Saturday, February 07, 2009

Joey


I wanted to get in the habit of regularly doing just straightforward stuff to sharpen up...portraits, animal studies, etc. This is another rock legend portrait (I drew Joan Jett a while back, I want to crank one out every week or so now). I'll probably make iron ons of all of them. Lux Interior will probably be next.

New Experiment...


Whoa, really heavy blog guilt...its been ages since I posted.  Stressful stuff at work was a big distraction, and getting bogged down Facebook with really low energy levels has kept the old Graveshifter blog frozen for a while. Excuses, excuses.  I have been working on this stuff...I'm not talking too much about it yet, but its gonna be fun, with some mass production involved!  Here's a small sample....

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Christmas poster for the Flicker...


I haven't really been participating this year AT ALL with the Athens GA holiday festivities...not one single party, show or arts/crafts fair.  BAH!  I DID do this because an old pal asked me to...but that's it!

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Strayhorn Movie NIte...


An out-of-print treat from the great Hal Ashby...free admission and popcorn...

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets



Comics by the mysterious, tragic pioneer Fletcher Hanks. This book is really fantastic.  Insane and weird, with beguiling art that is totally goofy and totally haunting.  Most stories feature an invincible superhero (usually Stardust the Super Wizard) who thwarts plots of mass destruction by gangsters, then doles out complex and brutal supernatural punishments!  I saw one of these strips a couple of years ago and was blown away, and was thrilled to stumble on this book at Borders this past weekend.  Buy this book, for the sake of humanity.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Treasured Books from the JTO Studio Collection™




On my old Graveshifter website I did a "Book of the Month" feature which was totally sporadic, not at all monthly, but fun.  I focused on stuff I found at thrift stores with illustrations I liked...usually stuff that was unintentionally creepy.  As I dig through some of the surviving junk I have saved (I threw a ton of stuff away recently...paintings, books, etc.),  I'll post some covers like these.  No blabby commentaries, just scans of stuff I could not bear to trash...yet.

Friday, October 17, 2008

New Album Cover, sort of, finally,


Here it is! I actually finished this drawing a while back, but I didn't want to post it until the record was officially released (which is happening as I type this, the release party is tonight). I was planning on going but I feel ill and old tonight. The local entertainment and news weekly, Flagpole, actually posted a pic of it with a review on their site a few days ago, but I grimly stuck to my promised timeline...although once I took the drawing downtown to show the guys in the band what it looked like "in person" and wound up flashing it around to a ton of people...a shining moment. This is a milestone of sorts because this is the first cover art where I put together the whole package...layout, logo design, everything. I didn't really have the gear until recently to do that stuff...man I love my new computer. I looked back at the earlier version I started with no studio or spare time with a borrowed computer and god how terrible-I'm so glad the first version didn't see the light of day. I have another cover coming out this winter for The HEAP, another band here in Athens, but its still top secret and can't be seen, but here are some shocking and enticing clues : monsters, foxy girls with knee boots, and pinball machines.