Salt Flats

Gum Arabic Transfer Prints.

These are from a workshop I went to , they show you how to use gum arabic to print from photocopies. The print quality of mine is terrible but some of the other people got very crisp prints in different colour combinations.

Smash N Roll!

Ok one more, I was done making these but I had a great idea for a creature riding on a wagon that has a countertop from which small beasts pop out of holes that the thing with the two hammers has to hit. In the finished drawing I'll have the colorful guts oozing down the side of the wagon from where the mallet has crashed onto the body of one of the smaller creatures popping out of the hole. I was going to have the background landscape covered in holes that various odd things are popping out of but that would be too similar to another of these that I'm doing.

Depart

new ink "Pilgrimage"

Ok, I still have three inks to go, and that should conclude this series- that I sorta started in '05 with "She Lord" ink. Also, me and my wife just got a house, we'll be moving in Aug. 12. I'll finally have my studio/room all to myself. Which is great. On top of that I have a show coming up in a couple months and I just got the frames for the artwork. Stuff looks really great framed. That was a sigh of relief. Having said that I think I'll need a little bit more than coffee to keep me going in the weeks to come.

Flying and Floating

Ok, I think this is the last of the collage roughs I'll post from this series. With the float image the large 15th century iconic image of the sea monster as the giant float was originally just place holder so I had a rough idea about the size I was going to make the floating creature. Since then the design has grown on me and I might redraw it instead of making something completely new in place of it.

With the kite image, I was inspired by the single woodcut drawing of the character flying the odd dragon creature which I've flipped on the left and ride side of this composition. I decided to make a scene of various figures flying kites which are winged animals carrying passengers that are fighting, jousting, shooting arrows, sword fighting each other. Again, the final drawn versions are going to be colored pencil. They'll be on heavy tooth sheets of arches watercolor paper. I'm hoping the heavy grain of the paper with the colored pencil will carry a sort of vintage aged look to the surface, not sure how successful that will be as of now though.

In Battle There Is No Law

Speaking of being published, i just got my first alternative weekly cover published today.


I'm taking a break from my experimental work & am doing stuff that is part of my larger consistent style. Here i isolated a character from Bolt Thrower's "In Battle There Is No Law" which i've been obsessed with since i first saw it in 1988.

Here's the awesome original album cover. Can't fuck with this stuff.

& here's the title track from the album.

Countless numbers die in war's path
Armies falling to our wrath
Warriors of power marching to fight
Destruction, killing, all that's in sight
Raise the shield or be cast into death
Take a final look, your final breath
Innocent victims of war
No turning back, in battle there is no law

Capitol

" Body Shop" a oil from 05

I think I stole the original title from an X-Men comic from way back. I'm posting this because I've been really busy working on my inks; which one of them I'll post tomorrow, hopefully. Well, I figure this painting has been collecting dust and I may as well show it. I was into oil for a couple of years and I'm not really sure if I'm done with it, but if I use it again, it's on my own accord. I really hate all this romantic bullshit on oil anyway. Everybody wants to be a fuckin' painter these days. I appreciate what you guys are doing on this blog and I realize most of it isn't oil. And that's what I love about it. That's just my opinion- whatever.

work work work

So, here we are all working on our projects, self publishing, posters, web stuff, zines, comics, etc. So does anybody here have anything published by a publisher? Do any of you have interest in that sort of thing? Do any of you know how to break into that sort of thing? Do they contact you or do you contact them? Just curious. BTW, I am very greatful to Zeke and Sean for including me in some bigger projects. I cant wait to see them. I would also love to organize something like that. Perhaps later in the winter when some of my own projects wrap up.

I am considering a book idea down the road based on my experiences in a fundamentalist seminary. Ha! A traveler going to a secret temple to delve into the secrets of the universe but finds instead a machineic system of obstacles, monsters, domination and traps. Not much further than that so far. Been wanting to write about this for years but havent found a way to do it. I dont want to simply write an auto bio kinda piece. Not interested but want to take personal journey and experience and fuse them with sci fi dungeon culture.

Btw, I want to thank you all for sharing your amazing talent and thoughts on this site. I feel much more at home here than with painters and traditional gallery artists. At least with regards to my own work. Not with People. Peace.

