ArtBox Project for @PghCityPaper (part 6)

I was selected to paint (decorate? enhance? art?) one of ten Pittsburgh City Paper street boxes. This is Part 6 of my progress reports.

The box is finished and delivered! Below are photos from different angles to give you a sense of what all the sides look like together.

 

 

And here's the box with the masking removed and awaiting delivery.

The boxes will be revealed October 15 at the Best of Pittsburgh party, and then voting for a favorite begins October 16.

ArtBox Project for @PghCityPaper (part 5)

I was selected to paint (decorate? enhance? art?) one of ten Pittsburgh City Paper street boxes. This is Part 5 of my progress reports.

This is the back of the box where Andy will be, but just the background is complete.

The next thing I did was the flesh tones. Those were the scariest part of the box for me (along with the balloons), so I decided to tackle them first.

And then, here's Andy's head complete.

...And the back of the box with the masking removed. This is the side that will be facing the street. I think it's safe to say I'm pretty satisfied with how he turned out.

ArtBox Project for @PghCityPaper (part 4)

I was selected to paint (decorate? enhance? art?) one of ten Pittsburgh City Paper street boxes. This is Part 4 of my progress reports.

Not a whole lot to show on this one. This is the top of the box. Pretty straight forward.

ArtBox Project for @PghCityPaper (part 3)

I was selected to paint (decorate? enhance? art?) one of ten Pittsburgh City Paper street boxes. This is Part 3 of my progress reports.

The next thing I did was the underpainting on the other four sides of the box. Kinda boring, sorry.

But if you think the underpainting was boring, imagine what painting "Pittsburgh City Paper" eight times down two sides was like. Yeah. A little tedious.

But finished.

Let's move on.

ArtBox Project for @PghCityPaper (part 2)

I was selected to paint (decorate? enhance? art?) one of ten Pittsburgh City Paper street boxes. This is Part 2 of my progress reports.

The first thing I had to do to the CP box was prime it, then transfer the sketches and then get the underpainting going. (Sorry, kinda boring.)

The sketch on the front.

The underpainting on the front.

Here's how the front turned out.

ArtBox Project for @PghCityPaper

A friend (I suppose I can still call her that) from work told me that the Pittsburgh City Paper ArtBox Project just "screamed" for me to paint some Rots.

So I sketched, and I entered.

And then they went and picked me to paint one of their boxes.

I guess now I have to paint it.

Here's the sketch I did for what might be considered the "back" of the box. It's the side opposite where you open the door to take out a paper. It's also the side that will be facing the street.

The box will be Andy Warhol themed (in case you didn't know, he was a native Pittsburgher) with his mylar cloud balloons on the top and front and the City Paper logo painted repeatedly down the sides.

Working hard on my 15 minutes...

New site up and running

I just uploaded a completely new website for The Rots (http://www.the-rots.com). I spent a long time getting these pages together and working. The original site was built completely in Flash (http://www.the-rots.com/old), but that was years before Steve Jobs decided the iPads he wanted to sell in the future wouldn't include the ability to view Flash. And I, like so many others, really need to listen to Steve.

I also had to build separate style sheets for tablets and other mobile devices, because those also weren't much of a factor when I built the original site. But it's finished, and I'll tweak if necessary, and hopefully (hopefully) the site will work for whoever wants to take a look.

So, if you're so inclined, I would really appreciate some extra eyeballs looking over the site. I need to know if it's working on everything it was designed for. I've already hit a snag with my smart phone, which doesn't want to recognize the style sheet I built for smaller devices, and I'm not sure how to make that work.

What I need is a web guru that will sit under my desk like a troll and look over my coding when I run in to problems. I just don't know any gurus, so I guess I'll be trolling the help forums online.

Weird is the new normal, part 2 #weirdwins

In my last post on Tuesday I gave you an idea of the weird I am now; I have toys. Lots and lots of toys. And I'm winning. Not in the Charlie Sheen kind of way, more like the Rotty kind of way.

But I wasn't always winning. I guess to be a winner you have learn to be a loser first.

