Art Media: Pen and Ink Drawing with Digital Coloring

A Nonagon poster for our show with Juniper Tar and Light Coma. This started as an ink drawing and was colored digitally.

Digging through some old files, I found this is a comic strip I did for the last issue of the Madison, Wisconsin art magazine, Artzine. I had previously done a few other comics for the ‘zine on while I was graduate art student in Madison, but this one I did after I moved to Chicago in the early oughts. The “Scott” in the last panel was Artzine’s editor and the current proprietor of Western Exhibitions Gallery here in Chicago, Scott Speh. This is a pen and ink drawing that was given shading and tweaked digitally.

View a close-up of the full image here.

This is a cover illustration I did for the Chicago-based lefty magazine, Lumpen. The general theme of most of the articles in the magazine is of the “Corporations are evil” variety. In this issue, there was much about the Genoa riots against free trade.

As retarded as I think the protestors are (I mean come on… smashing the windows of businesses is going to help the world’s poor?!?) I wanted to make an image that didn’t put blame on the cops yet didn’t come across as pro-fascism. Basically we have the thoughts that are running through the heads of the cops moments before they march down on the angry protestors. It can be read two ways. I one sense it pokes fun at the seemingly insipid thoughts of the riot cops, on the other hand, these are the same thoughts that run through most peoples minds (with one violent exception) and in that sense it humanizes the cops.

Anyhow, fight the man… buy American… say no to drugs.