upcoming tour. I've known Brian and his brother Mike for what seems like forever - incredibly talented dudes. Our bands all used to play together back in the day - I had worked with him on his first couple of records, and even played keyboards in his band for a bit. It was great to get the chance to collaborate again.

Bonz Tour Poster Version

Unlike the recent two process blog-posts, this is a good example of how each and every aspect of the artwork changed and evolved with each passing minute of working on it. Sometimes I like having a plan, sticking to it, and executing. But other times, it's really exciting to let the artwork steer me in it's own direction - I just gotta hang on.

Sketch Evolution

As always, I start with sketches. I had done some acrobat-type stuff in my sketchbook recently, and wanted to elaborate on the theme with a print. So I had this loose 'circus' theme that I started late one night with a pencil scribble (above left). By morning I had my colors mapped out (next sketch over), but that composition is just terrible. I couldn't live with it, so I took the part I liked the best - the actual acrobats - and decided to close in on them.

The funny thing is that I hadn't intended to have them look as though they're about to kiss - but when I blew up the scribble lines, they already appeared that way. So I went with it. That there pretty much changed the whole direction of it all. By then, the circus theme was kinda gone, and instead of the trapeze platforms bordering the sides, I decided to put them in the city.

Final Sketch

At long last, I had what I would consider my final sketch. On to drawing.

Acrobats drawing

I loved the looseness of the original scribbles, and while I kinda tried to clean them up and get all fancy with it, I realized they were more beautiful as these blurry silhouettes. So I grabbed my Pentel brush pen - it's big and sloppy, and runs out of ink all the time. Perfect for this kind of style.

Duct Tape

Before I started drawing the city, I had this really fun idea - what if I made the city out of Duct Tape? So that's what I did. Tearing little pieces to get those corners and windows just right was a pain - and then getting the lettering together.... that took a few tries. That stuff is mad sticky! I did want a rough look though, and I wanted it to be obvious that it was duct tape, so I didn't pretty it up too much.

I then scanned the drawing and the tape collages into the computer and started to do my Photoshopping. The blue highlights on the acrobats, and the white 'tour info' lettering were drawn in Photoshop with my Wacom tablet - and to get the tape to look like tape when I printed it, I decided it would need to be divided into two tones to show the textures of it. Lots of Photoshop trickery.

I sat and stared at it awhile, till I was finally happy with it. Then outputted my films and off to the studio to print!

Printing 1st color, Blue

Printing 2nd color, Yellow

Printing 3rd color, Magenta

Here are some pics of printing the first three colors of the poster-version (which I printed first to get them done in time for the tour). Not pictured here is the 'split-fountain' I used to print the trapeze-strings in the background - another last-minute idea. This gives the fading effect as the lines appear strong at the top, then fade to very light at the bottom.

The next day I printed the Art Print version - and once again, at the very last second, I decided to add the moon in the background of that one, since I was missing the balance that the lettering gave me on the poster-version.

Signing & numbering the posters

Then back to the house to curate them and sign & number 'em. Am I the only one who forgets how to spell his own name after writing it 150 times in a row? Probably.

Detail shot

Another detail shot

4-color screenprint, 25"x19", on 100lb Sweet Tooth French paper,

edition of 50, signed and numbered

5-color screenprint, 25"x19", on 100lb Sweet Tooth French paper,

edition of 95, signed and numbered

The art prints are available now in my store, www.jamesflames.com/store.html - $25 each.

Brian and the band will have the posters available on tour for the next couple of months - do check them out, they're pretty incredible. And their new album, The Triborough Odyssey, is amazing. I named these prints after the final song on the album, a real beauty.

Thanks for reading! Tomorrow is the 4th and final day of "Process Week" - it's back to basics time. Until then...

Donkey Kong "Kill Screen"

2011-02-15T17:21:00.002-05:00

JAMES - It's Day 2 of "Process Week", and I'll continue with my Donkey Kong print for the recent show MULTIPLAYER at Gallery 1988 in Venice, CA. The show was a collection of prints from an amazing group of artists, each depicting a selection of classic video game characters - I drew Donkey Kong. Literally. The show was a great success, and I'm honored to have presented with some of the artists I admire most. Incredible stuff.

My prints are now available on my website - get one here: www.jamesflames.com/store.html
(And for anyone curious, these copies are in mint condition. Unfortunately, the ones at the gallery arrived with a very minor bent corner - freakin sloppy FedEx! But my copies are perfectly minty!).

Sketch

As always, it all starts with a tiny sketch. In reality, there were pages and pages (and pages) of little pencil drawings. I went through a ton of ideas before getting where I wanted to go. This is the culmination of all that work. The first thing you'll see is that DK is facing right, which I later changed to face the other way - I just felt it moved better going to the left.

Pencils

I started with pencils, shaping and creating my version of Donkey Kong. I didn't want to mimic the 'new' Donkey Kong character (who is a little too tame and friendly for my taste), and while this is meant to be an homage to the classic DK, I didn't want to be as minimal as that design was either. So I gave it my own flair, using lots of reference photos of real gorillas and monkeys.

Working the lighting

One I had the basics down, I wanted to find where all the light and shadows would fall, so I created this reference using two sheets of tracing paper over each other. Just kinda blocking out my blacks to give him depth and weight (he's a big dude!).

Inks

The final inks were done on this translucent Vellum paper I use - it's very thin, but real smooth and compliments my brush strokes just the way I like. As usual, I used my #2 Winsor & Newton brush and Dr. Ph Martin's Black Star india ink (which is becoming harder and harder to find! I'm almost all out. Help anyone?)

Detial Shot

From there, the inks were scanned into the computer, and I created a grid over it which divided the whole thing into 'pixels' (big ones). I chose which ones would be the wild and stray ones - some of them having only the base color and no linework, which references the classic DK design; some of them are static colors of aqua and pink, which is meant to mimic the look of when your video gets scrambled.

It was then divided into 8 colors, which I hand printed during 2 and a half days in January (I'm pretty sure this is what I was printing on New Year's day). The colors are super saturated - came out sick, in my opinion.

8-color screenprint, 18"x24", on 100lb Sweet Tooth French paper,

edition of 70, signed and numbered

Again, these are now available in my store - I don't have very many left, so get them while you can. www.jamesflames.com/store.html Thanks for reading!

Tomorrow, "Process Week" continues with Day 3 - getting gnarly with some duct tape...

Stockholm Syndrome Apollo

2011-02-14T23:09:00.004-05:00

JAMES - Today is the first installment of what I will call "Process Week" - each of the next 4 days I will post a different process of a new project I've recently completed. Ready.... Go!

First up is an album cover I finished at the tail end of 2010, for the band Stockholm Syndrome's second album, Apollo. The band features songwriter Jerry Joseph and Widespread Panic bassist Dave Schools, as well as an all-star cast. The album is released tomorrow, Feb 15th by Response Records (Feb 28th in the UK). Find it everywhere.

I was approached by the band and management to bring a wild visual to life that somehow combined the Greek God Apollo and the Apollo Theater in Harlem. I was given the title song as reference, which poetically weaves the tale of a man searching for hope and meaning, to eventually soar to the sun from the depths of street life, with the soundtrack of Smokey and the Chi-Lites ringing in his head.

