New Print And New Art Show!

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!

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OC Weekly Cover

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!

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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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Dallas Observer Cover

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!

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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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