Spring Cleaning, Birth and Renewal, Stuff Like That

I decided to let my existing stock of krylographs and block prints on paper sell out, and not make any more of those images for a while. I'm gonna make some new pictures first, I think.

I was up to about 20, what would you call 'em, designs? for each of the stencil pics and the prints. That's kind of a lot to keep in stock, especially when you figure each round of each design ends up being about 7-11 pictures. Multiply that by 40, and you've got a decent chunk of storage space. What with the suits of armor and rare jewels on display around the HQ, it got a little tight when I was in full swing on all of 'em for Xmas.

Why make pictures I can even come close to calling "designs?" To keep the cost down, which means more people can buy 'em. $20 isn't an interior-design-budget choice, it's an impulse buy. I myself can't afford to buy an $800 painting. Even if I could, well, that's a couple of guitars, y'know? I make pictures that are affordable, and I like that. To still make a decent hourly wage, well, the time it takes me to make 'em had to come down, and so: prints and stencil paintings.

There are some 500 El Reys out in the world, and when the people who own 'em have guests over to their homes or work cubicles, that's a couple more people who get to see 'em, and hopefully, get a nice little art jolt, or at least a "Heh." I couldn't generate nearly as many of 'em if I was making nothing but original paintings for $$. If I did nothing but make fancy paintings, I'd probably do OK and all; but if that's all I'd ever done, would I get to say that I have that many pictures out in the world? Not for another decade or two. I love having 500 pictures I made out there. As sappy as it seems, it makes me feel like I'm doing some good, sprinkling "heh"s across the world.

Some of the designs were a couple of years old. Time for some new ones. I'll make more.

Upcoming: Pet Noir Show, April 9th, SF

I'm gonna have a group of zombie chihuahuas in this show that Ms. Mari Naomi is ringleading. And El Flaco (some know him as Fred Einaudi) will have an excellent painting in the show, as well.

Pet Noir
An art exhibit and music fundraiser to benefit Pet Noir: An Anthology of Strange But True Bay Area Pet Crimes and In Defense of Animals (IDA).

Saturday, April 9, 2005
7 p.m. until 8 p.m. Art reception—FREE admission
8 p.m. until 12 midnight Music party—$2 to $10 sliding scale admission

Balazo Gallery / Missions Badlands
2811 Mission St. @ 24th Street

More info.

I'll post a reminder.

Inspirational

Cheri Pann and Gonzalo Duran are artists in their 60s and live and work in their excellent mosaic tile house in Venice, CA, which you can visit on the 2nd Saturday of each month from 1pm - 4 pm and by appointment.



It's nice to be reminded that not everyone gravitates towards pale pastel sweatclothes and subdevelopment houses.

Artist = Stompbox

An artist of any taste will impose his or her own style on a picture they make. You take 10 artists and have 'em all paint the same scene, and there'll be differences in the pictures they make.

In addition to making pictures, I'm also an (increasingly lapsed) guitar player, primarily of electric guitar. From the very first electric and amp I owned, I've been as much a fan of the stompbox, or effect pedal, as the guitar itself. To the uninitiated, these are the little metal boxes on the floor in front of the guitar player on stage than he or she steps on right before the big noisy part of the song, or maybe a solo. To me, sound design and effects have always been as interesting as the musical notes, melody, harmony, etc. I spent a whole afternoon in college making whale noises in the basement. No musical content whatsoever, but I had a great time.


Boss DS-1 and El Rey, Teen Spirit, 2002, Collection of Andrew McDonald

I think artists are kind of like stompboxes. They take a source, process it, and it comes out dfferently.

You could also, I suppose, look at the artist's eyes and hands as a remarkably elaborate Photoshop filter.

Look How Nice!

Niff and/or Sutter over at InkFinger made me artist of the week and wrote this nice blurb!

"Monkeys, Robots, Animals, and Celebrities populate his mind. Burritos populate his stomach. This is El Rey. Operating out of his Mission-based studio in San Francisco, El Rey produces his prints and paintings with iconic mastery. He has a very fun and graphic quality to his work. And, if you want to own it (which you will) you can either go the old fashioned route ($) OR you can trade him anything from a pick-up truck to a pet monkey. It 's inspiring to see that all you need to get your art out there is the desire."

Thanks, youse!

Free Font Friday, 3-25-05

Cape Arcona is a beautiful place to visit. Also, there are free fonts there.

Here's Ginger Mint, probably my favorite.

(Still sick as a dog, thanks for asking.)

No Thinking, Just Linking

http://www.spamusement.com/view.php?id=43

http://www.spamusement.com/view.php?id=33

http://www.spamusement.com/view.php?id=90

http://www.spamusement.com/view.php?id=66

http://www.spamusement.com/view.php?id=114

http://www.spamusement.com/view.php?id=81

http://www.spamusement.com/view.php?id=100

Nice work, sir.