I knew that literally drawing the Apollo theater could possibly confuse people to think this was a live recording from the Apollo, as many such albums have appeared in the past. So I needed a better connection - and what better than the 125th Street subway station.

Pencil Sketch

Here's the simplest of scribbles - in my mind it mapped the whole thing out, even though I realize it doesn't look like much. But compared to the final, it's all there.

Concept Sketch

So I refined the sketch to submit to the band (along with a couple of other different sketches - this is the one they chose) using Photoshop and a quick ink drawing.

Perspective

Once the imagery was set, it was time to draw. For this one, I drew all the parts separately, starting with the station itself. I created a perspective to work with, and filled the station in around it. From there I would have the basis for the train and Apollo with his horse and chariot, all of which could stay within the proper perspective, using this guide as my key.

Drawing The Train

Drawing Apollo and his horse

Developing the lettering

Again, each element was created on it own, then all combined in Photoshop to be assembled and colored. This makes it a bit easier, in case I decide to change a certain thing later on (and I did...plenty!), it wouldn't affect any other part of the illustration. It also came in handy when creating the image for the back cover, which shows the empty subway station with just a little hint of Apollo's magic being left behind.

The lettering was developed by hand - the style revolves around interlocking circles. Once I had the theme down, I brought it into Adobe Illustrator and refined it till it was perfect.

Back Cover

Detail Shot

I'm very proud of the cover design, of which I also created the booklet and CD face - not to mention the double-LP version on blue vinyl (oooooh!!). And the album is pretty strong - these guys are serious pros. They start their tour on Friday the 18th in San Francisco to celebrate the album's release. Check em out if you can.

Stay tuned tomorrow for a process where I get to do a lot of monkeying around...

Happy Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T02:57:00.002-05:00

TOM- Hi lovebirds, this is a Valentine's Day card I made and sent out this year. I had fun drawing this one and sending them out in the mail. I felt like cupid. I like Valentine's Day because it's really the last of the 'winter holidays', so here's to spring!

Sketchbook Drawings

2011-02-03T10:45:00.001-05:00

JAMES - I just scanned a ton of sketchbookeries - here are some of the better recent ones...

Floyd Patterson

2011-02-02T15:30:00.003-05:00

TOM- Within the past few month's, I've been watching a lot of old boxing footage, stuff from the 50's and 60's mainly. There's something about those fights on a purely aesthetic level that is inspiring to me as an artist. There certainly is a great tradition in art, be it film or illustration, of using the subject of boxing as a source of inspiration. I myself often play with boxing themes in alot of my sketchbook work. Recently though, I attempted to create a portrait of a classic boxer and one of my favorites from that time, Floyd Patterson. He was a dude from Brooklyn with super cool hair who would just lay guys out in the ring, it's awesome to watch. I had fun drawing this and I'd like to create more work around this theme. Check out Floyd at work here.

Fever Dreaming

2011-01-26T13:38:00.002-05:00

JAMES - My latest is a poster for No Age, for their show this past Saturday at the Grey Eagle here in Asheville. The show was awesome - they totally killed. There was a crazy video/light show projection on them, and they closed with a Black Flag cover of "Six Pack". Pretty badass. They're way cool dudes too - it was a great night.

The poster itself is inspired by their song "Fever Dreaming", and it's a 6-color screenprint. The ones that I have left from the show are now available on my site for 20 clams each: www.jamesflames.com - and they have a little Glow-in-the-Dark action too. Here's a little about the process of making them:

Original Sketch

I started with a real simple sketch - I've had this idea of a dude throwing up his own brains for awhile now, but after listening to their new album "Everything In Between", and especially the song "Fever Dreaming", I thought that word balloons would work even better.

Ink Drawings

I drew the main dude twice - once with a marker (on the left) and once with a brush (on the right). They both had cool and different aspects to them, especially the way the line quality affected the flow, so instead of choosing one or the other, I scanned them both into Photoshop and composited the two into one crazy drawing.

Word Balloon Cut-Outs

I wanted the rest of the image to be made with all cut-outs. Similar to some of my previous posters, I wanted to photograph the cut outs and incorporate the natural shadows they create into the poster. In order to get a true sense of shadows and layering, I cut each word balloon separately, then stacked them on top of each other. The photo above shows all the individual cut-outs.

Lettering Cut-Outs

Then, to cut out the lettering. This took forever, but it came out way cool. When I brought the lettering cut-out photo into Photoshop, I loved the jagged edges of the lettering, but the shadows they created started to make the whole thing a little muddy. So I kinda just used the letters straight, no shadow. Coulda saved me time if I new that before-hand, but it was worth a shot.

Detail Shot

I screen printed these as 6 colors over two days.

Glow-in-the-Dark

And here's a taste of how the Glow-in-the-Dark looks. It's not super strong - there's alot of color underneath the "Glowy" bits, so it's a bit muted - but it's cool enough, for sure.

6-color screenprint, 19"x25", on 100lb Sweet Tooth French paper,

edition of 100, signed and numbered

They're available now in my store - $20 each. www.jamesflames.com. Thanks for reading! Lots more to come very soon - I'm cookin' baby!

PDX Model Drawing!

2011-01-23T13:38:00.007-05:00

TOM - So I was finally able to find a spot out here in Portland to do some live model drawing. My friend Jon and I went to check it out this weekend. Our model was great and it was nice to free up and do some life drawing again, it's been too long. Anyway, here are some of the drawings that I did. I apologize for the quality, they were taken with my camera phone!

Synthetic

2011-01-17T11:35:00.002-05:00

TOM- Here's a new drawing I made. I enjoyed using acrylic paints to create the 'fur'. The rest is just black ink and it's all on 11x14 bristol. Hope you like it. Happy Monday!

Ted Williams

2011-01-09T22:22:00.003-05:00

TOM- I'm sure by now everyone is familiar with this guy, Ted Williams. A pretty amazing story about a homeless dude with this incredible radio voice. All it took was one video of him to go viral on Youtube and within days he was appearing on daytime television shows, in talks to become the next voice for the Cleveland Cavaliers and getting offers for voice over work from companies like Kraft. It's good to see a positive story like this getting a whole lot of attention from all over the world. It certainly got my attention and inspired me to draw a little portrait of the man himself. As I was drawing this I couldn't help but think that just a matter of days ago, this man was out on the streets asking for money. Just goes to show how unpredictable life can be, in a good way. If we think we know where we'll be in three days time, we're only fooling ourselves. Go Ted!

Happy New Year!

2011-01-03T01:41:00.003-05:00

TOM - Happy New Year, everyone! 2011 is going to be a really awesome year, I'm excited
to finally start it! 2010 was a wonderful year full of new experiences, accomplishments, and big changes.

I watched this year end and start a new here in Portland OR, where I’ll be spending the next few months. I’m having a blast so far, it’s an awesome city and a really great place to make art.

