-----Last Friday Art Show of '11 12/30/11----

[jdustu]

Let's make it memorable!

I've had a "Jalopy Rods" shirt for a few years that was drawn by Thom Taylor.

That was the inspiration for this piece, "Bad Jalopy":





"Bad Jalopy" Hot Rod Sculpture by Brown Dog Welding, on Flickr



And then this dude,

Cycloptichop:


Metal Robot, Cycloptichop by Brown Dog Welding, on Flickr

[lockwoodkustoms]

Jdustu, very nice work as usual. Happy New Year

[57 Corvette ~ Bob]

Happy New Year to all ........

[fortypickup]

Happy New year all you HAMB Gear heads!

Some Hot Rods have Gremlins...this one has two! HaHa!!!

[fortypickup]

...oh and here is the rod the Gremlins are in!

[1320Paul]

Drawn on some stir sticks. Thanks to RodP for the idea and inspiration on this one.

[ToddJ]

Happy New Year Fellas...hard to believe this is the last Friday Art Show for 2011. It's been one HELL of a year.....nothin new this wee, just a recap of a few things I did this past year:

[Pure Hell]

Should have done a 2012.. oh well.. Happy New Year...
My version of "the Ground Pounder"

[ToddJ]

Here's a few more:

[ToddJ]

and a few paintings:

[dylan499]

toddj that last bit of art with the dragster looks awesome mate.. good stuff

[ToddJ]

Thanks dylan499!

Fortypickup- Killer toons, man! Love the gremlins!

jdustu- Josh! Killer stuff!

1320Paul- that's damned cool!

Pure Hell- I dig it, man!

Bob....Cool pic..Happy New Year!

[57 Corvette ~ Bob]

Very cool work ......great series.

[ToddJ]

Thanks Bob!

[Cutlassboy68]

Ive had a sick kid all week, no chance to do much worth showing on here... GREAT STUFF EVERYONE!

[BOMONSTER]

This year I've been hitting a few shows with my pop up store selling my BOMONSTER art. Seems like every show I attend a few of the same guys hang out, buy my stuff and tell me they're starting a car club and want me to design a shirt logo. Every show it seems they add a few more "members" who also buy my stuff. It must be part of their new member initiation because they always end up dropping a couple hundred bucks at my booth and telling me they want me to design a shirt for them. So at the end of the year, I figured they've already paid me enough to get a logo in return so I dropped this idea on them (all they told me was they like early 60's Chevy trucks):



They flipped out and told me to go nuts. And while I was at it, I thought I might share my process with this FAS. I usually start with a drawing to establish proportions and composition. I don't get too detailed - just the basic outline and maybe some light direction. What you don't see here is the truck reference photos from my online scrap pile - many of which I grabbed off the H.A.M.B. Then I transfer the drawing to a clean piece of scratchboard by rubbing the back with pencil and then redraw over the lines transferring the design onto the scratchboard. The size of this piece is 16 x 12.



I work on a flat table top taping the scratchboard to a drawing board. I work with a desklamp close to the work to see the faint graphite lines. I use an Xacto knife with a #16 blade. I wrap tape near the end of the knife to cushion my finger tips from the constant pressure of scraping the surface. Whenever I start a drawing I usually attack what I think might be the trickiest to pull off. That way if I mess up, I can start over without losing too much work. In this case I must have thought the eyes, arms and bent truck would be the trickiest.



Once I had the trucks looking good it was time to knock out the type. I really like the look of hand drawn type but also appreciate type design so the font needs to be accurate under the loose lines. I also like to leave some black showing so it's not 100% white so I felt thousands of parallel scrap marks were the way to go. Since I sometimes get lost in tiny lines. I jump ahead and scrap some lines to establish a line angle on each letter. That way if I'm veering a little off course I can readjust as I get closer to the pre-scratched marks. By taping the scratchboard onto a drawing board, I can also spin the work to fit the angle of my hand. I'm best at clockwise scraps from the 8 o'clock to the 1:00 range. Counter clockwise scraps from about 12 to 7. I constantly spin my board where my wrist works best.



After defining the letter forms with a thousand scraps I add some detail to the letter edges and generally touch up the trucks until I start to think I might have ruined the whole piece. Once signed, I scan into photoshop and fix any funny edges. Then I make an eps file and open in illustrator. I rasterize and do a live trace adjusting the setting a couple of times until it's closest to the actual scratch. Once saved it is a clean vector file which can be screen printed, reduced to a business card or blown up for truck graphics. The Wreckers loved it and that always make the effort worthwhile. Maybe now they'll stop asking for a shirt design.

[Neo Dutch]

[63ChevyII]

[BarryA]

Awesome work as always Bomonster - thanks for sharing the process!

[RodP]

Did some horizontal Stix this week.
RodP