MoogFest 2011 Print

"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

Detail Photo

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

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

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.

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Save A Secret For The Moon

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.

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A Harlem Hand, A Harlem Heart

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...

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Painting a Mural for the "Long Live" show

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

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MoogFest 2010 Print

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!

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Printing a Beach House Poster

JAMES - I've gotten great use of my new printing studio this past week, finishing three great posters for upcoming shows by the XX, Yeasayer, and Beach House. The last two days I spent printing the Beach House poster - a four color poster on beautiful "Grape Jelly" paper. I just made a quick little video roughly documenting the printing process. I'll elaborate on the creation of the poster once it's closer to the show date (April 30), but for now here's what I did this weekend:

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Vacuum Table!

JAMES - So I finally built my own Vacuum Table for screenprinting. I've recently acquired an awesome extra studio space, which I'm sharing with my buddy Brent Fleury (great photographer), and I'm turning my half of it into a print shop for my own personal use. Psyched.
Anyway, using the great plans of AndyMac (which you can download here, if you wish), I built the table from scratch. Got me a bunch of large plywood, some formica, drill bits, screws, glue and all that stuff. With the help of Brent's table saw, I cut it all out how I needed, and began to set the formica to the top piece of the table.
After that, I drew a grid of 1" squares and began drilling holes - 1,827 if I remember correctly.



Some pics of the drilling process. It took forever. My drill is shit - waiting for the batteries to re-charge was the worst part.


Here's a shot from outside at night - inside, you can just barely see that I have a ton of weight on the table, waiting for the second layer to set.



This is what the second layer looks like - staggered strips to allow the vacuum suction to travel through the whole table and suck in through the holes on top.


Finally, I set the third layer, which is just a flat bottom. Added my hinges and went to Ikea for some table legs - one's that can go at an angle to assist my back during printing. I hooked up the Vacuum, and it totally works great. The finished size is 4' x 4' - so I can do some nice sized prints with it. Can't wait to get started....

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The Octopus Bike

JAMES - i'm psyched to finally post this. It's a 1978 Raleigh Record Ace that i custom painted for Renaissance Bicycles, a local company that specializes in customizing and restoring vintage bikes. Bryan at Renaissance took the finished frame and tricked it out to make it a serious track bike.
the bike is for sale by Renaissance - here's a link, and it lists all the equipment specs: www.renaissancebicycles.com


when Bryan first contacted me, we talked about possible design directions, and i did some sketches. this is what i came up with.



when i got the frame, it had been stripped of it's original paint and decals and a nice white primer coat had been applied. i mapped the whole thing out with a pencil and an eraser - my body was twisted in and out of that thing trying to get just the right angle to draw on it. i wanted all the tentacles to attach to the head in the front, and keeping track of all the tangles was quite a challenge.



when i got it just how i wanted it, i rubbed it down with alcohol and painted it with enamel paint. the kind you use for sign painting. in retrospect, paint markers may have been an easier way to go, but there's no way i would have gotten some of that texture and flow without the thick enamel paint. but damn, those fumes killed!
i did use paint markers for the black outlines and the white bubbles, and for the lightning bolts on the rims. i'm super proud of how it came out, and i had no idea Bryan was planning to dress it up so nicely. this thing's a monster.

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I'm Jealous!

His Majesty, The Umpire // edition of 75

Hangin' On A String, Girl // edition of 75

The Umpire, His Majesty (reverse)// edition of 25

JAMES - it's been quite the whirlwind in the past 2 months or so, and it all culminated in my visit to London last week, where the above three prints were unveiled at the opening of Jealous Gallery.

the short story is that i was contacted by Dario Illari, who was opening a brand new gallery (and print studio), focusing on fine limited edition prints by folks such as Warhol, Hirst, Hume, Kapoor, Banksy, D*Face, Jamie Reid, Nick Walker, etc etc, as well as young and up-and-coming artists. eneter James Flames. we began a collaboration on these two illustrations to be printed in their studio by Matthew Rich - a master printer who, amongst many prestigious credits, worked on all the early prints for the Hacienda and Factory Records bands in Manchester, early 80's - so cool. sketches and many emails back and forth with Dario, then i sent them the artwork, and finally they printed them. it was a great collaboration and i think we worked really well together. they're about 50cm square (20inches or so), and i think they did an incredible job. the black is deep and velvety, they put a varnish over the grays so they shimmer slightly, and the blue really brings it all together.

well, i needed to sign them, and so instead of fedex-ing them back and forth, they figured it better for me to just go there personally. and i'm so glad i did. i arrived last monday morning, started signing right away, and then for the next two and a half days i became a part of the family - watching Eddie paint, asking Matthew a bunch of printing questions, and doing whatever i could to help get the place ready for the big opening on wednesday night.

^signing my prints, my hand was about to fall off by the end of the day. yes, that's a real Damien Hirst behind me.

^here are the two main prints, masterfully hung by Adam Bridgland.

^the front of the studio right before opening

^the "Menu", which went with the theme of the evening. i hand lettered both sides. quite a roll call of names on that list, an honor to be in their company

^the Jealous family. (L-R): Me, Jacqueline, Dario, Eddie King (and his latest piece - i got one to take home, thanks Eddie), Adam, and Matthew

^at full swing, the place was packed from the front door to the backyard. great food, and great company.

^the view from across the street, the place was poppin'

i'd have to say the night was quite a success, for everyone, and myself included. my Umpire print was the first thing sold that night, and by the end of the night myself and Eddie King had the most prints sold - more than i think anyone expected. it was such an incredible feeling to see them there, and to get such positive and insightful feedback. i'm still reeling.

the next morining i was back on a plane to come home. a truly amazing trip - i've never recieved such generous hospitality as i did from Dario and his family, both at home and at the gallery. it was quite an experience, and an honor to know that someone would put so much work into my own work. incredible thanks to everyone.

the prints have continued to sell well since, and are available online here. they'll also be showing at another gallery show later this month, i'll follow up with more details. and we're already at work on the next print. psyched!

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