Illustration Friday: Bacon 'n' Eggs

Bacon 'n' Eggs (inks on found card / 2008)

This week's theme for Illustration Friday is "Chicken."  You can't have a chicken without the egg (or is it the other way around.)

My entry this week is from the same series I posted from last week (click here for last weeks where I explain the series.)  

Human beings absolutely love them some chicken.  You can't narrow it down to any racial stereotypes either, since worldwide, we slaughter 70 billion chickens annually, of which we consume their meat and eggs.  Only tens of millions of these are breeders and all male chicks are killed at hatching.  So we are sexually biased in our choice of the chicken we eat apparently but these baby chick corpses don't go to waste.  Alas, we turn them into fertilizer and pet food.  That's right- we even feed our animals and plants chicken as well!

It is estimated that the domestication of the chicken began about 10,000 years ago in Southeast Asia.  Today, there are more of them in the world than any other species of bird.  In the wild, a chicken has a pretty decent life expectancy of 5-10 years.  The marvels of modern meat processing have that down to just six weeks now.  Amazing what we can do with technology and world-wide demand for poultry... kinda scary though huh?    A chicken only lives .3%... that's three-TENTHS of a percent of it's expected lifespan.  To put it into perspective with that same figure and same scientific method, theoretically we could harvest fully-grown humans in just a few months, right?  Good thing we aren't cannibals.  

(Click here to see all my Illustration Friday weekly entries) 

Vote Teapot PASS IT!

The fever is sweeping the nation as all 50 of our great United States now have their own branches of The Teapot Party!

And why? Well, 'cause Willie said so!

People are volunteering and lending their time and opinions to let the government know the public wants and needs decriminalization of marijuana and drug reform laws.  Sparked by a recent bust of Country legend, Willie Nelson, the movement is in full swing!  Many free-thinking societies across the globe have never placed a prohibition on this natural plant which contains many medicinal qualities, both mentally and physically.

 CLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL TEAPOT PARTY WEBSITE! 

CLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL TEAPOT PARTY FAN PAGE ON FACEBOOK

Local organizers and Teapot Party members:  Drop a line to  dregstudios@gmail.com with your information and which branch you represent so I can email you a print-ready file for use at your rallies and events!

CLICK HERE FOR MY SPECIAL 4/20 POST OF THE

TOP 10 STONER MOVIES OF ALL TIME!

Click HERE for my article on the dangers of street drugs vs. LEGAL pharmaceutical drugs!

Be informed, know your rights and get involved...

The Top Ten Reasons Marijuana Should Be Legal  

The Vaults of Erowid:  Cannabis   

Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics 

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)

Sarah Palin Made Me Do It

"Sarah Palin Made Me Do It" (inks on bristol / 2011)

"Buck up or stay in the truck."

-Sarah Palin

Today I was compelled to compose a portrait of Ms. Palin lending her hand to the now infamous, Jared Loughner...

Jared Lee Loughner opened fire with a Glock 9 on U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was hosting an open house for her constituents at a supermarket over the weekend.  She recently narrowly defeated her Tea Party opponent in the mid-term election to retain her Democratic seat in Arizona.  The shooting killed six people, including U.S. District Judge John Roll and Giffords' aide Gabe Zimmerman. Among the 14 wounded was Giffords, who was shot through the skull. 

Loughner was unhappy with the government by all accounts and preached extreme right-wing rantings to anyone who would listen.  This young man (barely out of his teens) orchestrated this- the most recent bloodbath our country has seen carried out by one of it's own citizens.  Every now and then, the every-day Joe buckles under the pressure of choking down their own little slice of the American dream, spoon fed to them by the media and government all their life.  We all know it's tough.  We all know our government is mismanaged and big business sucks us just dry enough so that we keep creeping along and making that next check.  Why does this guy snap?  Why does he decide to go on his own assassination crusade in the name of overthrowing the government?

Let's start with what he preached... you saw him carry it out through his practice.  Loughner was known to often quote a real national treasure of a right-wing mouthpiece with the rantings of Mr. Glenn Beck.  The problem with our new gods of the modern media is they don't report a damn thing.  Reporting involves communicating facts to the public.  Over the past decade, Fox News gained a large viewer base by having news personalities who spoke their opinions to fill their segments on the air.  Much of this was their own meanderings and pure speculation with little facts mixed in... just a little "news."  The success of this formula infected the other news networks so now you get no true world news in our county.  Beck feels free to tell his audience how much he distrusts the government and keeps them coming back for more with his wild theories and claims standing on the soapbox of freedom of speech.  He and Alaskan political glamor queen Sarah Palin are just a couple of examples of the mouthpieces worshiped by our new media.  Being opinion and not news, I feel such public figures should be held more accountable for their messages.  They should own what they say when people act on it. 

Sarah Palin loves her guns.  She's made it no secret her advocacy of Americans arming themselves to the teeth.  Over the past year, she's provided the world with countless soundbites in reference to her beliefs on the subject.  Last year, the image posted below was used on her website.  Rep. Giffords who was shot this past weekend was one of the targets.  Palin also held voter rallies where they let people fire assault rifles on target ranges set up for the event.  What a way to find the true pulse of your followers.... and what a way to forebode the tragic event of this past weekend.

"Don't retreat... RELOAD."

