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.

CheckerBeasts

I was screwing around with some drawings I'm working on right now.

NEW COMIC OUT!!!

New issue of Pipu out now! Pipu & the Wizard!
20 pages. full color cover. new super-small size. 4.25" x 2.75"
1$ ppd paypal gogoblinko@gmail.com
or mail a well-concealed dollar to pobox 12044 Eugene OR 97440
Bulk orders available for super-cheap!!! 50 issues for 20$ Sell them for a 30$ profit!!

hi

Want to say hello and thanks to everyone for the invite to share on this blog. I am a drawer by nature but I apply it to zines, ceramics and prints. I will post some soon. I love the work here and am thrilled to contribute. check out work at www.squatthrust.wordpress.com.

New Ink Art

This is my latest stuff, fresh off the press. In actuality they're three separate inks each done on 10"x14" paper. Names are (starting from the left) Harlequin - Overlord - Argus
I, obviously, have some affection for symbolism, and have been working with it for sometime now- trying to make it my own.

Introduction

Hi, my name is Marek Danielewski. I'm an Illustrator, here in Philadelphia. My medium is mostly ink on paper, but I have done other mediums like oil paintings and watercolors. Most of the art that I show on my blog is personal, and I almost think of it as therapeutic in nature. Thank you very much for the invitation to participate. I plan to post my newest artwork tonight, I'm just wrapping it up.

semenstorm

autobiographical work & tattoos

I never know if i should cross-post from blog to blog. I'm currently operating two separate blogs & then contributing to this one. I don't want to cross-post to all of them, but sometimes feel people might miss what i'm saying, so i try to mix up the content a bit! This is actually an old piece that i can't remember if i posted here or not, but i was feeling fond of it.

It's one of the first pieces where i started to include autobiographical elements, this one is about my childhood!

Then, i thought i'd share some tattoos people have of my drawings from the early 90s when i was a post-apocalyptic Punk Rocker with Volkisch tendencies.


These two have the same drawing done.



I kind of miss the days of when i was involved in a subculture where stuff like this would happen more (people getting tattoos of my work), when i was very much tied into a group of people & was a bit of an iconoclastic shaman of sorts. Ever since i decided to become part of society, i have felt more isolated on one hand, but on the other hand, less alienated. I prefer this actually... i hate alienation.

yellow blarer

I had this up on my wall at home but had to take it down 'cause the eyes seem to follow me around the room and it was quite unsettling

letratwins

Drawn on an old letratone box.

'Exhaust' exhibition flyer.

This is a flyer done in collaboration with David M. Birchall for an exhibition we're doing together. The opening night is the 14th march at cow lane studios, salford, with sets from Shackleton and the levenshulme bicycle orchestra.

Oozy Woozy

So lately I've been insanely busy working on a vast pile of ink creature drawings. I've got between one thousand and one thousand 200ish that I'm doing, all of which will be published this fall. I'm also planning on printing all of them across one big poster that I'll probably sell on my blog. I had to put a lot of paintings on the back burner to do this series and will be returning to those soon. Beyond that I'm doing a mini art book concerning the alphabet recreated with demons and tortured souls which grew out of some stuff I was doing for Craig Yoe's next Arf book which is due out in May. I'm juggling back and forth on other projects like my digital stuff and Hob Bob, some sculptures of monster masks and other stuff I'm forgetting. I've been wanting to experiment with the technique that Xia Xiaowan has put to amazing use. Been thinking of getting a small stack of plexiglass and painting layer over layer to create some sort of landscape with the distant areas painted in the backward pieces and the foreground objects painted in the frontward pieces. Has anyone messed around with anything like that? Anyway, no art for now as I'm not near a scanner.

edit - I just had a crazy dream where I ran out of a large classical dome theater in the middle of a forest and was trying to escape a giant monster that resembled a huge wooden painted devil with clots of black fur that was trying to eat me, it was awesome! I've already forgotten the details but I know the giant wooden puppet thing had something to do with the show, and no it wasn't Faust.

Mr. Sean in the news!!!

Fun article about me in the Lane Community College Torch newspaper.
Mr. Sean's neighborhood welcomes the unique and eccentric to the art world - Arts
"To me, good art is a combination of having the skills and the vision, but also kicking over garbage cans and digging up graves. Making all of this political propaganda feel-good art is just too communistic for me to deal with." ha ha!

Also, personal note. My first gang was Rat Punks. We had the most gang graffiti up in Berkeley in 1995. That's right you punks!!!

BLURGH!!!