However, being away from New York makes me realize just how ‘New York’ I really am. One of the things I’ve realized is that my history, up until this point, more or less lies within the city of New York. All experiences that have shaped me and made me who I am today, occurred within those five boroughs. I’ve realized that New York is more than just the backdrop in the story of my life, it's a major character, sort of my co-star. As people come and go, as jobs change, as apartments change, New York is always there, absorbing each experience deep within it’s concrete and brick. It wears me as much as I wear it. And like the drawing above, it’s written all over me. They’re imprints on my being and they range from the sweetness of a lip print to the pain of a battle scar. Though where I once tried to hide from them, I now wear them with pride and will carry them with me wherever my journeys take me throughout life.

I’m Thomas Pitilli and I represent my city.

James Flames Interview @ Tuckshop Community Radio Blog, UK

2010-12-27T11:26:00.001-05:00

I was recently interviewed by Jack Bacon of the Tuckshop Community Radio Blog in London - way cool dude, and great questions. Check it out here: http://thetuckshopcommunityradionews.blogspot.com/2010/12/burning-midnight-oil-with-james-flames.html

'Jalissa' Print

2010-12-13T19:02:00.008-05:00

'Jalissa' 2010

TOM - Sure has been a while since I've made a post here! For good reason though, been busy with new and exciting projects, moved across the country, plus I illustrated this awesome new print! This was printed by silk screener extraordinaire, James Flames! I was down in his North Carolina studio earlier this month and he really hooked this one up. Just in time for the holidays, this print(including a brown variant) is now for sale on my Etsy shop.

'Jalissa' (Brown Variant)

This bad boy(or girl, rather) measures 19" x 25" and is printed on on 100lb Poptone Sweet Tooth French paper. It is an edition of 26, so get 'em while they're hot!

Detail shot

The brown variant also measures 19" x 25" It is printed on on 100lb Kraft Speckletone French paper. This one's even a shorter run, only an edition of 8, so they're even hotter!

Detail shot

If you're interested in purchasing one of these prints, please visit my Etsy shop for all the details. Hope this finds a home on your wall soon!

Thanks for reading and more updated soon!

Knuckle Sandwich

2010-12-07T22:16:00.006-05:00

JAMES - It's always hard to choose, but I think this might be my favorite poster I made this year. After the success of last year's poster I made for them, Lucero contacted me about making a poster for their Fall Tour, most of which was in support of Social Distortion. I was fortunate enough to see the show when they came to Asheville, and holy crap - seriously killer show! Lucero just tore it up, and Social D... well, c'mon, what did you expect. Great night - I could just imagine that went on every night for like two months. Insane.

I have some of these available now in my store - www.jamesflames.com/store.html - there are two versions with slightly different colors and cities on them. Check it out, and get em while you can.

developmental drawings

This was all done a few months ago, so I can't remember exactly, but I think the basic idea came to me pretty quickly. But how to actually present it took some work. As usual, lots of sketching - working on the boxer's positioning, action, and anatomy. Those muscles had to be just right, but not overly detailed, since the eventual tattoos had to show through.

boxer sketchbook drawing

I finally did a treatment of the boxer in my sketchbook - here I was just finalizing the boxer himself. I liked this version so much, that instead of re-drawing it again, I just used the outline from this one as the final artwork.

final tattoo flash

But that was the easy part, cuz I still had to design, draw, and letter 30-something tattoos. Each of the tattoos has a different city on the tour, and I grouped multiple cities in a state or region when I could. The above photo is of the final drawings, which I did on vellum with a marker to mimic a single-needle tattoo style. In the photo it looks like I re-drew some of them on a separate sheet of vellum - can't remember why, but probably the perfectionist in me being all nitpicky.

detail shot (brown version)

detail shot (black version)

I screen printed these by hand - all 555 of them. Four colors each. That's like....2 million pulls or something. Give or take. They were done as two separate editions - the first 325 are with the Black outline and the cities from the first part of the tour, and the last 220 has the Brown outline and some of the city names are changed for the second leg of the tour. Like I said before, I couldn't be more proud of how they all came out.

Black Version, 4-color screenprint, 25"x19", on 100lb Kraft Speckletone French paper, edition of 325, signed and numbered

Brown Version, 4-color screenprint, 25"x19", on 100lb Kraft Speckletone French paper, edition of 220, signed and numbered

I have some available for sale of both versions - get them now in my store: www.jamesflames.com, $20 each. Thanks for reading. Stay tuned next week for my final two releases of the year!

Sight Beyond Sight!

2010-12-07T21:41:00.005-05:00

JAMES - Fair warning: if you ask me to make a poster for a metal show, you're gonna get Metal, with a capital METAL! These posters are now available in my store - www.jamesflames.com/store.html - get some. Ten points to the first person to name the reference of the title "Sight Beyond Sight."

Anyway, I was approached a couple months ago by the Orange Peel to make a poster for The Sword, and I couldn't wait to get started.

original concept sketch

Here's the original sketch - it's got the basic layout, and the concept of some skeleton having it's soul banished for eternity inside the sword. I knew it would be pretty intricate, so I just kinda suggested the little bits and lettering stuff.

developmental drawings

I drew like a million versions of the sword, trying to invent a unique weapon that honored traditional medieval style, but had some kind of futuristic vibe to it. The above photo shows most of the drawings - initially, I only drew half of the sword, to save time. Once I was settled on the different parts and all the shading, I then drew the other side according what was established.

final ink drawing

The final ink drawing was done with my trusty #2 Windsor & Newton brush and Dr. Ph. Martin's Black Star ink. I used some white ink for extra detail. The blade of the sword, as well as the skeleton captured within it, was all drawn separately - all the pieces were assembled in Photoshop, and I outputted my films for printing straight from there.

detail shot

As you can see from the detail shot, there really was no room for registration errors, so I had to be on point the whole time. Four colors on Electric Red paper, printed by hand, and it came out perfectly.

4-color screenprint, 19"x25", on 100lb Electric Red French paper, edition of 85, signed and numbered

The original show date was cancelled (the band had cancelled their whole tour in October due to the drummer splitting), but the rescheduled date was this past Thursday, and they got to use the poster anyway, which is awesome. I have the remaining posters available now in my store - www.jamesflames.com - for $20 each.

Painting a Mural for the "Long Live" show

2010-11-18T22:48:00.003-05:00

JAMES - I drove up to Raleigh a few days ago to paint a mural for the show. Here's a little video that captured most of the action. Saturday night is the opening - psyched!

James Flames: Long Live
@ Amplified Art Gallery, Raleigh, NC
November 20-December 10, 2010
www.amplifiedartgallery.com

James Flames "Long Live" - Solo Gallery Exhibition

2010-11-10T21:17:00.003-05:00

JAMES - I'm very proud to announce my first solo gallery exhibition, "Long Live", at Amplified Art Gallery in Raleigh, NC! The opening reception is Saturday, November 20th at 6pm, and the exhibit will stay up until December 10. We've had this in the works for awhile now, and it's very exciting to finally announce it.

I will debut two new prints made special for the show, and on display will be a large selection of my poster work, including some original artwork, rare variants, and many sold out editions - all for sale. And there will be some other special stuff that I'll announce before the show.

Amplified Art is a gallery specializing in the finest in gig posters - I visited last week, and it's a pretty amazing place. I mean, a gallery dedicated to posters? It's like heaven. I'm honored to be showing there. They're at 224 East Martin Street in the City Market section of Raleigh, so if you're in the area, stop by!

