Light a Candle, part Deux

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.

Amsterdam, HO(i)!

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!

Something rotten this way crawls...

Labor of Love

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

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.

Rock Beast

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.

New Old

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.

New giclee!

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!

Dutch dream job

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?

I'll never get sick of ballpoint.

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.