I Got Nothin'

A bad cold has your humble correspondent pretty much sidelined. Minor, minor brainstorming is sparking in thick delirious haze, but not really anything worth detailing.

I can report that a) the end-credit illustrations for The Incredibles are excellent, and b) that Minority Report looks like it was designed by Mac users.

Also:



More here.

See you when the pea soup burns off.

Free Font Friday 3-18-05

I like a nice monospace font for telnetting into Echo and the Well. Sometimes I do my day job copy editing in a monospaced font, if I'm feeling persnickety. This one looks good.



Monospatial also looks promising. They were designed by Manfred Klein, who's in his 70s and cranks out a couple of new fonts a week. I'm half that and I feel like I accomplished something if I cook my own dinner.

He has a billion other free fonts on TypOasis, and there's a nice interview.

Rock on, Mr. Klein. Thanks for the fonts!

Currently Reading

Elmer Bischoff: The Ethics of Paint

Aside from the black-turtleneck subtitle, this is a pretty good book about Mr. Bischoff, who along with David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, and others, was one of the Bay Area Figurative painters. Roughly, as I understand it, they took a few things they found useful from gesture painting and Abstract Expressionism (Pollock, Klein, those folks) and went back to painting people, which was oddly against the grain at the time.


His painting Orange Sweater was apparently where things started to gel, in 1955. (He was 39; as my 38th approaches, I find comfort in this.) I don't remember seeing it at the SFMOMA, but I'm sure this thumbnail doesn't do it justice; it's frickin' 4 by 4 and a half feet.

Here's a couple more of his pictures at the SFMOMA, here's some more at the Smithsonian, and here's a nice little bit about a retrospective curated by the book's author, Susan Landauer.

I was pointed to the Bay Area Figurative types a couple of years ago, by Jim Serchak, who now runs 66Balmy gallery. I'd sort of accidentally painted a good painterly picture of some boys running down a hill; he bought it and mentioned I should check out David Park. Park's another of the group (I mentioned him in this post, which generated a record 5 comments), but I wasn't able to find a book on him, and the library didn't have the Bay Area Figurative book mentioned above. So I ended up with this book on Mr. Bischoff, and in the process found not just one new-to-me painter that I think is the bee's knees, but two. Things just work out sometimes.

Tom Gauld: Good Cartoonist

Noisy Alphabet

Hunter and Painter

ICON4

Mr. Paul Howalt of Gilbert, AZ, a good chap and a really good illustrator, wrote in with news of the ICON4 illustrator's conference, which will be held here in SF this year, on July 7-9. I would be there in a heartbeat, if the $450 minimum fee for registration didn't make me skip one.

I will admit that, in between rounds of mini-golf on the roof course, I sometimes ponder the idea of throwing my hat into the illustration ring, which Mr. Howalt and others have suggested. It seems there's a $150 level of attendance that gives hucksters a table from which to shill.

"Hmm," I ponder. "Hmm."

PimpZilla y Reyzilla

I was just poking at my referrers, as one does, and found Fuzzy had linked here, for which I thank him. (Heya Fuzzy!) But more important than the link to me is the link he had to PimpZilla, a GUI theme for the Firefox browser (which we here at HQ use almost exclusively).



This, like almost anything (Ooo! Shiny object!) gives me an idea. I don't have the attention span to acually learn how to do one, but if any of you know your way around making a Firefox theme, let's team up and do an El Rey theme. Whattaya say? To the comments, chum!


Artist's rendering (not to scale). That's supposed to be a hammer.

The American Sign Museum

If you find yourself in Cincinatti, OH on April 28-29, you should go to the opening of the American Sign Museum. God, I have to find an excuse to use more type in my pictures.



Click to see more of their permanent collection.

Art SF Show Pix/Mini Review

at http://www.artbusiness.com/1open/031205.html (second show from the top of the page). Looks like Artbusiness cheese Alan Bamberger hit four shows that night. Whew.

This Is El Flaco

Be forewarned, evildoers!

The Art SF Show Was Fun, By the Way

Nice, nice folks and a fun party. With Mr. Mark was my date (as La Reina had royal business to which to attend), I had a fine time. Art SF is a nifty community art center, with an open-painting-night free-for-all on Thursdays. As I think a personable fellow who volunteers there named K2 said, it's nice if you have a small apartment to be able to pack up your stuff, go down to Art SF, and stretch out a bit.

They're located in a 5th story walkup space (overlooking the Burger King next to the 16th Street BART station), the kind of raw-but-painted-white space I was familiar with from the dot-com era in NYC. The party felt a bit like a scene from the movie After Hours; bohemians-a-plenty of all stripes and ages, a couple of live bands, and DJs. They're raising dough to buy a warehouse, one can of $2 PBR at a time. We helped them towards their goal, in said manner.

