Blogapalooza

Of things to come

2011-11-09T22:57:00.001-08:00

Had another great collaboration meeting with a good friend on a secret project, things are shaping up pretty good.

Das Zombieshowzen/ Guy Fox Day

2011-11-05T15:25:00.000-07:00

A week ago today (almost to the hour) a big group show opened up in downtown Long Beach, in conjunction with the massive Zombie Walk IV. Had a great turnout, and some inspiring costumes, on top of a gargantuan amount of really top-notch zombie-related art.

The show's still up, on 7th and Pine, and you can check out the online version at zombieartshow.com. The one called "Portrait of the Undead" is a personal favorite of mine.

Sketches

2011-10-08T16:47:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know, it's been a long freakin time...

Oh You Are Sick....

2011-03-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

Been on an internet-less hiatus for the past month, trying to convince the caring people of Verizon that my service transfer request IS as simple as it sounds. You ever read about how one ant is really dumb but the colony as a whole is a very intellegent organism? Verizon is the exact opposite: their individual people usually care, but they have no efficient way to talk to one another, so every time you call them you feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog day... But enough of that.

Another amazing Phone Booth Gallery Show is up and running, this one dedicated to David Lynch's art and films. GREAT turnout last night, and a lot of really enjoyable art on the walls. Picked up a Rich Kelly print I've been salivating over for a while too.

If you missed the show, it's going online sometime today at Phoneboothgallery.com. Definitely worth a look.

For the old man

2011-02-08T23:12:00.000-08:00

Good things are coming

2011-01-25T22:00:00.000-08:00

I'll be in a couple of upcoming shows here in the LBC, one at Phone Booth Gallery in celebration of David Lynch, and at Cal State Long Beach, in honor of and tribute to the life of an incredible artist and good friend Lisa Nguyen. The art at both of these events will be absolutely jaw-dropping, so don't miss either if you're in town.

B&B tradeshow in Berlin!

2011-01-19T17:46:00.000-08:00

So cool.

PBG Live Paint II

2011-01-16T21:27:00.000-08:00

Phone Booth Gallery has done it again; another Live Paint event, this time with raffle tickets to give away the eight (individually worked) finished paintings at the end of the night!

It was great to work next to some of my favorite fellow artists again, and we had a hellava turnout, the place was PACKED all night!

Mr. Moses Avila (I think I spelled that right) won my painting in the art raffle finale! Hooray to you, and to all the winners of eight AWESOME art pieces. This event set the bar really high for next time!

3D rainy-day fun!

2010-12-17T17:34:00.000-08:00

Trying some stuff out while working on Christmas presents. Seems like it works better with the red lens over the right eye, but I don't know if that's the Official Way™ or just the way I made the image.

Please stand by

2010-12-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

This is a test. This blog is conducting a test of the Twitter/Blogspot/Wordpress Compatability System.

This is only a test.

Light a Candle, part Deux

2010-12-09T21:58:00.000-08:00

I got the chance for a second stab at the van Bommel page ad from a while ago, with a new shoe to showcase for a designer's expo. They ended up changing the background color scheme back to the original ad, but I really like the way this version turned out.

Technology is my friend

2010-11-21T22:16:00.000-08:00

Screwing around with some vacation photos, trying out an old tilt-shift technique I just discovered to make landscapes look miniaturized, and instantly fell in love with it. Ridiculously simple to do, and I'm probably very late to the party, but definitely something I'll be playing with in future projects. Huzzah for knowledge!

van Bommel odds n' ends/ Zombies' last gasp

2010-11-19T21:18:00.000-08:00

Tried to post this on Facebook just now... terrible.

Also, if you haven't been by yet, my good friend Mr. Jason Liwag's Zombie show has been extended, but only for a little while longer, so go check it out at Yojie's (501 w. Olympic Avenue, Los Angeles)!

Wonderful work by a great group of artists, don't miss it!

Amsterdam, HO(i)!

2010-11-16T08:09:00.001-08:00

The newest van Bommel Family Tree is off and running to a new shop in Holland! Did the drawing on illustration board instead of paper this time; great surface to work on but with limited scanning options. Ended up having to cut it into sections (as artfully as possible of course) to get it into the flatbed.

This final shot's pretty tiny, but I'll be adding some detail shots soon. Excelsior!

They Live... on 4th Street.

2010-11-01T17:19:00.000-07:00

I only have a few pictures from the other night, but MAN it was fun. So many good costumes, so many great people, and way too many recipes for fake blood!

I'm a pretty lazy photographer, so if you wanna see way more (and better) pictures, visit Pink Cow Photography's Zombie Walk Photoset.
And if you're looking to buy a t-shirt from the event, check out the MondoCelluloid store HERE.