I ended up hopping around FLICKR last night looking at the work of a bunch of trendoid hipster artists. The work was all very slick & well-crafted, i'll give it that much, but does it look like i give two bits of bottom botulism about that? After filling my brain with such things i don't know what to do. I spent a bit of time working that angle, the hipster trendoid angle, but it just isn't me. I'm a Salt of the earth type. Honestly, i think i dislike most artists.

poster

Portfolio Updating Makes Ray a Dull Boy

I've spent a fair amount of time the last three or so days working on my portfolio. My linework has gotten a lot better and my color sensibilities have matured a good measure over the last three years. Adding older pieces to round out my portfolio really kills me. I figured, what the hell, I ought to revisit some of these pieces and bring them more in line with my current capabilities. A sort of George Lucas-ing of my old pieces. I redid small bits of linework and updated the colors a tad on the following images (And a few more on my Flickr stream, but I'll spare you all of them).



In the above recolor, I'm attempting to work some texture and soft shading in with my linework. It's got a ways to go, but I like the results of the experiment.





While doing this, however, I got stuck in a bit of a rut. Being bombarded by all your foibles over the last few years can hit a guy in his ego! Sometimes, when I need to shake off the cobwebs and get my head back into a creative space, I do something outside of my comfort zone. In this instance, I made a set of "watercolor" tools in Manga Studio and did some portraits of friends. Here's one such attempt:



I really like the result. I'm just not sure what to do with it. I've worked as an art director in the past and I know that if I saw this sitting with the rest of the pieces in my portfolio, I'd be a bit confused. I think consistency of style is important in the way an illustrator markets themselves. I'm a brand, more or less, and there are certain expectations of me. Perhaps I can use it in one of my comics that I'm working on? Maybe I need a pseudonym, eh? Hah.

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Barry Bon Bon

Gosh, it has been a bit since i posted a new picture up on here.

Here is a fun two-headed monster to play with!

HOTWIRE #2!

Be on the lookout for HOTWIRE #2, out soon from Fantagraphics, look at the amazing line up, Tim Lane, Jonathon Rosen, Mark Newgarden, R. Sikoryak, David Sandlin, Mary Fleener, Johnny Ryan, Matti Hagelberg, Sam Henderson, Danny Hellman, Glenn Head, Carol Swain, Mark dean Veca, Stephane Blanquet, Mack White, Onsmith, Lorna Miller, Chris Estey, David Lasky, Ivan Brunetti, Tobias Tak, Craig Yoe, and Christian Northeast

all that and some sunny sidewalk surfer* called David Paleo, don't disturb his siesta or let him know where your door is! he'll camp there with a key!

here's a link where you can check some previews
http://www.hotwirecomics.com/

*Bum

Beware of Flying Guts!!!

I spent way too much time on this SuperTrash poster but I think it turned out good. I originally was sticking to a normal human set of organs which are hidden under all the gore but I started to abstract things into my own weird bloody designs. I covered everything in a thick coat of blood to give it that extra trashy splatterpunk sort of vibe.

Creative Commonality

If there's one aspect of art shows I don't like, it's that the art is often very costly. As a result, only a select few are able to purchase it which flies in the face of my ideals on a number of levels.

Willfully contributing to this system gnaws on my conscience a little. The circumstances make me wish there was something I could do to change the way people consume my work. I've been toying with the notion of releasing my personal, uncommissioned works under a Creative Commons license.

Unfortunately, a large portion of my income is to be derived from print sales and, now that I'm working as a freelancer full time, I can't really risk that money. Last time I checked, my wife and I like to eat!

A good compromise, I think, is to do everything I can to support other people who have the same goals. I'd like to announce my services free of charge for any band releasing their music under a forgiving Creative Commons license. The artwork I create for the bands in question will also be released under a non-commercial, no derivatives license.

I may not be a good fit for every project and I suspect the amount of people asking for help will be daunting. With that in mind, I hope to help as many bands as possible. I thought it appropriate to start with my friend's band, Soul Pollution, and the above flyer shows a hand lettered logotype and a bonafied-original illustration I created for him.

Leave a link to your Creative Commons licensed album download in the comments on my site (and a contact address in the comment form) and I'll promise to help in whatever capacity my time allows! Flyers, album art, hand lettering - all the things I usually charge for.

I look forward to hearing from you!

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SuperTrash IT!

