One week 'til Flatstock

...and so much left to do! The reception at Fill In The Blank was wonderful last night. They did an amazing job with everything. It was a great way to end the week. I also put down the last two colors on my Flatstock 21 poster, which will be available at Flatstock and online shortly. I'm also printing tour posters for the band, Hostage Calm this week, and I'm going to try to have a new art print finished in time for Flatstock, as well.

Okay, lots more drawing, printing (and skateboarding) to do! Stay tuned.

Fifteen hours and a bad case of trucker's arm

A Similar Sound: The Art of the Rock Poster opens this Friday, July 10th. I will have some of my posters on display along with many of Chicago's finest printers. It will be at Fill In The Blank Gallery (located at 5038 N. Lincoln Ave. in Chicago), and the reception begins at 7 PM (it's free; come hang out!). I've been really looking forward to this show, as well as terribly excited to be showing work alongside so many talented poster artists.
I drove from my apartment in Montreal to the suburbs of Chicago yesterday. It was a very sunny day, so my left arm is suffering a mild sunburn from resting on the edge of the driver's side door. Today, I put the finishing touches on the films for my Flatstock 21 poster, which I will be printing tomorrow at Screwball Press.
I have been lacking in the art print department lately, since I've been pretty busy with gig posters and coordinating the bit of traveling I have in store for the rest of the year. I'm planning on participating in Flatstock 23 in Hamburg, Germany, which will be my first time in Europe. I will be printing a new art print at Screwball while I'm in Illinois, and I've got a whole slough of sketches and ideas for future ones. They're on the way!

Bikes, robots, geese, trombones, paper airplanes.

Test prints are a common practice among screen printers and poster artists. A printer will usually keep a few sheets of stock around to make sure the screen is clearing properly or to check registration. They're essentially the protracted layering of several different colors from various prints on a single sheet of paper. The result is a unique print, often rife with aesthetically pleasing happy accidents. Test prints are one of my favorite parts of screen printing. Below are some that I recently put up for sale in the gigposters.com classifieds. Just for fun, I will be including an original drawing to ship out with each of them.
One more thing--check out one of my favorite posters of all time by Nick and Nadine at Sonnenzimmer. I can't say enough good things about this print. They truly are blurring the line between fine art and illustration in this thing we call the rock poster.
Nick and Nadine are the founding members of The Chicago Printers Guild. Also, Nadine speaks German!

One or more of your subjects may have closed their eyes.

Today was Saint Jean Baptiste day in Quebec, which is more or less like the provincial version of the Fourth of July or Canada Day. I printed a poster this afternoon for the Flaming Tsunamis and took advantage of the holiday and skated at some downtown spots. I also went swimming in a fountain, but that's neither here nor there.
I love the paper I've been printing on. It's a bristol stock, and it seems to take the ink very smoothly. The prints look especially organic on this paper, and I really like that. I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of arranging two-screen posters, too. Although I wonder what this poster would look like had I done a third screen for the two suits..
I draw a lot of figures with closed eyes, so I always get a kick out of my digital camera notifying me that "one or more of your subjects may have closed their eyes." If I can fool the machine, I suppose I'm on the right track.
I'll be heading back to Illinois to show some posters at {fill in the blank} Gallery and participate in my first Flatstock event, Flatstock 21 at Pitchfork Music Festival. I have a really big poster for that on the way. I'll be printing it at Chicago's Screwball Press. I've also got some new art prints on the way, as well as a poster for the band Cursive.

There will be a lot of drawing, printing, and driving in the next few weeks. Or months.

Sprinter

Today was one of those days where I had to practically drag myself away from my table. I'm thoroughly engrossed in a new art print at the moment. I also began doing sketches for a poster I will be printing for Chicago's own Mucca Pazza, among other things.
Mucca Pazza are an interesting (and really good) band. I've been listening to their music and watching live performances on youtube in order to figure out of what sort of drawing I should do for this poster. I think I finally settled on an idea, and my rough sketches have let my Bill Watterson influence show a bit. For those who are unfamiliar (shame on you), Bill Watterson is the creator of the comicstrip, Calvin and Hobbes. I'd like to retain a shred of this semblance in the finished product, not only for aesthetic purposes, but as a modest nod to the man himself.
Lastly, and on a much sadder note, my heart goes out to friends and family of Chicago musician Stephanie Morris, who unfortunately passed away this week. She had been active with the Pawner's Society and Dianogah. May she rest peacefully.

Wake Up Stanley

To the left is Lac Champlain in Vermont. I was totally unaware of how expensive postage is in Canada, so in order to ship out a bunch of mailing tubes without giving up eating for the next three weeks, I drove back over the border into upstate New York to use the US Postal Service. It actually isn't nearly as big of a hassle as it sounds like. And since I'd never been to Vermont, I decided to take a small detour along the shore of Lac Champlain before making my way back into Quebec. I ended up taking a kind of roundabout way back to the highway, so I drove through a small town in rural Quebec called Lacolle.
Below is a picture of a recent art print I did for an upcoming bird themed group show at Leia Bell's Signed and Numbered Gallery. It was the first thing I printed in my Montreal apartment setup. I tend to forget how how fun birds are to draw. This particular piece was especially fun to work on.


I used an X-Acto to work subtractively, removing toner from the film to establish highlights (a little move I lifted from Chicago poster artist, Jay Ryan). I've been using clayboard a lot lately, as I've been into working back and forth, adding and removing ink. But I find doing the faux scratchboard technique on photocopy toner yields a slightly crisper result. I've always loved the way Jay uses this technique, particularly the way it contrasts with his signature use of rough pencil rendering. I try to apply it differently when working on my films--which are made form ink drawings-- using more of a straightforward scratchboard approach.
Some new art prints on the way, as well as some mono prints, and a private commission. À la prochaine!

"Bon session!"

This was one of my first sort of "weekends" where I actually did very little work in quite a while. I kind of cheated and did an exposure test and exposed and washed out two screens for something I will be printing tomorrow. I'm trying out a different emulsion, and I quite like it so far. I also saw some good bands (The Flatliners and Hostage Life). My old band actually played with the Flatliners in 2005 in Ontario. It's really cool to see a punk show where people actually seem excited about what's going on. I tend to see a lot of that in Montreal--it's refreshing.
Today, I saw a French separatist rally and went skateboarding at the world famous Olympic Stadium. I met some very nice locals and got to practice frontside rocks, a bit of French, and in one case both ("C'est mon premier frontside rock en le Big O!"). It has been two years since I last skated at this spot, and it has been difficult adjusting to its unique shape and feel. Nevertheless, there is nothing like it, and I can't wait to skate there again. As a sort of outsider, I try to approach such a sacred local spot with a certain degree of cautious respect. The locals I met were all extremely nice and offered encouragement as I worked on frontside rocks, tailslides, and backside disasters. Their respective bags of tricks were much larger and considerably more impressive than mine, but as one of them said today, it's really about the energy of the session and how we feed off of and push one another. I can't help but think he was absolutely right. I ended up feeling like I was a part of the skate session rather than just some quiet American lurker. After we were all finished skating, we ended up hanging around and shooting the shit for over an hour. We parted ways shortly after it got dark.
I skated back to the Metro (Montreal's subway system) with a big smile on my face. I simply couldn't help it.