Tuesday, December 3, 2013

All Hail the Whale

Whalecaller shirts are back on the site again! I'll be going back to the classic Gildan Ultra 100% cotton shirts for this run. Both long and short sleeves will be printed on Navy. I have had many requests to use these again, and I am happy to oblige. Please allow a couple of weeks for your shirt to arrive, but most will ship much sooner. Please allow some time for specialty sizes.

Order yours here.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Atlantic City 2013 Poster Process



The Atlantic City run and PhanArt poster show is drawing near. So, time for another poster process post. We're pretty excited about this one. The mock up really doesn't do the colors justice. Like Hampton, this will be sized at 11 x 17. It will be a 5 color print, and instead of using reflective paper for the variant, we're doing it for the entire run of 100. The paper is "Gold Digital" and is represented here with the yellow color. The variant will be a special "sepia" print in a run of 30 on Biscuit colored paper. More on that one later.



The design centers around the prohibition era police truck, so I started that sketch first.


Next, of course was the venue itself. I love this building.


Then it was leaves and pumpkins for hours.



Sir Mix a Lot at The Print Monkey mixes and selects the right brown. Did I mention that some of these browns will be on the sepia variant?
Brown, baby.
5 colors of the main run against the paper stock. The orange is *almost* there.

The first two colors are down!


Third color...

Fourth color...

...and DONE!

Available at the PhanArt Poster and Pin Exhibition
You'll have to wait until the poster show to see the variant. 

Monday, October 14, 2013

Hampton one day only...

Many have expressed interest in these after the pre-sale closed. This is your last chance to have your 2013 Hampton poster shipped until after tour. Posters are shipped in a 3 inch, heavy Yazoo Mills tube, with craft paper, and delivery confirmation. All orders today will ship tomorrow.

The blueberry paper is a run of 100, and the silver paper variant is a run of 15. Both are a 4 color screen print. The paper is heavy 12 pt cover stock, and the paper size is 11" x 17". The variants will not be available in Hampton. I will be saving a few for the Atlantic City poster show.

Online sales have ended.


Tuesday, October 1, 2013

2013 Atlantic City Poster Art

Colors are approximate - 11 x 17
I thought I would show you the art for my 2013 Atlantic City poster. I decided to take a slightly more traditional approach with this one, except for the paper. This will be a 5 color print on metallic gold paper. The size will be 11 x 17, and this will be a nice heavy stock. This will be a run of 100. We are still working on the Hampton printing, so I will eventually release the specific paper and ink details closer to press time. The graphic above is an approximation of the final colors. Since the paper is difficult to photograph, I used a golden yellow to represent it here. The actual color will be a darker, sparkly uniform-gold color.

There are a couple of details representing the history of our favorite band, starting with the border. There are 30 individual leaves (...you don't have to count them...) in the border and scattered around the image - representing 30 years of Phish. Boardwalk Hall reminds me of times long ago, so I went with a prohibition-era police truck. Instead of hauling away hootch, the cops are hauling away the past 7 Halloween "musical costumes" in the form of pumpkins.

Stay tuned for updates on this one. I can't promise there will be an online sale of these because I just don't know if there will be time to get them mailed out to you prior to the run. They will definitely be available in Atlantic City. At this time we have a special variant planned, and I will release those details later.

Friday, September 6, 2013

A Word About the Steal Your Face

 A little while back, I posted about Phish "no-no" designs, variations on the Phish logo, or the blatant use of the name or likenesses. Because of what I see as the sense of entitlement within the artist community, I got a lot of flak for that post. I still will stand behind it, and encourage others to do the same. However, in the end, people are going to do what they are going to do.