This Temple Breathes

Another conceptual collage for a color work I'll be drawing soon. I've got a good idea for this scene going into the Hob Bob comic where Hob has to acquire some key or artifact inside the temple but must defeat all of the skeleton mummies that come to life in the niches along the walls before the door will open. Some sort of reference to Harryhausen I guess.

Just had another great idea for this scene, Hob has to walk up a gigantic staircase that leads up the body of this huge demonic character whose head you see here which would be standing hundreds of feet above the landscape with some weird helmet contraption on its neck which would be part of this circular interior. And it also functions to keep the giant demon paralyzed on the ground sooo, gotta figure out a way in the story for the helmet to come off so the giant can get loose and attack the nearest village. Maybe once Hob takes the object from inside the demon's head it will cause some Indiana Jones insanity where the helmet contraption shakes loose and Hob has to run down the stairs before it crumbles. Those are going to be some fun comic pages to draw.

Something else I just worked out, I've been trying to figure out a way to explain why Hob can walk around without a head and see where he's going. Well, he's going to have one cyclopean eye in his chest!

Cthulhu Larva

Hey folks. It's great to see that everyone is busy working on new projects! I on the other hand am being a lazy bum lately. No brand spankin new art unfortunately. So here's another older work. I'm thinkin the idea behind this one is a juvenile Cthuloid monster that has yet to sprout wings and other appendages. It's about 8" x 10," ink and acrylic on acid free board.

Voida Inks

Just finished up a two page spread for our boy Zeke's VoidaVoida zine. It was a hot, sticky day. I got up at 6am to let the dog out and stayed up. Worked outside on the new house in between working on this page. I was on auto pilot. Too hot for any kind of introspection...



-So it's hard for me to come to any conclusions about this piece. Zeke sent me a template in jpg format.I opened that in Photoshop, bumped it up in dpi and drew over it on a couple of layers with the Wacom.I then came up with something I thought was interesting when I copied and mirrored the drawing. I kind of recognize that it's a maybe too easy way to come up with a composition, but I can't deny that it has a certain effect on me that I like when I see.
Anyhow, I then printed it out in sections and taped it together at the size I wanted to draw the original in, taped that sheet to some Bristol board and used my lightbox and a blue pencil to copy it to the Bristol. It started changing a lot at that point. I sort of liked where it was heading. I was sort of taking myself out of the equation; my job was to trace it.I was like a malfunctioning computer, in that everything was imperfect. All I had to do was fill in the lines with ink at this point. I decided not to make any decisions as I "drew" , which was wise as I had no real choice ( too hot to think).
I don't know where all of it is headed, but I think I'll do a few more like this, though I'll lay off the mirror/symmetry effect..


****EDIT*****

- I'm going to redraw my VoidaVoida contribution.This one makes the cutting room floor. Don't worry Zeke, I'll have it to you by Saturday!!

Miscellania

Hello again, everybody.

Just a few scraps from my sketchbook this time - obviously nothing major, but what the heck. I'm always a little intimidated by the work I see you fellas post - I fear my own stuff is a bit too clean and cartoony to fit in.

The bottom image is my first attempt at coloring in Photoshop. I literally have no idea what I'm doing there... I suppose there are plenty of tutorials online? In fact, I think Ray may have posted some himself? Any guidance you guys can offer would be appreciated, thanks.

At any rate, I'll have a big new collage to post at some point in the next few weeks - unfortunately it's a gift for someone, so until it's framed and given to her on her birthday, I can't let her see it here or on my own site (just thought I'd mention it so you can get all excited in advance, LOL) (yes, I just typed "LOL").

Exo Chapter I

I`ll post another picture from Chapter I every couple of days.

Feeding Time

Here's another concept piece I threw together from various collaged artworks. You might recognize the bird from a recent MB post on alchemical artworks dating around the 15th century. The idea for this one is to show a room inside a castle where a giant bird thing is kept and fed by servents stabbing worm/snake creatures with spears from a pit in the floor. When I start drawing this the characters, bird thing will change a lot as I do my own thing to it but the basic composition you see here will stay the same. Originally I was going to have fishing rods hanging weird bits of bait creatures over the walls to feed the bird but I opted for the idea with the snake pit and two servants. I want to do something interesting with the chest of the bird creature, I'll either add some sort of grotesque face or maybe dozens of eyes staring out through the feathers.