Stay tuned to this blog and my facebook page (click here) for updates and photos and stuff.

Big Tuesday: New Posters for Circa Survive, Blitzen Trapper, and Fruit Bats!

2010-11-09T20:35:00.001-05:00

JAMES - Four new posters today -- pretty exciting! They're all available on my website starting today. www.jamesflames.com/store.html

There are two posters from Circa Survive shows in Atlanta and San Diego, plus a special "Blue Skull" variant for the San Diego show (super small edition of only 13, on Kraft Speckletone paper); and then a tour poster for Blitzen Trapper and Fruit Bats as they traveled around the country with Pearly Gate Music. That's a whole lotta ink and paper!

Probably a little too much stuff to get into details about all of these. But I will say that there are some hidden images in both Circa Survive posters - the Atlanta poster has an orange 'ghost' skeleton underneath the main skelly; and the San Diego poster has a hidden character underneath the skulls and phoenix, someone who seems to be the one in control of the action. Can you see them?

Here are some close-up shots and photos:

5-color screenprint, 19"x25", on 110lb Smart White French paper, edition of 120, signed and numbered

5-color screenprint, 19"x25", on 100lb Sweet Tooth PopTone French paper, edition of 125, signed and numbered

"Blue Skull Variant" 5-color screenprint, 19"x25", on 100lb Kraft Speckletone French paper, edition of only 13, signed and numbered

5-color screenprint, 25"x19", on 100lb True White Speckletone French paper, edition of 120, signed and numbered

Once again, they're all available in my store as of right.....now. Click here for that: www.jamesflames.com/store.html

And big shout out to Mitch at OMG Posters for hooking up the Circa gigs. Check out his blog, filled daily with all sorts of poster goodness: www.omgposters.com

How I make an Illustration

2010-11-09T10:00:00.007-05:00

TOM - I haven't done a process post in a while, so I thought I would share with you how I created this week's 'First Time' illustration for Nerve.com It's a sex column where people write about their 'first time' and although it's fun to draw people humping and kissing, I would get bored if I had to draw that every week. The young woman writing of her experience describes herself as a quiet outsider who likes books and cats and wore glasses that she thought made her look like an owl. I loved that line and decided to use the owl comparison as a jumping off point...

...so I start off by brainstorming on a sheet of paper. These are just scribbles at this point, I work really fast so that I could get all my ideas down before I start to over think anything, that comes later. I don't care about drawing on top of another idea, it's a total mess. I could understand it, but I wouldn't expect anyone else to.

Then I tighten a couple ideas up and this is the one that we finally decided to go with. Like many birds, owls build their nests in holes of trees and keep it very guarded. I decided to put the woman in a nest that has a suggestive shape. She's guarding her own 'nest' so to speak. It's kind of subtle, but the goal is to make it work as an interesting illustration whether people pick up on that or not.

Then I light box over the sketch so I could tighten up the composition, add detail, all that good stuff.

My favorite part, the inks! I used a mix of a nib and brush to ink this one. The nib pen allowed me to add textures in the tree and to the owl, where the brush helped differentiate the woman from the rest of the piece.

Then, it's into Photoshop for some coloring. I wanted to make this a nigh time scene, so I used blues, greens and grays. I used limited white which I hope draws the viewer in as well as push the whole 'owl' metaphor.

Is this a sex illustration? I don't know, but I had fun regardless and I hope you enjoyed reading about my process. Enough about what I think though, let me know what you think in the comment section below!

Take care.

Catching up...

2010-11-02T17:10:00.007-04:00

TOM- I'm happy to say I've been producing more work lately than I can keep track of. One of the downfalls is that I forget to post some of it. So here are some of the latest illustrations. Above is an illustration I did for New York Press about a male prostitute.

Here's one for Nerve.com about things heating up during an argument. My kind of argument...

Here's another one for Nerve.com about a young american man's expierience with a wild woman in Vienna.

These last two are a couple of sketches I did, just messing around with textures, patterns and materials.

Thanks for reading! A lot more stuff on the way!

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-30T09:44:00.003-04:00

TOM - Here is a little autumnal greeting for you all! Have a great Halloween weekend!

MoogFest 2010 Print

2010-10-25T11:46:00.003-04:00

JAMES - I am honored to have been asked to be a part of the MoogFest 2010 art show, Synth: A Group Art Show Inspired by Bob Moog, in honor of the inventor of the synthesizer. MoogFest takes place this coming weekend here in Asheville, and the art show features limited edition screen prints by some of my favorite and most respected poster artists. It's gonna be awesome.

Above is my contribution, an illustration depicting the connection and love between man and machine, inventor and creation, musician and instrument. They are hand-printed as an edition of 50, featuring 4 colors on 100lb True White Speckletone French Paper. 20 of the prints will be available at the festival this weekend, and I will have the rest of them available on my site on November 1st. www.jamesflames.com/store.html

The main black inkwork was drawn with a variety of brushes, both wet and dry. And the green circuitry, which is printed semi-transparently over everything, was composed as vector lines using Adobe Illustrator. The paper itself is naturally sprinkled with speckles of dust and stuff - I thought that would kinda play off the looseness of the lines.

Thanks to Justin Helton for curating the show. I'm in some really great company - the Young Monster crew, Us & Them, Get a Clue Design, DKNG, Zeloot, Doe Eyed Design, Dan Grzeca, Drew Findley, Steve Walters, and of course Justin, plus a bunch more. I've seen some of their pieces online recently, and man oh man, this show's gonna be a killer!

Studio Visit: Marcellus Hall

2010-10-19T11:42:00.022-04:00

I recently had the great opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with illustrator Marcellus Hall at his home in NYC. Marcellus was a teacher of mine back in my early days at School Of Visual Arts. His class offered me an insight into what an illustrator actually does and the process behind creating an editorial illustration. In class I got to see a lot of it first hand, as Marcellus would bring in assignments that he had just finished or sketches that he had sent to an art director. All of this really appealed to me and essentially that’s what made me want to pursue illustration as a career (rather than cartooning, which was my major throughout school). Just like our days in class, during my visit Marcellus was more than generous in sharing his work, both old and current. Throughout the course of our conversation we talk about his process of working on a children’s book, the role of Photoshop in illustration and his love for sketch-booking. The visit started off with Marcellus showing me some of the artwork he’s been creating for his fifth children’s book entitled, Full Moon and Star, written by Lee Bennett Hopkins:

Marcellus: I could show you the process.

Thomas: That’d be great.

Marcellus: It starts with this, a book dummy. I just slap down these drawings and staple it together. Later, the publisher adds the type and figures out how the words are going to play out on the pages. Then, I’ll bring this in and they’ll approve it or tell me what I need to change. Then, I’ll take each sketch and bring it to Kinko’s and blow it up to the size I’m going to work on. I then take a piece of vellum and trace over the rough, tightening it up, making it a little more exact. Once that’s tightened up, I use a piece of graphite paper to transfer the pencils onto the watercolor paper.

Thomas: Do you like to keep it sort of loose at this stage?