The one thing I keep hearing from young and older fans alike, is that the Steal Your Face is fair game. From my point of view since the image has appeared on album covers, it was no longer just a symbol that Owsley and Bob Thomas created to tell the band's gear apart from other gear. It was a brand. Similar to the other album covers and art created by Kelly/Mouse, these graphics became lasting iconic symbols for the
band. If it's not legal, or "ok" to use Phish's logo, why would any other band's logo be different?
Terrapin Station Cover by Kelly Mouse studios

We are not talking about corporate logo mash-up's here. Consider Banksy's quote about advertiser's who do not give you a choice as to whether you view their ads.:
Any advert you see in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
link from bandshirtarchive.com
First of all, let's not get into a debate about that quote being plagiarized from Sean Tejaratchi's Crap Hound magazine piece in 1999. Instead, let's examine why this is a such an inspirational piece of text, and why it applies here. Using Tide to represent the song Glide is not the same as just taking the Phish logo and making it say whatever you want. There is actually a court ruling that says this type of design does not infringe on Phish's intellectual property.  (Phish, Inc. v. Knighthood) Altering Phish's actual logo is. The same is true for a Steal Your Face. Whether it be a sports team, an EDM logo, or a Wu-Tang reference (Even if you ignore the fact Jerry did not consider rap to be music.), it is not yours to re-arrange. It is not an advertisement. You have a choice.

This follow up post was inspired by a conversation in a FaceBook group with a guy I met named Bryan. Bryan remembered a page from The Illustrated Trip biography that referred to this very situation. He was diligent and kind enough to type out the entire Robert Hunter quote which flies in the face of the "we can do whatever we want with these logos" conventional wisdom that exists today.
In the parking lots & fringes of gigs, an artisan culture sprouted up naturally, & just as naturally alerted the business world at large of the profits to be gained from rock tie-ins. In light of this annoying knowledge, our lawyers decided to shut down the artisans en toto because of the influx of true counterfeiters, merchandise companies who dumped great quantities of bad tie-dyes in our lot, due to our laissez-faire non-policy. The counterfeiters were overcome & the artisans responded by continuing to create the forms sans logo or else using the trademarks surreptitiously. But, the commercial dogs were unleashed. They're hard to train & don't differentiate. Trying to stop corporate commercialism resulted in the evolution of new product by artisans that was reminiscent of the feel if not the logocentricity of what was already in creation. Generic. That particular bad decision didn't stymie the growth of the art, only it's GD specificity. W/o apology, that's how it went down. You see how it is. Conclusions to which we were led by the very system we tried to cut looses from. - Robert Hunter
 The baby was thrown out with the bathwater because there was no way to stop just the counterfeiters. Or, at least that's how I interpret this. This blog post is an attempt at clarity. If you really do care, and you really want to be original, you are going to have to take a risk of creating something nobody has seen before. Trust me, it's an extremely difficult thing to do. If I didn't have thick skin, I would not be an artist. For every 1 person that likes what you do, there are 10 people behind him that think you suck. I see this as a huge part of the reason that the SYF is so often butchered. It's easy, recognizable, and it's likely that someone will buy it. No one wants to take any risks.

Bullocks amazing Dicks 2013 print
So, you can flame me for drawing my own line if you like. Everyone has an opinion. But these symbols hold sacredness to me. So, I won't be the one printing SYF's or Terrapins.

Let these images inspire you! Create something we've never seen. There are a lot of artists doing this right now, and they are doing it extremely well. Be selective about what you buy in the lot, collectors.

Check out AJ Masthay or Isadora Bullock or maybe check out a poster show the next time one is scheduled when you are on tour.

There is amazing art everywhere if you look.

Dicks 2013 by Jon Rose

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Journey to Hampton Poster Process

It's that time again! These process posts have been getting positive feedback when I see folks in the lot, so I figured I would keep it going with the two posters I have planned for the fall. Journey to Hampton has been in my head for a little over a year now. Sometimes an idea has to wait until they play a venue again. Keep checking this post for photo updates of the printing process. Remember when ink hits paper, the pre-order ends.

I started with the venue itself, and decided to make one for each night.
The little robot fish (what I them) came later. Theme From the Bottom was the song I held in my head for the inspiration.




The bathysphere was something I thought of during the drawing process. I wanted to combine elements of the past and the future. You can see on this early drawing where I changed my mind about where the word Hampton would appear.


Here's where the layers started to come together.


Adding the background (paper) color.


Ink selections have been made. A little mixing will happen. Check out that silver!



Seafoam Green being created


The paper is here!


Colors against the paper stock
Soon to be full of blue paper.
Transparencies are done!
Seafoam green on blue

SILVER!
Seafoam and Silver

 White has been printed. It's hard to tell in this photo, as the white is similar to the silver with a flash.
The finished poster!