Also there is this:

Ink-scratch delight

2010-10-24T19:03:00.000-07:00

Some more work for my favorite client; I feel so lucky to have gotten a gig like this...

Check this guy out

2010-10-01T03:18:00.000-07:00

I was digging through some old D&D books the other day (yes, I was an even bigger nerd once upon a time), when I rediscovered an artist that was a huge inspiration for me.

Probably half the reason I kept buying those books was because he'd been given more and more page space as the franchise grew. I could never figure out his signature on the paintings, and never really pursued looking him up until recently.

His name is Wayne Reynolds. Dude works almost exclusively in acrylic! I've always been attracted to his sense of shape, contrast, gesture and characterization, but now that I know he's still working in traditional media... I mean, look at this stuff!

Zombiewalkthrough

2010-09-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

Here follows an intoxicatingly detailed rundown of how this year's LB Zombie Walk poster was born...

The back of my receipt from dinner at the Taqueria on 4th, where Garry pitched me the idea and we started sketching...
(If you've never had their Lengua burrito, check it out; pretty messy, but damn good!)

Out of the billions of reference photos I took, only a couple ended up being useful. Had to come back a few times to get all the angles and details I wanted.

More photo reference, ended up straining muscles in my palm I didn't even know I had!

Final approved sketch...

...Taken into photoshop and massaged into a workable value study...

...Blown up and transferred to midtone charcoal paper.

And the fun begins...

Throwing in some tasty sinew and gristle action on the pelvis, ribcage, and so on. Some light touch-ups and texturing in photoshop, a TON of typework brilliantly executed by the fine people of Phone Booth Gallery, and...

BAM. ZombieWalk poster.

More info about the event here.

Something rotten this way crawls...

2010-08-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

PBG Live Paint

2010-08-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

This video was taken at Phone Booth Gallery, right down the street from my apartment. 10+ artists, two 4' x 8' panels, 5 hours to rock some sweet art together. Had a great time, great people, awesome atmosphere and AMAZING turnout! I've heard rumors of a second one in the works, I'll post info here if you wanna come see it.

Also, one of the coolest remasterings of "Ziggy Stardst" I've ever heard. Great soundtrack, Garry!

Labor of Love

2010-07-11T13:21:00.000-07:00

The latest van Bommel shoe ad, TONS of fun to do. The one part that took the longest to iron out was those damn flowy shoelaces!

There are two or three monster homages mixed in with my own stuff here, I couldn't resist. Basically just an excuse to watch Tremors and Enemy Mine again.

sneaky-peek

2010-07-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

MAN it's been a while. I gotta switch horses and get back on this one.

Here's a chunk of something I'm working on for my shoemaker friend overseas, I'll post the final version in the next couple weeks.

Off the Hook III Opening Video

2010-04-24T10:39:00.000-07:00

Some really great OTH III footage shot and edited by my creative comrade-in-arms Mr. Jeremy Eichenbaum. Show hosted by Fix coffee in Echo Park, orchestrated and hung by the good folks at Phone Booth Gallery. For those of you who missed it, you have my pity and my unwavering scorn. Enjoy!

Summer Camp t-shirts

2010-04-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

Just polished off a trio of designs for this year's Riverside District Camps. The third is still under scrutiny for a redesign, but here's Junior High and Senior High (which I'll be serving on as co-dean with my good friend Ms. Risa Vargas).

Blog Banner

2010-04-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

Final version of that little somfin-somfin for a friend. Lot of fun to work on, turned out wickid-cool, and the owner liked it which makes it even better, right?

If you've got a minute, check this guy out, he's got the latest scoop on all the print/poster happenings, showcasing a ton of really talented artists from all over the place.

Now that I did this piece, I gotta start thinkin about redesigning my site, blog banner, etc. so they'll measure up! The pressure's on!

Rock Beast

2010-03-29T19:23:00.000-07:00

Working on a little somfin-somfin for a friend, changed my mind about this guy and decided to go in another direction. He's got tremendous potential, definitely worth fiddling with some more.

Interlude, with overpasses

2010-03-16T01:09:00.001-07:00

Title-less so far, but I'll think of something...

I don't usually do a lot of inorganic stuff, and definitely had to put my impulsive, "who's gonna know if there's no structure? it looks good!" mentality on the shelf for a bit. Tried to, anyway.

I always planned to cram as much ballpoint drawing into this as I could get away with. Had to rediscover a lot of stuff I'd learned about painting, overall a REALLY fun project to work on.

Swing Low

2010-03-03T00:25:00.001-08:00

T-shirt design I did for a friend's pet-project (do you hyphenate that? Never used that phrase in writing before). Up top is the original color scheme, below is the final version.

