Tag Archives: Music

Funky Frankie

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It’s that time of year when I have a tra­di­tion of doing some kind of Franken­stein imagery. Right after I fin­ished the one I did for last year, this one came to me in a fore­head-slap­ping “D’oh!” moment.

Unlike last year’s image, this is a real song, as some of you will know. The Edgar Win­ter Group’s “Franken­stein” is one of the coolest rock instru­men­tals of the ’70s. I’ll give you moment to check it out here, if you haven’t heard it before.

…Okay, you’re back now? “Franken­stein” was a big hit and actu­al­ly made it to #1 on the charts. My under­stand­ing is that in record­ing and fig­ur­ing out the song, the band end­ed up hav­ing to do a lot of phys­i­cal edit­ing of the song parts. Today, that’s just a mat­ter of hit­ting a but­ton or two. Back then, you had to lit­er­al­ly take a razor blade to the record­ing tape to cut it apart, then tape it back togeth­er again. With all the var­i­ous tape pieces lying around the stu­dio wait­ing to be pieced back togeth­er, the band’s drum­mer observed that the song had become “like Franken­stein.” The name stuck.

I knew what I kind of want­ed the illus­tra­tion to look like, but think­ing about col­or was anoth­er thing. Then I remem­bered that for awhile now, I’d been intrigued by the idea of try­ing some­thing with flu­o­res­cent col­ors, like a black­light poster. It struck me that this was the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to try that out, so here you go!

Hap­py Halloween!

Do the Frankenstomp!

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It’s that time of year again! Hal­loween! And long-time vis­i­tors to my site might recall that I have some­thing of a loose tra­di­tion of doing Franken­stein-themed stuff in hon­or of the hol­i­day. Here’s this year’s: a sin­gle from the ’60s by the Orloks, doing the Frankenstomp.

There was a big pop cul­ture fas­ci­na­tion with mon­sters in the ’60s, like­ly spurred ini­tial­ly at least in part by TV sta­tions look­ing to fill time, and resort­ing to run­ning old mon­ster movies. They caught on with young view­ers and cre­at­ed a demand for more, result­ing in all kinds of games, mod­els, TV shows, cartoons…and even nov­el­ty 45’s like this.

I’m a big fan of this kind of mid-cen­tu­ry art style (and the style of graph­ic design that goes with it). It’s very sil­hou­ette- and shape-ori­ent­ed. I must con­fess, it does­n’t come entire­ly nat­ur­al to me to try to draw this way (it’s like throw­ing a car in hard reverse, after years of try­ing so hard to get vol­ume and dimen­sion into all my work). But it’s fun to at least attempt it like this every now and then.

Enjoy, and Hap­py Halloween!

Twistin’ with Frank!

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If you’ve poked around my site for any length of time, you might have noticed I have some­thing of a loose tra­di­tion of cre­at­ing some kind of Franken­stein image for my site around Hal­loween, when I have the chance. Here’s this year’s!

I had the good for­tune that dur­ing my child­hood, mon­sters were a big part of the pop cul­ture land­scape. This def­i­nite­ly informed me (or warped me, depend­ing on your per­spec­tive). Mon­sters were kind of every­where! Car­toons, TV shows, books (like How to Care for Your Mon­ster), mod­el kits, toys, games…all kinds of fun stuff! There was even the occa­sion­al nov­el­ty mon­ster-themed 45 record.

That’s sort of where this idea came from. This mid-cen­tu­ry Car­toon Mod­ern type of style is not some­thing I’ve done a lot, but it’s how I envi­sioned this look­ing in my head. You spend years try­ing to get vol­ume into your draw­ings, but you kind of have to throw your brain into reverse and think more in terms of flat­ter shapes and sil­hou­ettes in order to do some­thing like this. I find it a chal­lenge, but a fun one.

When this idea came into my head, it just felt like a record that should’ve exist­ed back then, so I took it upon myself to make it hap­pen. I hope you enjoy my lit­tle illus­tra­tion and design experiment.

Hap­py Halloween!

Four Bananas Make a Bunch

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Let It SplitI’m sure most of you remem­ber the Banana Splits. They were that famous and influ­en­tial rock band that changed the face of the ’60s with their music; songs that have stood the test of time and are still with us today. Late in the band’s career, things had begun to get hec­tic and stress­ful. The mem­bers’ lives were head­ing in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. They were grow­ing apart; no longer the same wide-eyed kids they were when they start­ed out. But before they called it a day, they put out one final album: Let It Split.

Okay, not real­ly. I just made up all that stuff. Knowl­edge­able vis­i­tors will real­ize that what I’ve done here is a riff off the cov­er of the Bea­t­les’ last album, Let It Be, only recast with the mem­bers of the Banana Splits. Going clock­wise from the upper left, you have Droop­er, Flee­gle, Snorky and Bingo.

Yes, when I was a kid, I would watch The Banana Splits Adven­ture Hour. Fun times. I’ll even admit to hav­ing sent away for the Banana Splits Fan Club Kit. No Sour Grapes Bunch for me! No sir! Sing it with me now: “Tra la la, la la la la,…” 🙂

Tunes!

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Okay, I know this is sup­posed to be my portfolio/artblog. But here’s the thing: any­one who knows me knows that I also love music. If you come up to my desk while I’m work­ing at some stu­dio, odds are I’ve got tunes play­ing in the back­ground. My iTunes is loaded with almost 70 GB of music. In addi­tion to my art, it’s anoth­er big part of who I am.

So to that end, I thought I’d add some music links over in the side­bar. These are far from being the only bands and artists I like! They’re only a small hand­ful of musi­cians who would leave a notice­able absence for me if they were removed from my iTunes and CD libraries. If you haven’t heard some of these per­form­ers, do your­self a favor and put some­thing new in your ears! Maybe I’ll add to the list from time to time.

And of course, since this is sup­posed to be an art­blog, I ough­ta post some art to go with this announce­ment, right? The illus­tra­tion up top was part of an assign­ment I did for one of my class­es back when I was attend­ing Art Cen­ter, to illus­trate and design a CD pack­age. I had no Pho­to­shop skills back then, so it’s all pen & ink with water­col­ors. Today, I’d prob­a­bly still draw some­thing like this con­ven­tion­al­ly, but I’d use Pho­to­shop for the color.

Yowza, Yowza, Yowza!

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As I men­tion on my “About” page, I was in a band back in the 80’s. (I know: “Who was­n’t in a band in the 80’s?”) We were called the Contact.

Since I was the artist/graphic design­er in the band, I wound up doing all our fly­ers. It was a blast, because I could pret­ty much do just about any­thing I want­ed. You can see a few sam­ples of my Con­tact fly­ers over in the Gal­leries here.

Here’s anoth­er one (which may even­tu­al­ly make its way over into the Gal­leries too). A lot of the time, band fly­ers tend to draw from the same sources over and over. For this one, it occurred to me it might be fun to bor­row visu­al influ­ences of an ear­li­er age for once. And it was! I had fun dig­ging up all the ref­er­ence in the library (pre-inter­net days, y’all), then pulling all those influ­ences togeth­er to make a 30’s style band fly­er. I think I did a pret­ty good job of car­toon­ing all of us too (though I’ve nev­er played a stand-up bass in my life). It was fun to get to do some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, and I was hap­py with how this exper­i­ment worked out.

Por­tions of the fly­er are cen­sored here, sim­ply because I don’t think our gen­er­ous hosts back then would appre­ci­ate their home address being post­ed on the internet.