And I chatted for a bit to the always-pleasant Ms. Mari Naomi, and it looks like I'll have a little something in a show she's curating next month at Balazo gallery: Pet Noir. There's even a possibility El Flaco may get in on the fun. More info later!

Cover Versions Are Fun

My back went south for the last couple of days, so no followup to the innocent whistling, but I got the idea to broaden my horizons and paint some cover versions. El Flaco hooked me up with the wheatpaste.

Thanks, as so often they do, go to La Reina for choosing the source pictures.


Click to enlarge

Free Font Friday 3-11-05, late edition

Hannes Siengalewicz of jestyle.net creates typefaces "out of found footage like money, old magazines, boardgames from the 60ies or labels on bottles of liquor. Kyrillic characters rock."


Here's maybe my favorite of his. Click to go to his page.

Art SF Group Show, Saturday 3/12

I'm in this fundraising show this comin' Saturday! Come on by, if you're so inclined.

(The only person listed here that I know is Mari Naomi. She's nice. A couple of years ago, I swapped her some El Reys for a picture of a cat warily looking at a bottle of hooch that now hangs in my kitchen.)

March 12th, 8pm-1am
Art SF
110 Capp St. @ 16th St. (1 block from 16th Street BART station)

Art SF 2nd Saturdays presents:
Belief ?
What do you believe?
What do you worship?
...an exhibition of ideas

COME SUPPORT ArtSF EVERY SECOND SATURDAY OF THE MONTH!

Artists:
"98"
A Johnson
Alan Bartlett
Alden Conant
Alexis Hagosian
America Meredith
Andrew Schreijer
Ann Taylor
Ariel
Atomic Bombshell
Bernard Pangalangan
Bill Allen
Camille Motta
Chris Dead
Chris Lynch
Dane Westen
David Houston
Desoto
Doug Rhodes
El Rey
Erik Foster
Erik Groff & Kittymak
Fred Klein
Fritz Flohr
Gillian Wee
Howie Bagley
Jason Arnold
Jason Aumann
Jason Van Horn
Jenne Giles
Joe Mama
Jose Maro Alvarado
Karamarie
KAT B
Kate Thompson
Katie Miranda
Láralyn Mowers
Latino Torelli
Laurel Nathanson
Marc Christian Tweed
MariNaomi
Mario J. Giordano
Mark Temple
Marta Ayala
Matt Marsango
Melissa Lane
Michael Levy
Michelle Knox
Nan Kent
Nanette Wylde
Natalia Popova
Nick Port
PeeMonster
Polywog
SA Murray
Shalom
SkinnY VinnY
Smurf Suicide
Ted Terbolizard
Teresa Moore
Tessa Poppe
TJ Walkup (Omnific Productions)
Trish Tunney
Victor Barbieri

Fashion Designs with:
Asha Rani
Regina Marie Vista
Miranda Caroligne
Edgar Furlong

Music and Performance with:
Popskull
Chief Enablers
Nullspace
Justin Hager's poetry corner
DJ Polywog

$5-500,000 sliding scale donation

(Whistling Innocently)

Buttons: Addicting

(www.kalsey.com/tools/buttonmaker)

There's a Newly Boarded-Up Store on My Block

And the plywood's covered with ads.

(Despite the fact that I use stencils and spray paint, I detest graffiti and postering, unless it's over ads, billboards and the like.)

I think I may need to look up a wheatpaste recipe.

$1.98 Oil Paint

Looks like dickblick.com is having a sale on Van Gogh oil paint. The tradionally more expensive colors like cadmium red are $4.18, but most are under two bucks for a 47ml tube. As I understand, this isn't exactly a top-shelf paint; I don't know squat about oil paints, but yep, $1.98 is $1.98.

Free Font Friday, 3-4-05

The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has released these fonts, with bad-printing artifacts intact. There's a whole CD of 'em for $20!

This is my favorite of the free ones:


"HPLHS-Headline One is a replica of real newspaper headline type. It has softly rounded corners like old lead type. Available for FREE in the HPLHS font pack."


They also have another CD of 1920s/30s-ish documents (props for live-action roleplaying games) you can print up, and some free props, which are amazing. They also have a bunch of tips on making your own.


In 80-years-later kinda way, miniml also has some nice free pixel fonts. (Scroll down in the right-hand frame.)

Make somethin' nice!

Oh, and here are a bunch of movie title screens I liked.
http://www.shillpages.com/movies/tt.shtml

All the above are via www.typebase.com.

The Other Chimpbot

Mmmmm, baffling.

More Hand Adventures: An Orangutan-Based Case Study

Last year I hit upon the idea of doing a painting based on the four-color print process, whereby dots of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK) are printed in a pattern called a rosette to give you pictures in magazines and such.