FINALLY

2010-02-28T13:43:00.000-08:00

My sister's wanted me to paint her something forever, and I finally got it together for her birthday this year.
It was a ton of fun to do, after at least a year of not even touching a paintbrush. Definitely thinking about doing more of these.

New Old

2010-02-24T22:41:00.000-08:00

Redo of a REALLY old piece, after a couple years' practice in Illustrator. Definitely a work in progress, especially since it still kinda looks like a raging wiener with tentacles! This way I'll post something new even sooner than usual, haha!

I had a friend a long time ago who confessed he had a phobia of snakes coming out of the toilet to bite him. Not sure if I was drawing on that when I came up with this, but the idea's pretty frightening.

And we're DONE.

2010-02-21T00:12:00.000-08:00

New giclee!

2010-02-18T19:44:00.000-08:00

Releasing my first ever giclee print! The guy I worked with did an amazing job bringing out every detail, and in some places it looks even better than the original!

It's an edition of only 25, so grab em quick if you're interested. 20 are available for purchase at Phone Booth Gallery, and I'm selling five of them myself. 12.5" x 12.5" on high-quality paper stock, cut to fit in an album-frame you can pick up at Aaron Bros. They're going for $30 plus shipping, and with each giclee comes a special surprise...

Sweet deal!

Ideation

2010-01-31T19:32:00.000-08:00

Found this sketchbook page from when I was working on the Tree, thought I'd throw it up here. I like a lot of these little drawings on the side, some of them could be the start of something else (that crazy-looking Berlin bear especially!). Floris recently sent me a video of an interview he had during Fashion Week™ with Sleek Magazine, shot in the very shop where the work is posted on the wall. Wickid!

Interconnectivity Ahoy!

2010-01-31T01:44:00.000-08:00

Just set up a Facebook Page for my art, Czech it out!

This will mark a glorious new era of productivity and art-minded thinking. An era where perseverance and zeal will fall like a Gilded Rain upon the rich soil of Creativity, nourishing the fevered germination of new and bizarre forms, gnarled and strong, deeply rooted in the porous bedrock of Semi-Plausability, straining with all their raw and terrible might toward the broiling heavens.

Even in the lowlands of Sloth, where the earth is a cold barren gray and Hope's flame chokes and sputters in the coiling fog of Doubt, there will the oily-thick Rain be made to gather, to pool. The puddles will continue to swell, rivulets stretching like fingers of dull gold over the tortured earth. The tiny flame will jump and flare, strangely emboldened by the tempest. The once-lifeless basin will be slowly changed, smothered by the downpour and enriched by it, pools of all sizes expanding and joining and weaving their forked tendrils among the ashen rocks, until a larger pool bursts its banks and engulfs the only source of light.

For a terrible flickering second, all will be extinguished...

...and then from the sudden smoke, a great spark! Hope is tempered anew, fed and propelled by the Gilded pools, racing in a bright and roaring ring from its birthplace! Gold and red-orange, blue-violet and beautiful, the hungry flames dance and surge over the lowlands!

Even here, in this once-forsaken and lifeless expanse, the very ground stirs... Ideas and Techniques that have long lain dormant writhe in their membranous cocoons, tearing their nests asunder, ravenously seeking the warmth and nourishment that has been but a hazy memory for eons. The landscape is alight with this strange and magnificent fire, fed by the Gilded Rain which shows no signs of abating. The air is thickened with strange pollens from near and distant lands, shaken by the low rumble of flames and the fervent cries of the Wild Unknown.

...Woah. That's all I got in me for now, I'm goin' to bed.

From Berlin, with love

2009-12-18T14:18:00.000-08:00

Floris just sent me a few pictures of the new van Bommel shoe shop in Berlin, where my mural/family tree is going up!

There she is, in all her glory. So rad!

Here's a more recent photo. Such a difference!

Prints for sale!

2009-12-11T13:01:00.000-08:00

Remember almost a year ago when Garry and I tried to sell some awesome prints of my work from the Mundane show? And we were all like, "people will BUY these", and then the economy took a flying nosedive? They're still around folks, and you can get at the last 19 of em through my email at kflynn84@gmail.com, now that I've joined the modern world and set up a PayPal account.
The prints are 24" square on 80lb. eclipse black paper, signed and numbered. I'm selling em for $35 a piece.

This info is also on somethingawful.com, for those of you who have accounts there.

Dutch dream job

2009-12-05T12:02:00.000-08:00

About 6 weeks ago I got a text from Garry that somebody had bought a piece from the Mundane show. ROCK! He didn't know who it was, I guess they hadn't emailed him about it but just ordered through the website. Total mystery.

Later that day I get an email from an address I don't recognize, asking if I'm available for some freelance work: Mr. Floris van Bommel of van Bommel Moergestel, Holland, a 9th generation shoemaker, the same guy who bought my piece and ended up being one of the coolest clients I've ever worked with.

