Howdy folks! Where the "F" have I been you ask? Well, pretty much in my studio, holed away working on a book illustration project which I can't divulge any details about yet. But I do have a funny tale to tell y'all about. A few days ago I got an email from a fellow out in North Carolina who had a funny story to tell about an old drawing I did some years ago.
Here's the skinny;
Hello Eugene. I work for a major corporation and my job is in R&D printing t-shirts. Every now and then, I get time to do some for myself and my friends. Well, a few weeks ago I decided to google some Tweedy pictures because one of my good friends bachelor party was coming up and we love Wilco. Anyway, I get to like page 30 on google images and there is your artwork. It's perfect for a t-shirt, so I edited it and increased the resolution for printing(about 300 dpi). I put it on a shirt and give it to him and I thought that was the end of it. Well, weekend before last my friends were going to see Wilco in Charleston SC (we live in NC) and I couldn't go but my friend went and wore your shirt. He worked his way to the front(like he always does-that idiot) and believe it or not, he could tell Tweedy kept looking at him. Then after a song, Tweedy stops the show and says "that is the most disgusting shirt I have ever seen. That doesn't even look like me". Kind of joking of course. Then he plays another song and after that one he still can't let it go. So he starts talking about it some more "I look like the Geico caveman, and my nose is bigger than that". After another song, he can't take it anymore so he helps my buddy onstage and asks the crowd what they think, smiling the whole time. He even tells my buddy to hold out the tshirt and then he puts his face beside it and asks the crowd. Anyway, he had a huge smile on his face the whole time. My buddy ends up stopping the show for 5 minutes because of your artwork and he gives Tweedy a hug and shakes Nels Cline's hand as well. It made my buddy's life. Here is an excerpt from a local newspaper about it: During the show, Tweedy noticed a fan in the front row wearing a shirt with an image of the singer he found unflattering. 'I look like the Geico caveman,' exclaimed Tweedy, who proceeded to bring the fan onstage to model the image for the rest of the house.
Charleston News Story
For some context, here's the image
Time to get some new promotional materials out there! I decided to create an image solely for the purpose of using it on a postcard. Plus I needed a project to get me back on track with my work. I'm using a large format card for this design so I don't lose too much detail.
Here I go with yet another take on the Joker-figured it's a good start to the new moleskine...
Once again I've fallen behind on my posts-but this time I have a good reason...
fatherhood!
My wife Mary gave birth to our beautiful daughter Audrey Olivia Smith, last November. I've spent the last 4 months figuring out how to take care of this new, amazing little person-as well as keep up with all the work I seem to want to pile on myself. I'm working hard on some new promotional materials which I'll post soon; in the mean time I've decided to post my submission for the new Beasts! volume from Fantagraphics. The competition is pretty fierce, over 200 artists submitted work, so my chances are slim. Although I don't think it's my best work, doing this project got me in gear and I'm ready to jump back into the fray of creating art again.
And here's my piece for Beasts!-
The Red Cap, here's the wikipedia entry for this little beasty:
A Red Cap or Redcap, also known as a powrie or dunter, is a type of malevolent murderous goblin, elf or fairy found in British folklore. They inhabit ruined castles found along the border between England and Scotland. Redcaps are said to murder travelers who stray into their homes and dye their hats with their victims' blood (from which they get their name).[1] Indeed, redcaps must kill regularly, for if the blood staining their hats dries out, they die. Redcaps are very fast in spite of the heavy iron pikes they wield and the iron-shod boots they wear. Outrunning the buck-toothed little demons is quite impossible; the only way to escape one is to quote a passage from the Bible. They lose a tooth on hearing it, which they leave behind.
