Happy Halloween

New Sketches

For the first time this year, I'm having some artwork exhibited publicly. I have six new pieces as part of the Double Exposure show at Blankspace Gallery in Oakland. The show features nine other artists, all of which are owners / curators of other Bay Area art spaces. Narangkar also has a new series of paintings in the show. The exhibit opened on the 25th of this month, and a first Friday reception will take place on November 7th, 7-10pm (although I'll be out of town for that one). 

I'm very pleased with the new work, which I feel ties together a few different series I have been following: the Junk Pirate collections, the Time-Wasting Machines, plus some other illustrations based on sketchbook ideas. All framed real nice and priced to be owned. 4 of the 6 have already sold! Once the show is down I'll post the work on my website and blog. 

In the meanwhile, I have also scanned a few recent drawings from the old sketchbook:

As usual, I've been drawing a lot of video game related images. Not really characters or imagery from game content, but more like drawings of the shapes of controllers and arcade machines. I think the King of Kong movie got me hyped on classic video games. I really wish arcades still existed. PS3 is cool, but sitting on the couch playing a first-person shooter for hours just isn't the same as going to an arcade.

This is a simplified image of the skatepond. Narangkar has been doing a lot of great art using the pond and the yard as imagery and it inspired me to get some drawings done. I basically wanted to reduce the pond to simple image with the colorful concrete, the lavender, and the lemon trees. I would love to evolve this into an Arts-and-Crafts style tile illustration. 

Immortality

Well, I can check another big one off the lifetime to-do list:

Appear as a cartoon character on national television in a show I love! As absurd as it sounds, a few months ago I made a special appearance on the acclaimed Cartoon Network animated program Metalocalypse as myself, a fan of cartoon supergroup Dethklok. In my big scene, I get an autograph from who I think is bass player Murderface (who is actually Murderface's double-crossing look-a-like), only to get stabbed with the pen.

Truly this is a big moment for me and I would like to take a moment to let you all know how such an amazing circumstance came to be. It all started with my buddy Ako getting a job doing character drawings for Titmouse studios, the makers of Metalocalypse. One day I got an email stating that she needed some reference material for Dethklok fans for an episode in season 2, so I quickly got some pictures of my ugly mug and sent them off. 

When I later visited Ako in the Titmouse Studios in Los Angeles (awesome place, by the way), I was able to pick-up a photocopy of the original drawing of me-as-a-cartoon, plus the assurance the I would, indeed, get killed by the band in an upcoming episode. 

The episode with me had originally aired on November 4th, 2007, but I had sort of forgot about it all. Then, recently, I searched for the episode on Youtube, and, sure enough, towards the end of episode 4, "Dethdoubles", there I am. The video has since been removed from Youtube, but Season 2 will be available on DVD on December 2nd.

The original digital snapshot I sent to Ako.
Ako's drawing.
There I am! This is from a screenshot I took of the Youtube video. Awesome!

Coincidentally enough, I look a lot more like the cartoon now than I did when the original photo was taken over a year ago.

Big thanks to Ako, the entire Titmouse crew, and anybody who recognizes how freakin' awesome this is. If the video shows up on Youtube again I'll post it up. It has truly been an honor to be killed in an episode of my favorite animated show (sorry, Simpsons, but it is time to call it quits). The Dethklok CD is pretty good, too. 

extra roadtrip photos

By popular demand, I present 28 bonus pictures from our recent road trip.