Creepy Critters

I finished a huge series of ink drawings I've been working on for almost a year. I passed one thousand so I reached my goal. The idea was to just brain storm a vast number of insane creatures then get them on paper. The lower left one in the picture above was inspired by this.

Bang Bang sketch for "Gunman"

Last year I was a witness to 2 gun fights, one in which a person was killed. That happened in my neighborhood, right on my doorstep. The fighting was over drugs and territory. I sketched the idea for an ink piece, but really it was to get that shit out of my head- and on to paper.

P.S. I'm going on a 2 week excursion to Japan, so I won't be posting anything for awhile.

A couple of tee designs.

I did a Threadless submission based on a fable by Aesop. It's is in the running and seems to be getting good feedback. I used a homebrew SWF file for the presentation. It allows for zooming in and out with lossless quality. Woo!





The newest submission, however, might be a bit of a tough sell to the wider Threadless demographic:



It's got gore - albeit toned-down gore. Regardless, gore is historically about as limp as a wet noodle voting wise.

I'd been practicing my ability to draw a likeness by asking Threadless'rs for photos of themselves. I decided to turn that idea into a tee shirt and solicited 30 people for new photos and for their permission to use their likeness on a shirt. The tricky part was getting everyone zombified (for lack of a better term) while still leaving enough features intact to make them discernible.

Now, I realize that their likenesses being recognizable was not necessary for the design to be successful. I thought doing so was the least I could do to repay them for use of their image as a point of reference. Mind you, I didn't trace their photos or anything. I know some guys include tracing reference as a portion of their workflow. I'm just not comfortable doing that. Seems cheaty.

The interesting thing about this tee design is that it features a seamlessly tiled image. It repeats endlessly in all directions. Over 30 heads repeated in a 5 across, 6 down table.

Uncolored, reduced, still mostly tileable version suitable for putting in a blog post:



The finished piece mocked up on a tee:



Get the 1920x1200 wallpaper here.

Get a large, seamless tile here.

A whole mess of process:













Last, but certainly not least, the 30 intrepid volunteers:



For the record, number thirty was me. Oh, vanity!

New small ink

I must have done this image 5 times already. One is called "The Butcher" and its an oil painting.

MARK A LOT

I love markers. They are by far, my favorite thing to work with in the world of art. They are fun to look at, fun to collect, fun to draw with & look good when you have lots of them. Here are my coloring markers.



I tend to use the sharpies more than the copics as they sharpies are 1/6th the price & have some bolder colors & i've worked out a whole system with them. The copics are very nice markers, but are too expensive. They are refillable though, so that makes up for their price. I have been discouraged from using markers as my primary medium many times, but i always come back to them. Two of my favorite artists use markers primarily.

I was introduced to Vaughn Bode via a combination of graffiti, Ralph Bakshi's Wizards (Vaughn was supposed to work on this but they had some kind of falling out & then Vaughn died) & his son Mark doing my favorite issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Vaughn Bode named his son Mark after "Marker".



Pedro Bell is famous for his work for Funkadelic doing covers like Cosmic Slop. Bell's work is some crazy Cosmic Slop in its own way & is like the Funky Black Futurist parallel to the work of Cal Schenkel for Frank Zappa. He got his start doing cartoons & writing for his college newspaper & you can find alot of his early stuff reprinted in issues of Roctober.

CD cover for Returner

This is the CD cover that I made for the Death Metal Band- Returner. The name of the album is Retched Machine and I think it's coming out in a couple weeks. I made this image with pencil and digital means.

Saint Pestilence

The patron saint of sickness! Don't touch the budding flowers growing out of the bottom of the box, they're not good for your health!

Recombinant Flower Initiative

-Been thinking a lot about genetics lately. Not so much the science itself, but more about how I see people interpreting the concepts of genetics, of dna. This idea that YOU ARE YOUR DNA is particularly freaky to me. It relates to this idea I see around me a lot, as we're being ushered into this new era (NWO), this idea of "organic"; Let it develop organically, humans must realign their activities to create an organic, "interdependent" whole. As far as I can tell, it has to do with being "natural". I could rant about this forever, but I don't think we're "natural" beings in the sense that we understand the term, as in an animal, or a tree; we can decide what to do. We have wills. How "free" they are is up for discussion, but we make decisions everyday. Being "organic" seems to me to be about shutting off the traditional means we've developed to help us make decisions and opening ourselves up to a materialist/naturalist world-view, one that adds up to an end to individualism as we know it.
These two drawings loosely have to do with this theme.

ALSO

I drew up an EBD banner the other day at work. Here it is:



I thought it would be cool if any of us who are into it drew up a banner. There is code that allows for rotating images upon the page re-loading. I'll have to dig for it ( If any of you guys know it and can paste it in the template, that'd be cool.), but I thought it would be cool to see a lot of different banners.

Also- Do any of you guys know why I so often lose color quality when I save Photoshop images "For the web"? The orange in this one has a lot more depth and variation in the original file...

Out There Radio

Internet radio is really fantastic, except for the whole it being on the internet part & not having that direct access of the radio tuner. I really miss tuning into good radio stations & just taping stuff, because they'd play stuff worth taping. Anyhow, you can still do that, it's just more complicated & more expensive & less cool.
Anyhow, if you're into the weirdness, "Out There Radio" covers it all from Charles Manson & the Process Church to Nazi Occultism & everything in between, inside out & upside down. I'm listening to their Robert Anton Wilson show right now.
OUT THERE RADIO

Rubbish Ocean

I've got three solo art shows in the next three months. I gotta do alot of work every day or else... i have to show old stuff, but that's not what this is about. I've been thinking alot about ART & the ART world & how it just isn't appropriate for my stuff to be shown in proper galleries. The audience is all wrong, this is a cultural thing, this isn't for those gallery people.