Like lots of kids, I looked kind of funny, which made me terribly uncomfortable in social situations. I had a unibrow that I wasn't allowed to split until I was in seventh grade. I also wasn't allowed to shave or wear pantyhose until then either, which meant I gave up on shorts and dresses and staying over at friends' houses. I had teeth with gaps so wide I could slide my tongue between them. My skin started breaking out early, which was bad enough, but other kids actually accused me of thinking I was a big shot because I had something everybody else didn't get until they were teenagers. (Yeah. Zits.) I was flat-chested and never grew out of it. I had (and have) nine toenails. One just decided it didn't want to grow any bigger than a pinhead. Swimming in public (meaning, without shoes) just wasn't happening for me.

Adding to my self-conscious looks was my abnormal interests. I didn't like shopping with my friends. I didn't really know how. Their moms would take us to look at clothes, and I would follow them around the store without looking at anything. I would have rather been playing baseball with my uncle, which didn't go over well with the girls I knew. I played drums, I didn't want to wear makeup, and I certainly didn't like talking on the phone.

To fit in, I found myself trying to be smart and funny. Smart and funny for me combined into smart assiness and, at the time, that didn't help. As I grew older, I realized the people I considered to be my best friends all those years all considered somebody else to be their best friends. And that hurt.

So I withdrew inside my little world. I became quiet and observant and geeky. I drew pictures. That was something I could do by myself. And for years I drew what people would have expected me to draw. But then, almost overnight, I found myself ready to give up on trying to be normal. The characters I had been drawing changed from what was considered normal to characters that came straight from my innards. I decided it was time to embrace my weirdness.

It was time for The Rots.

The view in my hallway.

The Rots are twisted little characters that don't even attempt normality. They are who they are and I think they enjoy it. And I think other people out there must, too. Last check, 4,000 people out there are liking The Rots Facebook page. 4,000! After seeing The Rots for the first time on Facebook, a person I used to think of as a childhood friend asked me, "How did this happen?" as if it wasn't normal.

I never got back to her.

The first book I ever illustrated was called Yikes! Wow! Yuck! Fun Experiments for Your First Science Fair, and I probably wouldn't have gotten the job if the art director had thought I might have been normal.

I wrote and illustrated my first book, and that wouldn't have happened if I was living the 50% gray life of normality. The book is called Twisted: Tales to Rot Your Brain Vol 1, and the people at the Midwest Book Review like it. So do the people at Publishers Weekly. And Kirkus Reviews. The people at Kirkus liked it so much they asked to do an interview with me.

The poster in my office space.

Forget normal. Normal is overrated. Normal is gray and boring and unflavored tofu. Normal doesn't get to have this in its office space. (Thank you much, @ParaNorman!)

Do yourself a favor and go see ParaNorman, and every time you read the name "ParaNorman" convince yourself that it actually says, "ParaNora."

Because, really, it does.

The Rots @ DV8 (Part 3)

DV8 had the opening last Saturday of the exhibit where my drawing "Leonard the Clown" is hanging. It was really crowded, and it was nice to see that, of the ten people who were invited to show there, I personally know two of them (besides me).

I took a few pictures, but I was trying to be subtle, and I don't know that the people there really wanted to be photographed. So here's one of the photos I took with a couple identities skillfully hidden. Notice my drawing is squeezed between a cabinet of things to buy and the food table. Hopefully somebody noticed it there.

The Rots @ DV8 (Part 2)

I finished my drawing for the 10th anniversary exhibit at DV8 Gallery in Greensburg, and this is it (you can click on him to see him bigger). The exhibit opens this Saturday, Feb. 11 at 7 pm. Here's a locator map to find it: http://bit.ly/zPRcuy. If you missed the sketch I posted earlier last week, here's the link to that.

And here's what DV8 looks like from the outside so you don't drive by it:
Actually, that's almost a total lie. They just changed the spilling coffee cup on the front to a standing-up frothy espresso cup just a couple weeks ago. But you get the idea.

The Rots @ DV8

I've been asked to participate in the tenth anniversary exhibit at and for DV8 Espresso Bar and Gallery in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. They hosted The Rots' first exhibit back in 2007 (has it been that long?). Pictures from that show are on The Rots' site under "gallery" at the top of the page and then "shows" on the left. They're only exhibiting ten artists (for their tenth anniversary), and I'm honored to be one of them.

