Geisha Smoking A Joint

I tried to draw the pot smoking Geisha in a simple and clean style like in the old Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints. The color palette is Mœbius inspired.

Skeleton riding a coffin skateboard

I originally tried to draw this in 2008, but I left my sketchbook containing the first skateboarding skeleton image on top of my car, and then drove off. I didn't know it at the time, but all of my art flew into the road when I hit the first curve. Several hours later I realized what happened and hunted down my roadkill artwork. There wasn't much left of it.

About a year ago I saw the scrap of paper that had my first skateboarding skeleton rough sketch, and I decided that I still liked the idea and was finally ready to take another shot at finishing it.

Here is my most recent drawing:

...And here is the first drawing that got run over by traffic (oops!):

 

I used to love to skate, but after several years, I fell really hard and I realized (for the first time ever) that skating was dangerous and I was not invincible. 

Thanks to all the people who went skating with me back in SB. Those were some good times.

A Familiar Face"

I've been working on this one since January. It has been sitting around for over a month now while I've been deciding whether or not to declare it as finished work. Finally, yes, I can say for certain that it is finished.

There's nothing too profound to say about the concept. The idea just kind of came to me one night:

Disappointment

This image is from a dream of mine from all the way back in 2007 or 2008.

Here's what happened:
The moon floated down from the sky and hovered in front of me. The moon was really crazy looking in this dream. It was full of weird crystals and patterns and it was glowing in a really odd way. I tried to make a grab at it while it was near, but it floated away as soon as I began to show any interest in it. I chased that moon all over dreamland and was eventually able to catch it, but as soon as the moon touched my hands, it began to melt. I felt incredibly sad that I had ruined the moon; I really wished that I had never even tried to pursue it in the first place.

Since dreaming this up, I've always interpreted the moon (this dream only) to be a metaphor for failure, or at very least it represented something similar to a goal that was never achieved.

 On the brighter side, the painting itself is no disappointment. Finally, after seven or eight years, I can cross this off my list of things I've been meaning to paint.

Liquid Light Show 1

I started doing liquid light show experiments a few months ago, and last night performed my first show. Here are some photos:

It was unfortunate that the walls of the venue were black. The projected colors did not show up all that well unless the color blobs fell over the band members, or on the random light colored things behind them. What is pictured here is my clock-face mixture over the projector, not the actual projected image.

This was a real traditional 60's light show with the basic ingredients: water, oil, alcohol, and dye. I have been hearing complaints online that mineral oil is sometimes hard to find. At first I couldn't find it either, but I eventually found it at a food co-op.

TSA 3000 - Final Draft

With many big projects on the horizon, I really wanted to wrap up my work on the TSA drawing, which has been an ongoing struggle for the last year.

When I first set out to color this picture, I had in mind a dramatic/limited nighttime color pallet of dark blueish gray with a yellow or chartreuse highlight. Things didn't quite pan out the way I expected (they usually don't), and suddenly deep red became the only background color that made sense.

This design will eventually be printed on American Apparel t-shirts and sold through our website ThoughtLion.com. A few high-quality art prints will also be made from this design during the next few months.

TSA 3000

In the distant future, it's up to the Transportation Security Administration to exterminate any alien monster-beasts that sneak onboard aircrafts! As always, passenger safety is top priority.

This scene was directly inspired from a dream of mine several years ago, right around the time when the TSA started installing the full-body scanners in airports. I would've begun drawing this picture immediately after I had the dream, but did not feel quite ready to tackle such a technically difficult and absorbing project until just a few months ago. Note the honest try at near 4-point linear perspective, cast shadows, and absurd attention to detail.

(Click image for a larger view.)

I am waffling between using this image as a t-shirt design or a large art print, or maybe it will be both.