The Mighty Warrior Junga Junga


The Toxic Jungle


Four Faces: Piles, Mr. Mandrill, Mr. Cheese & Grk Gregk


Suzi Q: Bananarchy: Anti-boring


The Breakfast Barbarian: Breakfast is the best meal of the day, but i don't like to eat in the morning. Lunch should start at 11 & last until two. The work day should go from 9-11, then brunch, then work from 2-5. You'd have happier, better workers.


Big influences right now...


The RAMM:ELL:ZEE: Rubbish Ocean: New York City Garbage God.

Saint Serpentine

This is one from a small series of reliquary pictures showing saints from The Land Of The Moth. The finished version will have a rotted out coffin wooden frame outline. I just started messing around with the overlay option in layers and it is amazing. I can't believe I hadn't explored that effect before. It turns an image into a translucent shadowy underlayer and can create some really brilliant textural effects.

OK OK Already!

Ok, so I am now on spring break. NOW I will start posting some art and crap to this fine ole blog. But I will start tomorrow! HAHAHAHAHA! BTW, I love the zombie painting on the etsy site. The one with the pins and coloring book. I would love to trade some art for it. If you are interested. otherwise, thanks to Sean for the invite, I will contrib tomorrow when I get home from the ceramic studio. Pax

Entrail Head

Hey Folks! My name is Marc Damicis and I’m an artist in the Philadelphia area of PA. Much thanks for the invite to join Eaten By Ducks! Although I have Myspace and Flickr pages, this is my first time on Blogger. Anyhows, I figured I’d post this monster. It’s actually an old ink drawing from around 1989 that I dug up. I thought it was kinda cool so I painted it up with watercolor, gouache and acrylic. I am in a bit of a lazy rut these past few months however, and need to get working on new stuff and finishing up half-done projects that have been lying about…

1988 BRAIN STORM.

2008 is my 20th year of doing zines & i feel just about the same way as i did then about doing them. It still gives me the biggest kick to put out little magazines with whatever content i want to. Of course now i'm teaching kids who are the age i was when i started doing zines, & let me tell you, NONE OF THEM ARE AS COOL AS ME STILL. So that's refreshing. I also realized that one of my favorite records at the time was NWAs "Straight Outta Compton" which seemed like a parody record in its absurdity. It's still pretty good though, great beats & lyrics (even though they seem like they were written by the FBI).
Anyhow, in the last few years i've been moving back towards my "1988 Feeling" when sampling was new & there were like 10 cultural convergences going on & masculinity hadn't been totally wiped off the surface of the earth.
New Zine: NOT OUT YET. JUST SHARING.




I also invited Chris Mostyn & Marc Damicis (Pickled Punk) to Eaten By Ducks & man, they better post some art up on this mother soon!

I said no now I say yes

Seeing as how I was not producing any work AT ALL I thought the well was dry and I'd call it a day...and mix some metaphors.

Then I drew this picture...

Coffin Series

Here's a screenshot of my current digital project. I'm doing a series of 4 mummyesque figures in coffins for the Voida Voida coffin shaped book that Zeke is putting together. The originals are going to be much larger (19 x 7 inches) than the coffin book versions to allow for some nice looking prints.

A brief explanation of what some of the imagery in this picture are... bones from an ancint giant sloth, mummified lamas, the ears and split open forehead of a slaughtered pig, bits and pieces of a cool gargoyle sculpture, the right eye is that of a rhino, the wood on the borders is from a flooded out building that had some great textural wood rot, and other weird things. This part is still rough and I'm working towards pulling things better together but I have the head and chest area loosely how I want them.

New ink- The Augusti

The Nuts Of Silence

Things You Should Watch

Barefoot Gen, Hiroshima Destroyed

An insane animated sequence of the Hiroshima bombing.

Dario Argento Montage
Here's a great collection of some of the best scenes from Argento's films.

Kids In The Hall- Killer Monkies

The best Kids In The Hall skit ever!

RIP Gary Gygax

I hear that Gary Gygax, the inventor of Dungeons & Dragons just died at age 69.

The whole "imagination with rules" thing is pretty weird, but apparently i like it. Making up little rules for everything, & then breaking all the rules. The best thing about Dungeons & Dragons was the big lists & the monsters & that they hired artists who weren't so polished & had their own weird, quirky styles. Old role playing games were more like zines & self-published stuff in that they hadn't been so processed by the big money concerns & were pretty flukey & strange & all sorts of crazy stuff got thrown into them. The old D&D & AD&D books are right up there with the Johnson Smith Catalog & Mad Magazine & Maximum RocknRoll & Factsheet Five in terms of compendiums of weirdness with small type.

I think Aeron should do a giant monster manual feature for his crazy monster blog.

I would like to share the art of M. Karwacki

M. Karwacki was my uncle, he died years ago from cancer. I think the inks I am showing here are from the 80's. He was an artist, but also did design for theater and television productions. He was very much a contemporary to Beksinski and Duda Gracz. Also, of course he's completely obscure, but still he represented what in Poland was referred to as Plastic Surrealism (aka Neo-surrealism). Karwacki's art, as well as early Duda Gracz and unlike Beksinski's, was saturated with a commentary on the dystopia of Polish socialism. (Which in young America is seen in a very romantic light- though people don't have a clue of what they're talking about.) Also, my earliest memories and exposure to art, were spent in his studio. I apologise for the quality of the images- but they are from my aunt's photo collection, if you guys like this and want to see more, I probably can do something about that.