-Sarah Palin

Illustration Friday: Same Old 25th

This week's theme for Illustration Friday is "deja vu." The term is French in origin and translates to "already seen." Emile Boirac coined the phrase in his book The Future of Psychic Sciences around the turn of the 20th century. It is a reference to the compelling sense of familiarity which many people seem to experience occasionally throughout their lifetime. Deja vu is a very uncanny feeling when something about a situation triggers an ambiance in your mind that makes you believe you've dreamed about what is happening. Some say it's a simple glitch in the brain's wiring; some say it's a small glimpse into to the dormant portion of our mind which holds psychic abilities. Some people are more tapped into this than others . It's even believed by some that the feeling is us syncing into different alternate universes with different versions of our selves in the same exact situation. The only thing we know for certain is that it is a common unexplainable phenomenon which most of us experience several times throughout our lifetime.

"Same Old 25th" (inks on found card / 2008)

My entry for this week is from a series of illustrations I composed a few years back on index card dividers I found in my office. I've exhibited several of these in different shows themed around re-purposed materials and found object art. This work's character is in an exasperated state, probably after a uninhibited and uninspiring party and we get the feeling it's probably happened to him before.  The feeling of repeated disappointment led to the works's title listed below...

(Click here to see all my Illustration Friday weekly entries) 

In Memoriam: Gerry Rafferty

"Stuck in the Middle" inks on bristol (01/05/11)

Scottish rock legend and co-founder of sixties pop sensation Stealers Wheel, Gerry Rafferty passed away this morning from complications of liver disease.   Gerry's music has been with me since I was a teenager... and will always continue to make my playlists. He released his final album last year.

When I read of his passing this morning, I was immediately compelled to pay tribute through my craft.  The background of the cityscape in the reflection of Gerry's glasses is Scottish flags on either side.  Stealers Wheel got together in Renfrewshire, Scotland around 1972 and were considered the British version of super-group Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young at the time.  The group disbanded in the 70's and Rafferty went on to score a #1 hit in 1979 with the love song, "Right Down the Line."

The clowns and jokers bordering the portrait are inspired by lyrics from Stealers Wheel's biggest hit, Stuck in the Middle with You.

"Clowns to the left of me; Jokers to the right

Here I am, stuck in the middle with you."

Portrait Process: Leonard Cohen

I was running errands Sunday when I got a song stuck in my head.  Actually- just one line in particular from Leonard Cohen's "Anthem."

"There is a crack in everything-
That's how the light gets in"

This is one of my favorite songs from the author and musician next to Hallelujah and Everybody Knows.   I hadn't considered drawing a portrait of Cohen in the past but when the lyrics got stuck in my head, the gears turned just right to give me the perfect image of him in profile with a beam of light radiating out a crack in the darkness.  I couldn't get the image out of my head so I started working on him Sunday night...

I began sketching Cohen's profile from a picture off the net.  If I'm doing a larger piece with multiple reference photos, I'll usually print them but tonight was just a small 5 x 7 portrait.  I start out loose, just trying to get the general layout and spacial settings, them start hashing out the details..

After the sketch is done, I throw down my outlines in ink and call it a night after I get a scan (I had already been working on a much larger piece all day for an upcoming group exhibit.)

This morning I got back to the portrait as I erased away the sketch and got a clean outline for coloring.  This is the process I go through on each and every illustration.  When you erase the lead however, it dulls the outlines, so I go back over them when I'm done coloring.  So essentially all my drawings get an initial sketch and the outline done twice, the second outline usually adding much more detail. Now to get to coloring...

In many mediums, you go dark to light.  With markers, I've found it depends on the situation and I often go back and forth.  Most of the time I'll get my background done and then start adding my highlights to see where my light source will be.  You can't really add a light area over top of a dark one with my medium.  I lay some grays down first to get some depth on the "crack" and let the light in with three different hues of yellow.

 Next, I begin work on the clothes and skin-tones.  I generally use anywhere from 2-5 colors for a skin tone.  The hat and suit took four different blues and then a few grays to shade...

I work the drop shadow from the hat and then darken the background with another wash of black before adding some stars to match the suit (with a blue metallic pen.)  Last, I add some more depth to the shadow from the hat...

I went back over my outline to get things a big crisper (as I mentioned above.) Now I get my final scan...

Click HERE to Order an Artist's PRINT of this Leonard Cohen Portrait!

CyberCasualty: January 1: The Death of Hank Williams

The Death of Hank Williams (inks on bristol / 7in x 5in / 2010)

Last week I had the pleasure of illustrating a portrait of Hank Williams for JoeBot's article about this musical pioneer and wild man on his site, CyberCasualty. Williams died of a morphine overdose on New Year's Day 1953 in the back of a baby blue drop-top Cadillac.


I'll leave the words to JoeBot today [Click HERE for the article] but I have to say this- (and I think he'd agree) some men become gods in death and most of them go young. 

I met JoeBot when he walked through a couple of my art exhibits in Nashville.  Based on the content of my artwork, we had plenty of fertile ground for conversation. The man is good with words and has a way all his own of putting his commentaries down.  Being an illustrator himself, he also has his own line of greeting cards which will make you absolutely piss yourself.  Embrace the same joy I get of reading it all and visit him today. 

Also check out JoeBot's articles at...   Disinformation / Taki's Magazine 

Greeting Cards will be back soon at The Smiling Machine

I'll leave you today with Hank Williams' last #1 Hit...