C,M,Y, and K plates forming a rosette (from ippaper.com)

Naturally, my thoughts were to make a picture of one of our primate friends; in this case, an orangutan. One of my concerns was how to make a picture like this interesting up close. I knew that the dots would resolve into a picture at a distance (in the case of the show it ended up in, across Guerrero street, a good 60 feet) but wanted to give the looker-at-er some detail to look at if they were a foot away and passing it on the way to the bathroom.

I ended up thinning the paint to be pretty transparent (like the inks used in printing), and letting the dots be not perfectly round. Two thousand-ish scribbly little dots later, I had an orangutan:


Pongo.jpg

Made of lots and lots of dots:


PongoDetail.jpg

It was pretty successful, I think. I guess people like pictures that are like puzzles, like those eye-straining cross-your-eyes-and-see-the-boat prints you see at the mall (cf. Mallrats). I was happy because unlike my sharp-edged might-as-well-be-silkscreens, up close you could see the endless scribbling that went into it. This summer, I may finally get to the idea I've had of doing a picture with this process huge, using a hollow wood door as a canvas. A mini-billboard, El Rey style.

Pix of the Zip Zap Show

Well, looky this, pictures from the Zip Zap show are at artbusiness.com. Click that link and scroll down to the second half of the page. Many thanks again go out to nice lady organizer Yasha Wallin.

I'm barely visible in one of the pictures, even.

Hello to the Collision Detection Peoples!

Clive linked to me, and boy howdy, did the stats shoot up. Hi everybody!

You Can See the Hand in It

Something else I think about a fair bit is what I (not having the proper words for it) call the amount of hand in a painting. That is, in some paintings, you can see the artist's hand in 'em; there are brushstrokes and paint blended wet in wet, and they're more painterly, it's called. These pictures look like someone painted them, and the process is a little more transparent; you can imagine the painter's brush moving from here to there, because there's a visible record of it right there on the picture. In others, well, who knows how the hell it was made? There's a picture, sure, but god knows how it got there. This latter can happen in a couple of ways, depending on how opaque the paint is. I'll explain a little more in a bit.

To illustrate somewhat clumsily, here are two of my pictures, A Surprise Visit (still available for purchase, pimp pimp) and Master of Spiritual Guidance (heretofore referred to as "Llama" or "the llama," because I never remember the actual names I put on the things):


You can see the painter's hand slapping opaque paint around in a madcap fashion.


No brushstrokes; is this a silkscreen print or what? (Actual question I received.)

In the first, you can sort of see the picture being made; in the second, I used a small paintbrush loaded up with more and thinner paint, which gives the clean lines. The first looks like someone painted it; the second looks like someone maybe figured out how to print on canvas with an inkjet printer. (Which you can do now; they sell 8.5 x 11 canvas sheets at Office Depot!) Roy Lichtenstein, the Pop Art guy who painted huge frames from comics, used opaque paint and rarely showed brushstrokes, for a famous example.

Here's a more drastic example. Here are details from first, a painting by David Park, and then one by Jan Van Eyck.


Park: hand for days


Van Eyck: inscrutable

In contrast to my silkscreen llama above, Van Eyck used, from what I understand, 80 million thin transparent glazes to build up the picture above with admittedly amazing technical precision. Good luck trying to find a brushstroke in that picture.

Now, for me, in 2005, when I look at a painting, I cringe when I see paint trying to be something else. Van Eyck gets a pass because he was doing the above centuries before the photograph even existed. I spent years in art departments at design firms and ad agencies, and I have a passable, if dated, knowlege of how commercial art production works. I use Photoshop for pretty much every picture I make.

So to me, if Mondrian was making these pictures now, I'd say he should put down the paintbrush, use Adobe Illustrator, and save countless time. Bang bang, coupla nice lines, colored box or two, off to the large-format printer, done. Doing a picture like this in oil paint, today, is to me kind of pointless. Sure, it's possible, and it's impressive that he could pull it off, but really, that's not what the materials are good at. You have a picture in mind, you should pick the appropriate medium and not try and shoehorn another medium to fit your idea.


Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue by Piet Mondrian

I have the same reaction to the photorealist guys like Richard Estes and others who make super-detailed paintings that look just like photographs! Photography's already been invented, guys--make a C-print already. These kind of feel to me like an electric guitarist who uses an E-Bow to make the guitar sound like a violin. We already have violins, you know.

Going back to my pictures, by the above criteria, I kind of failed (and made myself a hypocrite) with the llama. It doesn't look like paint, it looks like a silkscreen. Now, generally, I just try and make a nice picture and don't kick myself too hard for not conforming to my own art likes and dislikes. I'm still figuring out how I want to do things, and this is not the least of my stumbles along the way.

Also, the llama picture sold the first time I showed it, and I still have Surprise Visit up in my hallway. Shows you how much I know.