I'm drawing a new piece just for the show (which is hanging Sunday, so I need to get a move on), but the sketch itself is a few months old, I just never had a reason to finish it. Now I guess I do.

Here's the sketch. His name is Leonard.

Square Kats

I started playing around with some ideas for kitty kats, and these little guys were totally ready to slink out the end of my pencil. They were easy for me to love right away, which isn't easy for me to do. I'm usually pretty critical of my initial sketches for a project.

Here's the sketch of all the kats in a row:

The first thing I could see them on was across the chest of a t-shirt. Your grandma's. Wouldn't she look cute in that? In a Rotty Kat t-shirt? I wonder if she would notice they were Rots.

I'm thinking of all kinds of katty variations: on t-shirts without a background; on note cards with a background; a single kat on the back of an iPad case. Depending on how they turn out in color, I'm thinking these kitties could be exploited for quite a long time.

They're already ticked, so why not?

Happy Birthday to The Rots!

On June 29, 2006, I drew the first page of what later became "The Rots." The scan of that first sketchbook page is over there to the right. You can click on it to see it bigger if you want.

I know, it pretty much sucks. But that's why I drew it in a sketchbook and not on something expensive or important. It wasn't meant to be viewed by the general public. I was just getting my feet wet, and artwork like this was very new to me (see my fine art portfolio here).

The Rots have grown up since then (a lot), and in celebration of their fifth birthday I decided to paint Rodney as I thought he might look today (see below). Rodney was the very first Rot (he's in the upper left corner of the sketchbook page above), and he's changed a bit, hopefully for the better.

Over the past few weeks I've posted some photos of Rodney as I was painting him, so you can scroll down to see in-progress images or click here to see all the updates on the same page.

Mr. Picassohead!

Looks like today is the anniversary of the demise of Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, but better known to those of us without all day to say his name as Pablo Picasso. To celebrate (?), you can make your own Picasso on the Web site Mr. Picassohead. Very addictive...

Here's mine. He's called Bewildered Man.

iFrank

Here's a new Rots image with a take on the commercial for that really popular little white electronic device. I'm planning on doing a color version sometime in the near future.

If you want to download him and use him somewhere, he's yours! All I ask is that you give me credit with a link (http://www.the-rots.com/), and let me know where you've used him!

Boris the Clown & Wiggles

 
This little guy's name is Boris, and he's the freshest Rot in my sketchbook.

I drew him in response to a fellow illustrator who saw my kid's illustration portfolio and told me the pictures would probably scare the children (I guess I deserved that). To get in the right frame of mind, he told me, I should be thinking more along the lines of "clowns and birthday parties."

Clowns.

I've always found clowns to be disturbing. And now I find myself trying to draw them.

And they've all been pretty much disturbing.

Slightly Irreverently Twisted

New URL on Facebook: www.facebook.com/slightly.irreverently.twisted. It's all possible because The Rots got enough fans on their page to become eligible for a unique URL. Thanks to everybody who fanned them!

Rots photo album

I have that Rots© photo album up on Facebook now if you want to take a look. It's just a mixture of some of the stuff I've been working on the past few years. Take a look around, but what would be totally cool is if you would take the time to become a fan. If I can get 25 people who are willing to admit they like The Rots, I'll be able to get a cool URL for the page that would be easy to use and remember (not like the one that comes up right now).

And if that weren't enough, I've also been Twittering!

It's all good!

Facebook

The Rots© have a page on Facebook. Not sure yet where that will lead, but you can become a fan. I did. Actually, right now I'm the only one. Kinda hard to advertise being on Facebook when you don't really have anything to show on the page. Eventually I'll get some images on there. Looks like a tomorrow job...

Newsletter

As many of you know, I've taken on a new "day job" as a tour guide at Fallingwater (the Frank Lloyd Wright house) which, also as many of you know, has taken up a lot of my time. So. I've skipped the Spring issue of The Rots newsletter and will attempt to pick up the next issue as scheduled.

On the positive side, the job's been good for me. It's certainly keeping me out of trouble.