The 12 Days of Jebmas

Well it's almost January, and another Jebmas has came and went. As a quick recap, I am part of an illustrator collective called Jeb Kennedy that consists of three other illustrators and myself. Every year we count down from twelve days until Christmas with a little twist on the usual days themes with themes of our own in the annual 12 Days of Jebmas!

Last year, my days were day 3, (3 Swine a Surfing), 7, (7 Spewing Silkworms), and 11, (11 Bahum Bugs), and my fellow Jebs covered the other days, with three days each.

This year we all moved our days up one, leaving me with days 4, 8, and 12. I'm happy to look back on this new batch of Jebmas art and see how much we have all improved in our art. Jebmas was really fun this year, you guys.

Below are my Jebmas days, but if you'd like to check out the other nine days, please please visit the Jeb blog here.


Day 4:

Day 8:

Day 12:

ALSO, we were so very blessed to have some of our best pals from the band, Bear Suit Sucker Punch, record the 12 Days of Jebmas song. I had the idea of asking them to do it because I knew they're craziness was perfect for the job, but the end result was so much better than I even imagined. Recorded on a laptop in a bedroom, you can tell these guys just had fun with it and the spirit of Jebmas really shows through. Thanks again, Hans, Drew, and Tyler.

Below is a video of the song with the Jebmas art to go along with it. Also, BSSP is a really rad punk band that actually has original material that's non-Jeb related. It's sure to knock your socks off and slap you with them. Check them out here or here or here or here.

Route 66 Map

I am currently working on freelance projects for an upcoming gallery show in Tulsa by the photographer and printmaker, Natalie Slater. This past summer, Natalie travelled the old Route 66 from Illinois to California, in an old Shasta camper, with a bunch of old postcards and photographs from the 1930's-50's and reshot them from the same exact locations for her project, The Mother Road Revisited. And that's only the project in a nutshell.

The gallery show will contain the old and new photos, screen prints, hand-made memorabilia, and even more surprises. And I'm being vague on purpose, you guys. There will be more surprises, and it will be really rad.

That being said, there were a number of things for the show that needed illustratin', so she asked me. Along with some other hip illustrated additions to the show, (that I may share later), Natalie asked me to create a map of the route that could be displayed in the gallery.

Below are some photos of the nearly finished map. All in all it is an 8'x4' zoomed in crop of the map to focus on the states that route runs through. You may also notice, that the route is shown by an illuminated dotted line. The map still needs to be framed, and I think that is going to do a lot for the piece. It's so big, you guys!

Anyway, check out the links to learn more about Natalie and her project. There is so much more to it than I've covered in this post. And if you are in the area, or even if you aren't yet, come to the show in Tulsa, Oklahoma on April 5th!

KB

Again, the links are:

http://natalieslater.com/

and

http://www.motherroadrevisited.com/home/about/

The Magic of Jebmas!

It's getting close to The Second Annual 12 Days of Jebmas over at Jeb Kennedy, where we count down the last 12 days before Christmas with an illustration every day. It starts on December 14th, so check it out!

This year we chose Kyle Armstrong to illustrate the announcement for the event, and he did a fantastic job! He showed the character of Jeb Kennedy in a fatherly way that we haven't seen before.

Anyway, Kyle A. asked me to do the typography for the illustration and I was so happy to do so. Below is the illustration from Kyle A. with my typography to accompany it. It was a ton of fun. I love it when the Kyle's collaborate.

Design & Thinking Poster

Recently I was given the opportunity to design and illustrate a poster for an event in Northwest Arkansas, put on by a group called Creatives United. CU brings together creative people and businesses from the area for regular meetings, seminars, events, and lots of other fun stuff. (Meetings and seminars sounds boring. Think more along the lines of snacks and prizes). This past week they had a showing of the new documentary, Design & Thinking. The event was held at the John Brown University campus.

I was asked by CU to create an illustrated event poster that attendees could leave with. After the showing of the documentary there was time for anyone to get their poster signed if they so desired. Illustrating the poster was a ton of fun, and being a member of CU myself, I was honored to be a part of the nights shenanigans.

Special thanks to Moxy Ox for printing the posters. They were awesome prints, you guys.

Free Wallpaper Patterns!

The holidays are soon approaching! So in the spirit of giving, here are some patterns I made that can be used for desktop wallpapers, twitter backgrounds, or whatever weird technology kids are into!

Simply save one of the below images to your favorite desktop or twitter page, or what have you. Then make sure and click the option to tile the background image. Then just let the magic of tile science finish the job.


Presto, you're work is done!

The first pattern, "Outer Spoofs", explores the incredible vastness of the limitless universe... and has some really neat space rockets.

Here's an example of what the pattern looks like on my desktop:

Pattern two, "Wet Whistles", celebrates hydration in a day and age where so many of us forget to moisturize our insides.

Here's an example of what this pattern looks like on my desktop:

Anyway, these puppies are tried and tested, so they should work out fine! Let me know if y'alls have issues though. Happy holidays, enjoy the pattern fun... use them as wrapping paper or something. ALSO, stay tuned to hear what we have planned for Christmas over at Jeb Kennedy! 

Cryptid Monsters Series

Here is the series of monster illustrations I made for Jeb Kennedy's "Month O' Monsters". I had a blast making these. I could draw monsters forever.