He asked me to make an illustrated version of his family tree, going back to the late 1600's, in whatever style I wanted as long as it had plenty of monsters and alien tentacles. No joke. So sweet. I sent him a sketch just to see how far I could take it, and his only major criticism was that there weren't enough monsters and aliens on it.

Up top here is a microscopic version of the finalized AI file (it'll eventually be blown up to about 14 feet by 6.5 and projected onto the wall/ceiling of a new shop in Berlin) and below are a few detail shots of the ink drawing I scanned in.

This stuff was a ton of fun to do; I don't usually work in Micron pens, so there was a little bit of a learning curve before I could loosen up on some spots.
I'm really happy with how the drawing turned out, and I definitely learned a lot about how to do this kind of thing faster and smarter in the future (so as to leave more time for creative invention and less time for "holy sh**t I gotta finish this in a week ohgodohgodohgodohgod"). Live and learn, right?

Pretend it's still March

2009-08-31T10:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a little retroactive posting for ya. Better hideously late than never, right?

I've had the stories behind the Mundane pieces floating around in my head since I came up with the idea for the show almost a year ago; Garry and I were talking about having laminated cards next to each one explaining what was going on. That didn't pan out for opening night, but I still want to do it. So here we are.
Since the early 70's, these enormous animals have been raiding dockyards and airports, stealing storage crates, jet liners and commercial aircraft. They are only seen in twos and threes, usually on overcast days near the mountains. Although extensive searches have been conducted, no one knows where they nest or what they do with the objects they steal, although there is a great deal of speculation.

It is theorized that they use these materials as vessels to house and protect their young, and may have evolved in a harsher environment where conditions made it essential to provide shelter from solar radiation during infancy. No convincing evidence yet found of a nymph stage to support this theory.

I'll never get sick of ballpoint.

2009-07-15T21:05:00.000-07:00

My buddy Dave was sketching the layout of a piece of packaging I was working on and left his notebook at my desk. That'll teach him.

Animalgamation

2009-07-14T21:14:00.000-07:00

A friend and I started a weekly sketch-off trying to combine the features and characteristics of two forms of life; through a very sophisticated method involving one of us pointing at a grid of animal and plant names with our eyes closed, I came up with this guy. He's not very highly developed as an animal in his own right, but I think he's worth developing. Probably most relateable to a more intellegent hippo with poorer eyesight. Maybe hangs out in a place like the Amazon mangrove forests, pruning the low-hanging branches and rooting around for tubers in the silt-muck. Maybe.

Just a taste

2009-03-22T16:25:00.001-07:00

Here's a little somfin-somfin from a project I got cookin' with a few friends.

Everybody loves the Undead, right?

I've never been that big on horror movies, or gory stuff at all for that matter. But something about zombies is just so alluring, everyone's gotta draw at least one. This guy's one of the slower, generic Old School Romero zombies, pretty much just cannon fodder for survival-type college students trapped in midwestern malls.

If you haven't seen the '68 Night of the Living Dead, check it out. Pretty cool ideas about what zombies are like, and still a good movie.

2009-03-19T22:00:00.000-07:00

Haven't done nothin but NOTHIN here in a long time.

Thought I'd post a few pics of some work from the Mundane show for some equal-opportunity perusal.

Lemme know what you think, the rest of 'em are up (for SALE) at Phoneboothgallery.com till the end of this month, including a print of the one in my last post, which is twice as big as the original and came out wicked-sweet.

Chekkiddout.

First post 09

2009-01-07T09:42:00.000-08:00

Man, haven't posted anything here in a while! High time I got back into the swing of things.

This is based on past personal experience (PAST, mind you) of the Post-College Bachelor Pad. If you've never been inside one, may this be the closest you ever get.

The alien here is pretty humanoid, which I try (and often fail) to get away from. In this instance I think it's excusable; the beat-up futon wasn't really designed to fit anything with too many legs, and quadrilateral symmetry would've needed a chair like an egg cup with grooves. Also, I like the idea of being able to relate to the "character" of this guy. Kinda slimy, too lazy to go get his own food or even pick up last night's paper plates off the floor... Maybe he doesn't even buy his own clothes. Doesn't wear a shirt because none of his roommate's have enough arm holes or something.

This is part of a series I'm working on for a solo show coming up in March. We'll hopefully have a physical opening reception... somewhere.... as well as a month-long stint at phoneboothgallery.com. Many thanks to Garry for letting me show on his site. I totally owe you a sandwich dude.

The first of many

2007-10-10T17:46:00.000-07:00

I guess I have to start somewhere, right?

Just finished this guy. He'll be the first in a series of five creatures.