Marcellus: It’s not loose, I want to make sure things are in place. The problem is though, that I don’t have a lot of the spontaneity as a result. The spontaneity comes when the watercolor get’s splashed on.

Thomas: Same thing with my work, I feel that sometimes when I light box, it could easily allow the drawing to stiffen up and lose something in the process. When I add ink to it though, that's where the drawing starts to come alive again. Is that what the watercolors do for you?

Marcellus: Yeah, hopefully. That’s the idea at least.

Thomas: So once you get it onto the board, how long will a spread in the book take you?

Marcellus: It’s really important for me to put some paint on, let it dry, and as it dries I kind of circle it, go in the other room, come back and look at it again. Sometimes it’ll sit on my desk for days or weeks. There usually isn’t that kind of time with editorial work, but with a children’s book you have months to work on it.

Thomas: Do you have to re-do pages a lot when working on a children’s book?

Marcellus: Yes, but only because I make myself do the changes.

Thomas: So no one’s putting pressure on you to do a bunch of changes?

Marcellus: No, they’re more lax than I am.

Thomas: Are they much more concerned with the cover?

Marcellus: Probably, yeah. They’ll be a little more critical about that. And here’s the cover. I’m going to lay acetate on top of that and do the lettering.

Thomas: Are you considered ‘old school’ for doing lettering overlays on acetate paper?

Marcellus: Yeah, as the years go by, I’m considered more and more ‘old school’ and I’m not that old (laughter).

Thomas: I respect that process though, I think it’s really awesome. Is that a decision you make because it feels right doing it that way?

Marcellus: Yeah, it feels right. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m young enough to know how to do Photoshop and I have learned how to use it and I’ve colored things with Photoshop and it takes me just as long to color something with Photoshop as it does with watercolor, but it seems less fresh, so I like the hands on approach. So, when I get labeled ‘old school’, I hate it, but it’s worth it, I’m not going to give it up. Or sometimes they’ll say ‘retro’, but maybe that’s because I’m in love with 1930’s and 40’s drawing style, I don’t know.

Thomas: For me, I’ve been trying to find a better way to integrate Photoshop with my drawing in more of a seamless way, so it doesn’t necessarily look like it was colored in Photoshop, using more hand created textures, not to make it look so computery. I look at some of the stuff I made while still in school and fresh out of school and it’s just disgusting, I was just going crazy with Photoshop, getting carried away with all the tools and relying too heavily on it for fancy affects. So, if I could keep it more about the drawing and less about the Photoshop…

Marcellus: Yeah, I think that’s good. I’ve seen people doing it, and I’ve seen stuff you’ve done and more and more people are using Photoshop to amazing effects and I love those textures that get put in there. Sometimes I look at those drawings and think ‘how the hell did they do that?’, which is cool I guess..

Thomas: Would you agree that there is that quality of brush and paper that nothing can really beat?

Marcellus: Oh yeah. It’s funny though, I remember when Photoshop first burst on the scene and all the illustrators were using it, I was frustrated because suddenly my drawings looked dirty (laughter) They didn’t look as clean.

Thomas: I do all my drawing by hand so I have all my original black and white drawings, but to some extent I feel like less of an artist because if someone asked to see the original colored drawing, I would have to give them a digital print out. And that’s one of the reasons I want to use less Photoshop, but it all comes down to confidence in the execution I guess.

Marcellus: I struggle every time I set out to do coloring. It’s hit or miss, y’know, I fail and then I start again and I rack my brain, there’s blood sweat and tears and sometimes I hate the fact that I’m even doing it and I’m jealous of all the ‘Command Z’ people. (laughter) There’s an illustrator named Eric Palma and he used to do watercolor and now he does Photoshop and he does it extremely well, it looks amazing.

Thomas: To me, when I see work like yours that’s completely hand done, it makes me think that particular artist has a great sense of confidence in what they do. For myself, I guess by trying not to rely so much on the computer, I’m just trying to build up a better sense of confidence in drawing and executing an illustration. Y’know, if I was living in a tree house in the middle of the rainforest and all I had was an internet connection and I got a editorial job that needed to be in that night, I would have to use whatever I had around me in order to create an illustration, and having that kind of confidence in order to pull something like that off would be essential.

Marcellus: I totally agree with you, I think I even adopted that sort of philosophy when I was really young. Part of it had to do with music. I was really in love with folk music and people like Woody Guthrie – he didn’t need an amplifier, he’d just pick up an acoustic guitar and start strumming or even sing acapella and I appreciated that kind of raw, D.I.Y approach, it was self sufficient, I loved that. And so it carried over into my art and I thought, I don’t need fancy watercolor paper and this and that, I could draw on a scrap of cardboard that I found on the street, I could use my blood, whatever (laughter).

Thomas: Your sketchbooks are awesome. One of the things I remember from your class is you bringing in your sketchbooks and openly sharing them with all of us. For me as a student, that was invaluable, being able to see those in person, it was like seeing where it all happens, no tricks, I saw the mistakes, the experiments…

Marcellus: Yeah, raw, free form kind of experimentation…

Thomas: Does that kind of tie into your D.I.Y approach?

Marcellus: Yeah, I think so. I just love the idea of sketching from life and I loved the idea of just coloring something with a tea bag. I just loved using materials at hand. Most of them are from real life, for some reason I don’t draw from my head all the time or that much, unless it’s an illustration job. The sketchbooks give me an opportunity to experiment with color and also to draw without inhibition and I also experiment a lot with composition, it helps me a lot compositionally. I remember thinking when I first started keeping a sketchbook that composition was my weakness, so for me the object was to fill a rectangle with lines that had a pleasing composition. And that sounds almost too obvious, but it really is a combination of lines that create a pleasing composition and some people forget that. You have to step back and look at it abstractly, I think

Thomas: Totally. How important is the outcome of a sketch to you? Are you thinking at all about the outcome?

Marcellus: Yeah, I am. It’s like a high wire act, I want to come out on top, I want to create a great piece and sometimes I fail. I guess the high wire metaphor is appropriate because you can fall, it’s a balancing act because I’m committing to paper with a non erasable pencil and without a net, y’know?

Thomas: I try to keep a sketchbook as much as possible, but I get frustrated with them sometimes because I feel like it becomes this art object or something, like every page in it has to be amazing. And I feel like the fancier the sketchbook is, the more pressure there is in terms of filling it up. Do you have that sort of…

Marcellus:Anxiety?

Thomas: Yeah, I mean it’s the stupidest thing, anybody that’s not an artist would think we’re crazy about having anxiety about filling this book up…

Marcellus: Yeah, for years I avoided good materials because I was too anxious. But then when I could start affording better quality materials, I was like hitting my head saying ‘why didn’t I use these materials earlier?’ because it makes such a big difference to have good paper. I remember wondering why certain watercolor wouldn’t apply to certain papers and it was because it was bad paper.

Thomas: I try and draw outside from life as much as possible, but I find it hard to not get spotted by someone who I might be drawing, or someone who wants to look over my shoulder which just makes me self conscious. But then I see your sketchbook stuff and I’m like, “fuck, I would love to do stuff like that!” What’s your method?

Marcellus: I think I’ve perfected some way to avoid scrutiny, I’m not sure how I do it, but I don’t get people over my shoulder that often and when I do I’m actually pretty confident and I have to say I think it’s just from years of doing it. I totally understand the self consciousness, but I’ve overcome it, I don’t know how though. One thing that I think about when I encounter a situation where I’m going to draw people is that I don’t think of it terms of “I’m going to draw people,” I think more in terms of the people and their relationship to the environment, I’m not just going to do figure studies

Thomas: I remember you bringing into class some books on artists that influenced you like Marc Chagall and…

Marcellus: George Grosz…

Thomas: Yeah, when you first started out keeping a sketchbook, were you heavily influenced by those guys and trying to emulate them? How long did it take for you to find your own voice?

Marcellus: I remember thinking that style was something that can’t be forced. People worry about it a lot, but my solution to that was just draw constantly. I figured if you were constantly drawing, you don’t have time to think about style, it just comes. I found myself gravitating to things that I’d seen and things that I liked, but in an unconscious way.

Thomas: I started keeping a sketchbook after seeing your sketchbooks in class, I was like ‘oh man, I gotta do stuff like this’…

Marcellus: oh cool…

Thomas: I remember getting a sketchbook very similar to yours and trying to sketch like you, then I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t you and it totally wasn’t working, then throughout school I would try and emulate various other artists sketchbook styles and I feel that only over the last year or so have I finally started to find my own voice in terms sketch booking. I feel like my own voice is not really even consistent with itself yet, it’s sort of all over the place, but at least it’s me and not someone else…

Marcellus: Yeah, and I still get influenced by people all the time. Sometimes I can’t help but start an illustration thinking about another illustrator and how they would do it. But I used to copy Ralph Steadman, do something in his style, then I would do something in Al Hirschfeld’s style and to me they’re almost polar opposites, but I was equally influenced by both of them. My line is probably more like Hirschfeld’s now, but I also absorbed a lot from somebody like Ralf Steadman. In terms of sketchbooks though, when I came to New York I actually was dying to make drawings of the city and of the people in the way George Grosz did drawings of Berlin. So I adopted a more flat, angular, cubist style, I did a lot of experiments with that kind of stuff

Thomas: Almost a collage-like composition…

Marcellus: …yeah I loved that.

Thomas: Looking through your sketchbooks, you’ve sketched all over the place, some of these are in China, South America…

Marcellus: Yeah, traveling inspires me…for you too, when you’re traveling this year, it’ll be a great opportunity for you

Thomas: Yeah, I’m going to try and create as many drawings on the road as I can and at the end of it, look through it and see if there’s something I could do with them .Haven’t really figured out what just yet.

Marcellus: It’ll certainly be invaluable I think. Also, if you’re feeling hateful towards the place you’re at, you might be able to channel some of that into a drawing, draw the people the way you see them, or if you’re lonely or excited or whatever.

Thomas: Is that what sketching is to you, especially when you’re traveling? Does is become some sort of…

Marcellus: Therapy?

Thomas: Yeah.

Marcellus: Yeah, it can. It’s also like I can’t wait to capture this and show it to people, so there’s a little bit of vanity involved.

And that’s when duty called. The New Yorker emailed him to make some last minute changes on an illustration that he was working on, so he had to get back to work. It truly was a great conversation though and it was great to look through all his sketch books from over the years and get a walk through of his process. You can check out Marcellus’ amazing illustration work at his website: www.marcellushall.com.

The Night Is Ours, But The Sky Is Yours

2010-10-12T21:33:00.004-04:00

JAMES - My newest release is this Blitzen Trapper poster from their show here in Asheville last week. The show was pretty great, these guys are in top form - and their vocal harmonies were freakin' amazing. Fruit Bats and Pearly Gate Music opened, both really impressive sets. Great night.

So I have some posters left from the show, and they're available on my site now, $20 each: www.jamesflames.com/store.html

Here's how I made it:

This all actually started one day as I was sitting on the beach, relaxed as could be, eyes closed, and the image came outta nowhere. I knew I had a Blitzen Trapper poster coming up, so I guess it was in the recesses of my mind. I made a mental note, and then made a little tiny sketch when I got home. Same as the last time I did a poster for them (here's a link), I'm using the German translation of their name, Blitzen = Lightning, as the genesis for my concept. This time the figure in the poster is trapping lightning bugs.

The final artwork was done in pieces. I drew the grass with ink and brush. Starting from the top, I drew some blades of grass with black, then some white ink for detail, then the next layer down with black, then white, then next layer down and so on... Like 20 layers later my hand was crippled. But it looks pretty damn cool.

For the lettering, I've had this idea for awhile and I finally got to implement it. I got some small rope - I think it's cooking twine or something - and a big jar of glue. I spread some glue over the string and began to shape it into letters. As the glue dried, the letters kinda stayed put - though I still had to be careful. Photographed them and then into Photoshop for some trickery to incorporate it into the poster illustration.

As with my last print, "Here Comes Your Boyfriend..." (which I printed the same weekend as this one) I wanted to experiment with a slightly darker and muted palette. So the night sky and the grass tones are less 'electric' than my usual colors. The heavy detail of the rope lettering left me no room for sloppy registration, especially using six colors - the extra time I took to perfect it during the printing paid off, cuz it's pretty damn tight (the detail image above is a scan of the final print).

6-color screenprint, 19"x25", on 110lb Smart White French paper, edition of 100, signed and numbered

Now available at my website: www.jamesflames.com/store.html . Thanks for reading!

Retro Couple

2010-10-11T15:43:00.004-04:00

TOM - This is a new drawing I worked on in between other assignments over the course of the last week. It started with a rough idea I had floating around in my head for a while, an image of a couple sort of interlocked, while looking in separate directions. I knew I wanted to incorporate some elements that I have been playing around with drawing lately, such as different types of clothing with various textures and patterns, big hair, and an overall 60's rock and roll type of vibe.

I started sketching with these ideas in mind. I was happy with the way the woman's body was positioned, but I felt like the guy needed alot more work and that there needed to be more interaction between the two of them in general. So, I photocopied the image and traced the rough onto a sheet of Bristol, trying to build it up as I traced.

I worked and reworked the hell out of it, but once I was happy with the pencils, I slapped some ink on it and above is what the original black and white turned out looking like. It's smudgy and I used alot of pencil as a way to add texture and also the pattern on both their shirts. I didn't want this one to be too slick, I've been trying to find a happy medium between clean brush work and the softness of pencil and dry brush. Not quite there yet, but I hope I'm headed in the right direction.

Either way, I had a lot of fun! Thanks for reading and Happy Monday!

Always Sunny In Philadelphia

2010-10-07T10:00:00.004-04:00

TOM- Over the last couple months I've done some work for Philadelphia City Paper, so I figured I'd post it all here today. The whole crew over there is real nice and I really like working with them. This week I illustrated their cover, it's a spin on the Grand theft Auto video games. It was cool to get a bit more comic booky than I usual do and Evan Lopez really hooked it up with the dope logo.

Here's what it looks like without all the text. When I was a kid, I used to make fake advertisments for my made up comic book series. That's sort of what this reminded me of when I was drawing this. I got in touch with my inner nerd.