Month O' Monsters: Cryptid Type

We just finished our second annual Month O' Monsters at over at the Jeb Kennedy website. Looking over my series of monsters for the month, I'm happy with the turnout of my collection and also the monster illustrations of the other Jeb guys. Monsters are something we definitely all bond over, and we look forward to Month O' Monsters all year long.

This year I decided to do illustrations of "cryptid" monsters, which are also known as urban legend monsters. Basically they are monsters that are specific to an area that are believed to actually exist by some people. I've always been fascinated with "real" monsters, so this chosen theme got me really stoked about my  Month O' Monsters illustrations.

The requirements for the monsters I chose included: having a specific area of origin, being believed to exist by a large group of people, and recorded "eyewitness" accounts. Along with each illustration of the monsters, I wanted to include some hand drawn type that I felt fit with the monster, as well as a hand picked quote from an eyewitness report.

I will upload the actual illustrations of the monsters soon, but for now I'm just gonna start with some images of the hand type for each monster. I had a blast drawing and pairing a type for each monster.

Color Roughs

Sometimes it takes me a while to settle on a design. Color roughs are a good way to test the waters if color options before getting too far into the work.

These roughs also test out different type options I was considering.

A Super Month

Last month at Jeb Kennedy, the four of us dedicated an entire month to art inspired by Nintendo. I have already uploaded the early stages of my King of Kong illustration and my Mario illustration, but I didn't want to upload any of the finished pieces on here until the month was finished. Now it is October and we are well into "Jeb Kennedy's Second Annual Month O' Monsters", so I think it's safe to share my Nintendo stuff on here.

"The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, Parts 1& 2"

"Punch Out!! Great Tiger"

"Tecmo World Wrestling: El Tigre!"

"A Complicated Man"

Mario

Mario In Progress

Here is a work in progress. It's the beginning of an illustration I am doing for Jeb Kennedy's "Super September Bros.", month of nintendo art. As hopefully you can see, it's stuff from the Mario Nintendo games placed to form the shape of his head. I plan on coloring it in a way that makes this even more obvious.

I started by getting a silhouette of Marios head and hat. Then I used a ton of reference images of characters and objects from Mario games. These images were a ton of help, and I could free hand the pieces together one at a time as I saw things that could fit into places.

(example of some source images)

Like I said, this is a work in progress, and the finished product will have some color or somethin'.

-KB

Kong's Comin'!

The King of Kong will be up soon! Only at Jeb Kennedy's Super September Bros.

Game in Progress

Over at Jeb Kennedy we are getting prepared to do "Super September Bros". All September we are going to be flooding the Jeb Kennedy website with only Nintendo-themed art. I have too many things in mind that I want to do, and I know I won't be able to do it all.

I have chosen to get started on a pair of illustrations based on my favorite documentary film, King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Here's a little sneak peak of progress to get things started.

Billy Mitchell Rough Sketch:

Billy Mitchell 2nd Sketch

Steve Wiebe 2nd Sketch

That's all I'm willing to show for now, but the finished illustrations will be done soon. Thanks for taking a look.

South Africa and the "Lekker Board"

Hey guys and gals. Many of you know that I will be heading to South Africa tomorrow with two of my world's best pals in the world. We will there for the next month or so, just having a great time. Unfortunately, this means little to no blog updates until after, (heavy on the "no"). But when I get back, I promise to update with a vengeance.

Before I leave, however, I do want to post a deck that I painted recently to commemorate the trip. It's a long board I put together with my pal Mark Dewbre. Mark is from South Africa, and will be going with me on the trip.

I spray painted the South African flag on this bad boy.

Me and my pals, Mark and Daniel:

Mark                          Daniel                        Me

I Made a Clock

I made this clock, and I am strangely proud of it. It works and looks cool- the perfect combination.

(Take a look at a few posts down to see the illustrations up close and personal.)

New Book Covers

A while back I created some book covers for two of my favorite books, George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. I enjoyed doing them a ton, and got a lot of good feedback, so recently I decided to do another set of two of my favorite books by John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men.

I thought a long time about the style of these, and what I could do to make them go together well. I always want to make these book covers something that pulls out something from the text that you would need to read to understand, instead of just illustrating the title. After some thought, it hit me that these books could be represented well individually by the tortoise and the hair, plus, they would go well together.

I plan on doing at least a third set of two, so if you have any suggestions for authors let me know!

So here's the first look at these covers you've been hearing about:

Here is a quick look at the old George Orwell covers:

New Paper Page Book Stuff

I probably shouldn't be showing this all so soon.

Project in Progress

Here are two illustrations for a project I am currently working on. Shh shh shh, it's not finished yet... go back to sleep...

Brule's Rules

Check it out, ya dummy!

Step-by-Step For Your Health!

Here is a step-by-step gif animation of my recent illustration of Dr. Steve Brule (see above) of "Tim and Erics Awesome Show, Great Job!" and "Check It Out! With Dr. Steve Brule".

I started with something a little more realistic to get a better feel for the shapes that make up the Dr.'s head. After that, I simplified it in a pencil drawing, inked it, and finally colored that sucker.

What a hunk!




Here are the two images of Steve Brule that I used to draw him: