Brahma on Holiday

A long time ago I was planning to do a series of illos on gods of various pantheons. Not for any other reason than I find the subject matter very interesting and visually appealing. I did one of Quetzacoatl and of Tlaloc (Aztec rain god). For some reason or another I didn't complete any others. I did however do some pretty complete sketches of Ganesh, Devi and Brahma. They stayed in a large sketch book with a plan to someday do something with them. About a year ago the area I live in was hit with a flood. At the time I wasn't drawing at all and had lots of soakable and easily destroyable art things poorly stored in cardboard boxes. It pains me to say I lost quite a bit of old sketches and art; I'm talking at least 8-10 years worth. It pains me even more the rest of "the gods" sketches were included in the loss. That coupled with finding these tee sites really got me motivated to draw and create stuff again. More than anything though, the loss made me realize how much I missed drawing. I was seriously down for a few months after that.

This started out with me trying to recreate the Brahma sketch. I remembered it being a more traditional representation with the faces being made of stone (like an old statue). I had the stone cracking in sections and pieces were missing. The heads were floating in space. His hands were also floating around the head making various hand gestures (peace, thumbs up, etc). I did the line drawing of the faces and it was OK, but I felt it needed more edge. One of my favorite clay craft pieces from Mexico is an Aztec/Mayan relief sculpture depicting birth, life and death; one face opens up to another, which opens up to another. Since I had the three heads there I thought I would mix it up a little and depict Brahma with those features. It's not meant to be anything other than hopefully an interesting visual. I certainly don't mean any disrespect to Hinduism so hopefully it is not taken that way.

On a positive note! It has been approved and is ready for voting at DBH! VOTE HERE!

Savannah Sun

This design is a redo of Kings (previous shirtfight sub). I took away a bunch of the colors, so the origianl vector graphic showed more. Also added the elongated dripping stripes. Will be subbing this to DBH. I haven't subbed anything over there in a while, aside from a few speical contest subs, and it's still my favorite place to sub a design. It's approved and ready for voting!

Click here to vote.

Whatever tomorrow brings

New design for the Incubus contest over at DBH called "Whatever Tomorrow Brings".

One side as living in fear and the other side being the endless possibilities that exist without it.
Like your eyes are closed when living in fear guided by whatever is bringing it and imagining life without fear (the dream) is where it's at because then anything is possible.

KISS mime (KISS Sub)

Here is a new one for the KISS contest over at DBH called KISS Mime. The idea hit about the same time as geisha, and I had to do it. It's the whole white makeup thing and associating it with various cultural and/or historical references. I like the way it turned out.

Tornado Head

This one is called Tornado Head. I submitted it to DBH and it is ready for voting. It got kicked back a bit with all the KISS submissions coming in like waves. I think it immediately was on the second page when it first showed. If it is meant to be it is meant to be. About the art... A little bit different and experimental (at least for me). I actually went thru a bunch of color changes and design changes with this one. At first it had a bunch of colors, but the more I took away the more it resembled something I liked. It's on an Olive background.

Punk Rock Skull

With this t-shirt design I strayed just a little from what I had been doing. Truth be told I needed a vector break. It was cool though, it gave me a chance to do someting creative with the description. I wrote a lyrical homage to what I envisioned as an old school punk song and called it, "Punk Rock Skull". It got a couple good responses (the lyrics). The shirt design is pretty straightforward and I like the way it covers the entire front.

I Sea Horses

I liked where I was going with this vectorized tribal look, although it takes a bit of time and feels very carpal tunnel inducing. Still I wanted to try something a little different with it. Maybe do something by adding color. Although this started with a generic sketch, the design changed quite a bit from the start and when certain shapes began to resemble the seahorses or the octopus more than I wanted, I added and took away until this; "I Sea Horses". Submitted to DBH.

The Ancient Traveler

It had been about a week I think after "27 Skulls" that I submitted "The Ancient Traveler" (1st image with brown background). This was an older design I reworked a bit called "Monkey God" (2nd image with light green background).

The Celebration Dance of the 27 Skulls

I don't recall exactly how I found DBH, but think it was thru the artist Jimiyo's site. Actually I was looking for info on index seperations for screen printing and found a tutorial Jimiyo had done. Some link clicks later I landed on his blog and checked out various t-shirt sites he has links to.

I was pretty overwhelmed when I started seeing the various t-shirt art sites like DBH, emptees, teefury, and others I don't remember off hand. I had already heard of Threadless but was glad to see more sites with more variety.

After that I was pretty much hooked into the idea of submitting something.

This one is called "The Celebration Dance of the 27 Skulls"