Also, I've been illustrating their 'A Million Stories' section on a monthly basis. They're pretty whacky stories involving local politicians and other happenings around the city. Here are the two that I've done so far.

Thanks for reading! I've got a bunch of new work that I can't wait to share, so stay tuned!

"Here comes your boyfriend..."

2010-09-29T00:16:00.008-04:00

JAMES - Here's my newest art print. A bunch of bad-asses, about to get tough, climbing a fence, and obviously impressing one of the guys' girlfriend. Probably gonna beat up some dude who was hassling her. Or just making trouble, cuz that's what they do.

The print is now available in my store. It's a 5-color screen print, 25" x 19", with an edition of 50, signed and numbered. $25 each. www.jamesflames.com/store.html

original sketchbook drawing

The whole thing originated with a sketchbook drawing one morning. Woke up with the idea, and just knocked it out quickly. I played a little Thin Lizzy, and then forgot about it.

I came back to the image a couple weeks later, and decided to delve into it and expand on it a bit. Above is the revised sketch for the print - I changed the framing, added a dude who was jumping off the top, and changed the wording.

final ink drawing

The ink drawing was done about 8"x10", with a #2 brush on translucent Vellum. The fence was drawn separately, as was the sketchy white lines that I used on the print. And I changed the wording one last time. Everything was scanned into the computer and composed in Photoshop.

detail shot

My prints are usually a diverse array of bright colors, but I wanted to experiment with using one main color (blue) and playing with four tones of it, then using the white and the black to strengthen the whole thing.

5-color screenprint, 25"x19", on 110lb Smart White French paper, edition of 50, signed and numbered

Get yours now: www.jamesflames.com/store.html.
Lots of new prints coming up - stay tuned. Thanks for reading!

Loose Ends

2010-09-24T10:59:00.007-04:00

TOM - Here are some recent drawings I made in between working on assignments. Before or after a long day of drawing, these help me relax and provide a place for me to experiment with different approaches that I could then use on future assignments. I love the immediacy of drawing these and then be able to share them right away, as opposed to hired jobs where I have to wait until the thing is published.

So, I'll just give you a quick walk through of the inspiration behind some of these: The piece above was me just playing around with my recent obsession with the beehive hair doo, I've also been wanting to draw a flannel pattern too, so there ya go.

This is a scene from one of my favorite movies, Ed Wood. I love the setting and the way the scene is shot, so it inspired me to make a drawing out of it. This was mainly an exercise in black and white contrast as well as the use of black on black, which I'm always a little scared to do, this made me less scared.

Here is a 'study' of the rapper, Nicki Minaj. I'm hoping to do a full out illustration of her in the very near future, so this was just a bit of a warm up. The likeness isn't quite there yet, but I like some of the effects I stumbled upon while drawing it.

A line from 'A Boy Named Sue' by Johnny Cash. I've often thought of making a short comic using the lyrics from that song, since they provide such great visuals. This is probably my favorite line in the whole song.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Head In My Hands In My Head

2010-09-21T10:46:00.004-04:00

JAMES - Here's my latest, it's for Tortoise's recent killer show at the Orange Peel here in Asheville, NC. Hell of a show, and really nice guys - it was an awesome night. The remaining posters are now available on my site - www.jamesflames.com/store.html - $20 each.

This was a real fun one to make. Just a ton of overprinting - six colors continuously laid on-top of each other. I wanted the color and ink to literally saturate every square inch of it. Here's some pics and words about my process:

In the photo you see the sketch to the right, which was my guideline for everything. The base of the mask was made with cutouts, which were then photographed. I wanted the natural curl of the cardboard and the shadow it cast below it to be visible on the final print. Then I drew the ornamental part of the mask, as well as all the rest of the flourishes, on paper and scanned them into the computer.

I now had a bunch of different pieces, and so it was a matter of assembling it all, using Photoshop and Illustrator (see the photo) to make it look like that original sketch.

detail shot

When it came time to mix the inks for printing, I made sure to keep the colors as loud and proud as possible. And I'm psyched that all the little details of the photographed mask came through, even as it's buried under layers of other color.

6-color screenprint, 19"x25", on 110lb Smart White French paper, edition of 100, signed and numbered

Get 'em while they're hot, not very many remaining - www.jamesflames.com/store.html. Thanks for reading!

Sketchbook Drawerings

2010-09-15T00:32:00.009-04:00

JAMES - Here are some of the better recent entries to my sketchbook. These are all done within an hour or less, usually at the beginning of my day, with no photos or other reference - just a chance to loosen up my mind and my hands, whatever's the first thing that pops into my head. Click to see them bigger.

How I Make A Weekly Comic

2010-08-30T10:13:00.005-04:00

TOM- I can't believe I haven't blogged about this yet...Since the beginning of the summer, I've been working on a weekly comic project entitles, 'My Intentional Life' for Grist, an environmental website. The comic is written by Jennifer Prediger and based the life of Gabriel Willow and his experiences living in an 'urban collective' in Brooklyn. It's a house that he shares with 15 other people, they raise their own chickens, harvest their own vegetable, and have a beehive on the roof for honey. It's a very unique living set up, especially to be located in Brooklyn. I had the pleasure of visiting this house for a dinner a few months back and I got to meet his roommates who have become supporting characters in the strip.

Artistically, this has been a much welcomed challenge. Since we have all these interesting stories to tell, but only one page a week to tell them, the challenge has been to make the visual storytelling as clear as possible, without cramming the page. I decided to share with you my step by step process of how I break down the page and take it all the way to final. Above are the first two weekly episodes. It's pretty self explanatory, but I'll just point out a couple things:

The first step is the rough, where I'm just trying to make the the story flow in an interesting way that keeps the eye moving easily from left to right. During this stage, I'm very aware of leaving room for where the speech bubbles will eventually go, I even rough them in so that I'm sure it's all going to work out before I take it any further. Then, I blow up the roughs to full size and work on top of them, creating the pencils(which I didn't scan along the way, so they're not show here), from there, I go to inks, my favorite part! During this stage, I'm trying to 'spot' blacks to help move the eye where I want it to go and also give the page a sense of balance. After that, it's coloring time. I try to make the colors as simple as possible, not to take away from the line art or distract the reader from the story. The point of the colors is to enhance what's already there and if anything add mood and a sense of atmosphere. I had fun muting the palette for the flash back sequence on page two. As always, there's last minute changes along the way, so if you look close enough, you can see where some of those revisions happened.

Anyway, we are already coming up on our sixth weekly instalment of this project, so it's very exciting to see it evolve and take shape, it's also been a great learning lesson for me along the way.

To read these pages and all the others(with words on them!), check out the 'My Intentional Life page on Grist.org!

Thanks so much for reading and be sure to check Grist every Tuesday for a new instalment!

Deam Wareham plays Galaxie 500 (x2)

2010-08-24T10:53:00.013-04:00

(Now That Enough Time Has Passed) It's Safe To Go Back Again

Hello Again / Goodbye Again

JAMES - I'm psyched to finally show off these two new posters. I've been a fan of Dean Wareham's music for as long as I can remember - Luna, Dean & Britta, and of course, the band that started it all, Galaxie 500. Dean's now doing some shows playing the old Galaxie 500 stuff, as he's backed by the Dean & Britta band. I had the privelege of doing the posters for last weekend's NYC and Philly shows (not to mention the opening band, Crystal Stilts!). These two posters are now available on my site - www.jamesflames.com/store.html - $20 each.