Is anyone else submitting work to the SuperTrash shindig? I saw Luke mentioned it a few weeks back in one of David's posts here. I decided to do it a few days ago even though I don't really have the time, but to hell with it, too cool of a project to pass on. I contacted the folks in charge and they're accepting submissions up until Sunday. Check here for all the details. I'm doing a poster for Mystics in Bali! It doesn't get much Super Trashier than that goddamn flick!
Below is a preview of what I'm working on. Currently turning a gut wound in a dead pig into a nasty witch mouth. Not sure which of the above eye types I'm going to use. Blue upside down dead pig eye or halloween mask voodoo eye.

Bulbous mic

This drawing is much bigger than I usually work 'cause it's for an exhibition I'm doing with my pal Dave Birchall at cow lane studios here in salford.

Frankensteinian Monster

My take on Frankenstein's monster for a friend's band. Hand lettered type at top. Gonna hand letter the show info in the area of negative space to the left, too. So far, so god.

Gonna try to gore it up a little, though!

I've been doing a bunch more hand lettering. It's a lot of fun. My piece in the aforementioned show even incorporates it a bit. Here's another recent example:



I think that getting better at hand lettering will only increase the abilities I can market for and get work doing. The other biggie that I want to get better at is 3D work.

Dread Pirate Patches Meets His Maker

So, I'm in a show set for this Saturday. Yay! Details here.

The concept behind the show is this: the participants offer personal works with little or incidental commercial value. In other words, do what you want to do, not what pays your bills!

At first, I was a little stymied. I mean, I DO what I want to do for a living, right? A little reflection left me with a clear idea, though. Comics. I love comics, but never have the time to make them. I made a little vignette. Half comic, half piece of art, and that's what I'm printing and bringing along.

I locked myself in my office and finished this last night at 4:00. I am pooped.

Mammoth Logo and Lettering

Mammoth is going to be a clothing brand with a demographic that largely consists of Mixed Martial Arts fans. I was hired to work on the logo and it served as a perfect opportunity to do some more hand lettering.











I'm working on getting better with my hand lettering. In addition to the lettering in the logo above, this was all done by hand:



It's a lot of fun to not be restrained by what fonts you have installed and, rather, to rely on your own ability. I've got a way to go, but it should prove fun to get better.

As is usual, I encourage you to click on the images and get whisked away to my Flickr page. Larger versions are available and the linework looks better in the non-resized, uncompressed version. Hey, what can I say? I'm vain about my linework!

I know that a decent crowd of individuals reads these posts. I'd like to interact more with you guys. What part of my process do you guys have questions about? What would you like to see more of? Less of?

Thanks for feedback, it's always appreciated.

My Fallow Year..

I haven't posted any artwork here for a long time. It's not for a bad reason, either; I haven't been making any.
I try though. I sure do. I get ideas. I sketch. I get excited about those ideas
And then I sit down to do it. To get it done. I'm not distracted, I'm not stressed or tired. It just doesn't look good to me.
It never really does. Some of it looks okay, I guess, but what good does that do anyone?
But I keep trying and trying, and it just..slowly..disentegrates...
And it doesn't seem worth it after a while, to be honest.
The next day I'll go in and look over what I'd done the previous day and it looks foreign, like some alien artifact; What was that guy thinking when he drew that?
I have no idea.
Flaccid. Fallow. Forget it.

And then I get to thinking about other medias, other forms I should go after; Maybe purely digital works, collage, maybe screen-printing .Maybe I should learn FLASH.
Maybe I should just write.
Maybe I should forget about feeling like I have to do any of this stuff. Don't other people live like that?
What does it mean to be "creative"? It sounds like fun, but vanity works like that too. What might I be missing out on while I'm burrowed away in a corner, scribbling and scratching?
Maybe I should get a dog.



I hope this next years proves to be more fruitful. Even if that means I leave all of this stuff behind. I

Horror Icons Playing Poker

I've been busy as all get-out. December marks my first month of full-time freelance work in over a year. Cold turkey from here on out - you have my undivided attention.

I'd been working 9-ish hours with 3-4 hours of additional drive time. Now, instead of dividing my time across two business ventures, I'm doing solely freelance.

I bought a great, large format, archival quality printer and I intend to start selling prints, more frequently update the blog (including a one hour long narrated podcast as soon as I figure out the most economical/practical way to host it), and really kick 08 in the ass.

I spent all day yesterday soliciting agents and hammering leads, and I can't wait to get started.

To try and balance out all this word smithing, I have a couple of shots from a forthcoming personal work, tentatively titled, Horror Icons Playing Poker. I've always been enamored with Dogs Playing Poker. What's not to like? Dogs? Check. Poker? Check. Fisticuffs to ensue? Check.