Puzzle Piece Beast

Welllll... I'll break the weekend silence with a conceptual piece I was messing around with. This is constructed from screenshots of "The Adventures of Prince Achmed " by Lotte Reiniger. The idea was to make a large creature covered in puzzle piece designs of various odd animals with some pieces coming off revealing empty spaces in the shape of those creatures. I'll be using this to sketch from and rework into a more interesting composition, specifically changing up the negative spaces around the legs. The final version will be full color and part of a small series of colored pencil artworks I'm doing right now. I don't know how close I'll be sticking to the Reiniger beast, the tail and snout were collaged in as well as the back fin looking things that are actually shrunk down ears, but I'll probably stick close to this odd elephant like shape.

Beggar's Blues

I said I was going to update in here soon and then kind of didn't. That tends to happen a lot with emails,updates, and ect.

Well this was scanned in halves but it's clumsily pieced together here for your viewing pleasure.
This drawing is part of a series I am working on now and then. It takes place on our earth I suppose but 50 or 80 years in the future. The main theme revolves around humorous and forlorn destitute aliens/hybrids who are mostly homeless and separated from true humanity. There is not political message or deep concept here, just a kind of dismal look into a sci-fi tinged future full of unemployed experiments/star travellers. I read a lot of science fiction and am pretty poor. I don't intend to make a comic or a in depth universe or setting with these themed pictures, I think I just want to have stacks of them over time. There are all kinds of weird characters I can make and I have all sorts of daily situations in mind which they can be taking place in. Hopefully becoming like old issues of Heavy Metal combined with Pieter Bruegel....or a vague attempt at it.


Here is another.
ps.I haven't figured out the correct way to set up this pictures/text business correctly yet.
-Matt

Oil Painting.

This is one of the 3 oil paintings that the landscapes drawings were done in preparation for, can't remember exactly when it was done a few years ago.

Sorry about the flash glare, there's glass in the frame.

The Other Window.

This is based on some of the lyrics from 'The other Window' by Wire. It's for the second volume of this http://www.soundofdrowning.com/soda1.html put out by Paul O' Connell.

Landscapes

These are some landscapes I did in a small sketchbook a few years ago. I decided not to bother tarting 'em up in photoshop. I don't think it's cheating to use photoshop at all but maybe things are more interesting left as they are. I'm not sure really.

A Little Help?

Hi Everyone.

Just a quick question I figure you guys - if anyone - will know the answer to: What are these?

There're a couple more at my site... I've had these in my scrapbook for a while, but there's not really any identifying info on them. Ideas?

And thanks!

Digicidal Interwebs

Click to enlarge.
Both digital from drawings.

mean-oldy

this is a piece from 6 years ago. I found it in one of my old portfolios. To my recollection it was originally a sculpture (in sculpty) that I made- baked in my oven- then incorporated it into my photoshop and made this illustration. I was experimenting in this fashion for awhile. This is unfortunately the only piece that survived. I haven't seen the sculpture either, one of my friends probably snatched it (probably when I was wasted).

Humbilified...

...By the Mighty Mat Brinkman, via Le Dernier Cri.

I thought about going right to the site to try to order one, but then I remembered that the Dollar is worth like -2 Euros..

Actually, check out this whole set for some serious inspiration.

Kid at Heart

Christian from Stay Gold Clothing Company hired me to, er, flesh out a design he refered to as Kid at Heart. Essentially, the brief called for toys of my choosing to protrude from inside the heart. There were requests for playing cards, but I was otherwise left to my own devices.

Christian was super easy to work with. Aside from one or two minor changes, my original vision was left almost entirely intact. The original brief hadn't mentioned a need for the company's name to appear on the shirt and that was added in. The composition didn't even need a tweaking; everything worked out swimmingly!

The final design is five spot colors and the shirt color and can be seen here:






All in all, I completed this tee in one full business day. I wish all jobs went as clean and satisfying!

Details:

An Ancient Beastiary

I drew these around the age of 8 from what I remember. All but a few of the pages are attached to a small pad of paper with every page (front and back) covered in creatures.