As usual, here's some words about my processes:
The ideas for these came about pretty naturally. For the NYC poster, I actually came up with the title first, and the image just kinda appeared on the page after a quick sketch. For the Philly show, I had just finished a sketchbook piece (which I've posted before here), and I thought this would be a great opportunity to bring it to life as a screen print.

finished inked lettering

I worked on both posters simultaneously - drawing, printing, the whole thing. But the styles for each one are totally different, especially in how I created them. The NYC poster was done pretty traditionally - I drew all the elements on paper with a brush, scanned them into the computer, and assembled everything together using photoshop. The lettering (pictured above) took a few tries to get it just right.

drawing directly on films

But for the Philly poster, I drew 95% of everything directly onto the films. My intention was for the final print to resemble a painting, so that the strokes look like they were painted with a brush rather than screen printed. The slight roughness of drawing onto the films directly helped to get that effect, as well as alot of overprinting (printing one color on top of another).

Printing the second color (green over red).

I also used a different type of paper than usual. French Paper makes some high quality stuff, and this time I used "Sweet Tooth" in their Poptone line. It's got a more pronounced texture that really adds another dimension to the prints.

detail shot

4-color screenprint, 19"x25", on 100lb SweetTooth Poptone French paper, edition of 100, signed and numbered

6-color screenprint, 19"x25", on 100lb SweetTooth Poptone French paper, edition of 100, signed and numbered

Now available at my website - www.jamesflames.com/store.html - $20 each. Thanks for reading.

Alotta Nerve...

2010-08-22T19:33:00.007-04:00

TOM- Ever since we changed the layout for the 'My First Time' section on Nerve.com, it has given me the opportunity to play around with composition and storytelling and in the process I've tried to push myself to try and create a really strong image week after week. I've been finding some really great inspiration in some of these amazing illustrations. That whole wonderful era of illustration is fascinating to me and truly inspiring. I've been trying to somehow tap into those guys genius and slowly try and figure out how to come up with new and interesting ways to jazz up a story with exciting visuals. I haven't even come close to what those artists have accomplished, but just studying them has been a real learning lesson all it's own. Most importantly, I've been having fun too! Here are some of my latest illustrations for the 'My First Time' section from the last few weeks. I've included the black and white versions as well.

On a side note, I just added more of my illustrated tote bags to my Etsy shop, so be sure to get 'em while they're hot! Thanks for reading and have a great rest of the weekend!

So Much To Say

2010-08-16T22:49:00.010-04:00

JAMES - These guys still kill it.
So I got to do a Mission of Burma poster, and I damn well made the best of it. The show was amazing - they just tore through every song with absolute fire. The crowd was diggin' it, and I had a hell of a time. Oh, and the posters...they flew off the table.
The remaining posters are now available in my store, 20 bucks each. www.jamesflames.com/store.html

A quick bit about the process on this one:

I knew I wanted some kind of skeleton. And I knew the style I wanted to draw it in. And I knew how I wanted to position the skeleton on the page, at that diagonal angle. But the rest was still a mystery. So I sketched what I knew, which is basically what you see above, and then hunkered down for some experimentation.

About ten different design options were thrown out before I came to the final image idea. Then the final drawings were done - the skeleton with a brush, the baloons and lettering with a marker. And then the final composition and colors, which you see in the detail shot below, was all done in photoshop. It's pretty simple, but it feels really big when it's staring right at you. And as a few folks remarked at the show, that black is deep as outer space. Awesome.

detail shot

3-color screenprint, 19"x25", on 110lb Smart White French paper, edition of 100, signed and numbered

Now available to purchase from my website, 20 clams each: www.jamesflames.com/store.html
Thanks for reading!

Philadelphia City Paper Cover!

2010-08-12T08:54:00.004-04:00

TOM - You know you've seen these people. The ones that flag you down with a big smile and stop you in the middle of the street asking you to donate to their cause. I totally respect what they do and I think it's a great way to get attention to a good cause, but I know I'm not alone when I say I've pretended to be on my phone or told them I was in a rush when I really wasn't. I know, it's messed up. As much as I would love to give to all of them, when you live in a big city, you're bound to see several of these folks a day, it could get a bit overwhelming sometimes...Anyway, that's kinda what the inspiration behind this cover was. I always have fun doing work for Philly City Paper and this was no exception.

Like a couple of previous covers, I did this one in several pieces, the girl, the background and the bubble. Here was the mock up that I sent them.

They put it all together, added the type and above is what the finished cover looks like. Thanks to my friends over at Philadelphia City Paper! If you're in Philly, it hit's the stands today so be sure to pick one up!

'The Stranger' Illustration

2010-08-06T11:55:00.005-04:00

TOM - This week, I got the opportunity to create an illustration for The Stranger, an awesome newspaper based in Seattle. The article is about a summer camp for non-traditional families, in this particular case, poly families, a family where the mom and dad have multiple partners. The AD, Aaron asked if I could illustrate a typical, happy summer camp image, except for the fact that the canoes are stuffed full of these multiple-parent families.

Here is the sketch that Aaron chose, it was the one I felt the most strongly about also, so I was glad he picked it.

As far as the inked drawing went, it was inked with a synthetic Princeton #1 brush and black indian ink on bristol. I kept the drawing very open with little to no shading at all because I wanted to expeiriment with color, adding light, shading and mood.

I'm happy with how the final page came out and I had a fun time working on this, thanks, Aaron! Read the full article here.

***Reminder***

On a side note, the show I'm in in Philadelphia, 'Wired and Hazy' is still up until the end of the month, be sure to check it out at SALT Gallery if you're in Philly!

Tote Bags!

2010-07-25T21:09:00.005-04:00

TOM- Check out these tote bags I just made! You may remember this image from a previous post a couple weeks back.

I'm really happy with the way these turned out and excited to be venturing into the world of tote bags!

If you are interested in purchasing one of these, here are some of the details: they are printed on 100% natural canvas totes with standard sized straps. To order, please visit my Etsy shop, where I also have t-shirts available as well.

Hope everyone had a great weekend, thanks for reading!

Getting hot in here...

2010-07-22T09:23:00.004-04:00

TOM- Here is an illustration I did for Nerve.com this week. I illustrate a weekly section for them entitled, 'My First Time', people submit stories about how they lost their virginity. For the most part, they're pretty entertaining to read. Over the past year or so, I've used this as an opportunity to experiment with different styles and approaches. Since most of these stories take place during adolescent years, I often approached it with a sweeter, more young adult type style. Recently though, they changed the format of the page a bit and asked if I could make the illustrations even sexier, focusing on the climax of the story and giving it a more adult feel. I'm cool with that, plus the wider format will give me another way of approaching these compositionally, which I'm excited about. Anyway, here's my first crack at the new approach. I included the black and white version as well, it's slightly different than the final.

Look out for some new sexy illustrations at Nerve.com!