Hey, It's Friday. Rockin'.

Legends of Rock #05 - George Harrison

Fab Four week continues with the lead guitarist for the boys from Liverpool. George seemed like a pretty cool guy, and seemed to stay cool for his entire career, which had to be hard. Big props to George.

My sister has this dog named Mabel, she's a real piece of work (the dog). I made this for her (my sister).

My Life as a Musician and the Importance of Failure

After college, I was pretty sure I’d end up being a musician of some sort. The last year of film school really took it out of me. I got overly ambitious with projects and continually shot myself in the foot with intended scale, failure to adapt and refusal to scale back. I failed about as hard as I ever have that final semester and the summer after, about all I did was sit on porches reading comic books and rode a bicycle. In hindsight, I do think the experience was good for me. Since then I’ve learned to get things out, not only to have them done and off my plate, but to push myself to produce more and worry less about any work’s reception. It’s a balancing act of perfection and timeliness, a constant struggle that makes or breaks me daily as a designer and illustrator.

But back to music, I spent about a year after school concepting and working on an EP in my childhood home in Maryland. I’d write and record music for most of each day. Many months of this ended up in my being broke and a bit burnt-out on music. I kept producing the EP but started looking for a part time job. I was lucky enough to have a friend who had moved to New York after school and had a small illustration gig for me, illustrating tarot cards for some website for maybe a movie I think. Anyway, it went alright and it got me back into something I’d done my entire life but hadn’t much considered since highschool: drawing. I took the moderate success of the illustration gig and started scouring Craigslist for freelance design gigs. I suppose the rest is history, to skim over the agonizing period where I hunted awful Craigslist ads to work on my chops. As this started becoming more and more something I saw myself doing, maybe even for a career, the album started working on me in a bad way. I felt like I didn’t have enough time to finish it and I’d devoted so much time and energy on it already. So in a last crazed push, I slapped the thing together, called it Brighten Up Sourpuss (a directive and goal for me at at time of pretty extreme isolation) and sat on it. I had always intended to “shop it around”, whatever that means, and go on tour with it… I know. So, I went on with the design life, moved to Brooklyn and set about carving out a place where I could work for myself doing something I liked (something that didn’t make me as crazy as music did) and gave me the time to enjoy other things too (friends most importantly).

Well, here is the result of those many months in my childhood bedroom, surrounded by drums, cables, microphones, guitars, a xylophone, a banjo, a recorder, harmonicas, and anything else that I needed to commit to audio. It was a good time (again, in hindsight) and I’m rather proud of what I produced. I hope you enjoy it.

I DR NY

My wonderful friend has been going to medical school for long enough to be forced to decide where to do her residency.  The possibles were Boston, NYC, or Philadelphia.  Thankfully for all, especially me who has come to rely on her medical advice, she will remain in NY!  As a not-going-away present, I painted her a little something because she will, in fact, be stethoscoping New York. Watercolor (which is awesomely cheap) on water color paper (which is awesomely pricey.)

Rad photo by Mike Wechsler

I’ve been missing sharing music, so I’d like to get back into mixes. I’ll plan on having one each month with an accompanying illustration. It’ll mostly be what I’m listening to at the time with some perennial favorites mixed in no doubt. 

Hair Evolution. (Actual)

I got a haircut last week and wanted to share that information but every way I tried to it came out pretty lousy and mostly who-caresy. I’ve had many haircuts. Not as many as I should have, and only 3 professional, but that didn’t stop them from defining my body’s image of itself.  This is a retrospective of all the major changes.  The ! denotes a part side change - this was a big deal for I had, finally, fallen in line with the rest of the Eustice’s part preference. The top right haircut is one I had my mom do after seeing the 1996 Mission Impossible starring Tom Cruise. Proud to see there was never a middle-part but embarrassed by the general bodyhair-confusion that overtook me late in college.

I was commissioned to create an art piece for a newborn's room/nursery. It came out really well AND I got to draw a whole bunch of dogs. Win win. Want one for your tiny baby (or grown adult)? Email me!

Season 3 Episode 8 in which an un-extraordinary man snatches a kid. Some psychic link stuff between a previous abductee and the current, but nothing too spectacular other than that. Carl Wade.

This is part of an ongoing project to catalogue the villains from the television series X Files. Check out the others here!

Unused variation of a magazine ad. 

Post Project Scatter

Just finished up a big push for the Regulation Room new rule. Whenever I have some strict deadlines and a bunch of work, both my real and digital desktop are the first to suffer. Keanu and the Swaze helped me power through though. Now, to clean up those files!