99 days

stale food

2005-11-29T13:37:00.000-05:00

this is the color version of a drawing i did this past summer.
Bruce Willen and I (aka posttypography) were asked by our friend Brian Ralph to help him out with a class he was teaching on self-publishing. We talked to the kids about poster making and then screenprinted a two-page spread with them for their major class project...a small book...our pritn was the first one made for it, so what we did would determine the content of the book. We decided to do a Fat Sandwich, specifically, the Fat Indian. The actual print wasn't full color like this. The filled in areas, instead of color, were printed with butter, the linework was a dark brown. The butter soaked into/stained the paper (but faded in visibility over time a good bit, but not totally) and smelled nice and salty.

to quote gomer pyle...

2005-11-28T11:00:00.000-05:00

well surpriiise surpriiise surpriiise

here's a blog update. from nolen! my lack of participation due to various factors had a negative impact on ryan as well...so blame all lack of updates on me.

here's some things i've done in the long downtime...lots more added in the coming days including recrod label logos, shirt designs, etc.

this was the sketch for the president of the university of baltimore's holiday card
done with sharpie on tracing paper and colored with illustrator cs2:

i liked how loose and free this was...but they wanted it tightened up...no xmas colors on the snowman...plus he had to be smaller to show off UB's new student center (that's the bldg in the snowglobe...it opens in January)...and they wanted the snow on the tree to look less like icing...

these are the final pencils after getting those edits:

And this is the final inked piece, inked oh-so-professionally with sharpie and uniball deluxe finepoint ballpoint purchased at CVS, then scanned, colored in illustrator. The glass flare/light reflection is a trick i learned from old Marvel comics from the 70s that had lots of occult/mystic stuff (Man-Thing, Dr. Strange, etc)...it's a good trick i think:

This is the ballpoint pen sketch for a boutique logo I did while waiting on my friends to finish up at The Beatnik Barbershop, a small, new, barbershop for men (what a novel idea in this day and age) located on Read St. where I get my hair cut now. Drawing these heraldry animals (in this case a rampant lion, rampant being the name for the pose) is very difficult as I learned while working on this project...finding the right balance of mass and style of curls and all that is not an easy task. Below this is the near-complete (minus the claws and finessing some of the curves) version of the art as redrawn in Illustrator. The type is custom lettering that I created. The stencil style fits the cut up/stencil looking style of the lion and helps make this dated imagery a bit more contemporary.

annnnd...here's some letters i drew on a flyer for a show i booked at CCAS that's coming up in a few days...the deer is taken from an EXCELLENT Dover book of 1419 copyright-free illustrated Animals that I borrowed from Sara...

more later this week and hopefully i'll be, if not daily, several days a week updating from now on...

since it's been so f'n long

2005-10-25T17:38:00.000-04:00

My Appologies

2005-10-16T23:21:00.003-04:00

My Appologies for not posting in such a long long long time.
No excuse could be good enough.

Things are going well for me in the studio and I will be posting lots of images to prove this in the next day or two. (I just need batteries for my camera)

I went to a buddhist temple today. Largest buddha in the northeast, 40 feet tall. And they had relics there. It was a beautiful experience. I was blessed by a monk. Kneeling before him as he touched my head for a few minutes. It may sound rediculous but I could feel his energy. Beautiful fall day leaves changing...great experience

Now I am reading about HEX SIGNS...

All in All lots of time has been spent today studying and participating in different systems of beleif.

---R

My Appologies

2005-10-16T23:21:00.002-04:00

My Appologies

2005-10-16T23:21:00.001-04:00

2 in progress

2005-09-07T15:51:00.000-04:00

let me know what you think.

...this morning

2005-09-02T11:11:00.000-04:00

I spent a lot of time painting yesterday and it got me thinking a lot about my approach to drawing...layering vs flat images, process...most of all composition...

Here is a minimal drawing, clouds or smoke, or just amorphic forms. I pretty happy with the composition though

we've been bad

2005-09-01T14:29:00.000-04:00

Nolen and I have been so bad about this blog recently....we'll get back on track though....

Here are two paintings I started working on. They are small and on board, I dig the direction they are heading in though...let me know what you think

pardon me

2005-08-30T18:42:00.000-04:00

i've been off the blog for much too long.
scanner issues, then bummed on drawing coz i couldnt share...then a bunch of garbage came up. in a few days i'll be back to my original level of zeal.

in the meantime...

if you live in nyc...you probly saw my bulletin on that other site's messageboard about how someone ripped off my art for a poster...well someone sent me a low-res version of it...i'd like to get a high-res before we contact the club with a cease and desist. the club is located in soho i believe so the ads are most likely gonna be up in manhattan.
anyway...if you see this could you take it down and do a high res scan or get a good, clear digital photo of it and send it to me so we can threaten the club or designer with lawyers? thanks.

oh yeah...it looks like this:

stolen art from my famous (as seen in Ellen Lupton's book Thinking With Type) Melt Banana poster.

thanks
nolen

smoke of the mystics

2005-08-28T10:49:00.000-04:00

two shades of black
super graphic...

larger piece in progress

2005-08-24T15:58:00.000-04:00

crooked in the photo

22x 30 piece of paper, charcoal.
First time using charcoal since college...I forgot how maleable and forgiving it can be
also messy as fuck

Utopian Field

2005-08-24T15:55:00.000-04:00

extremely minimal "field" drawing. Referencing both the pictoral field and a landscape. Stroke laid down in a deliberate manor so as to create a loose hazy pattern within the field

sometimes it just doesn't work out

2005-08-24T13:27:00.000-04:00

There are some parts of this drawing I like but on the whole it never came together.

...

2005-08-24T13:25:00.000-04:00

Trying to deal again with the "chewing smoke" theme, this time with pencil, the worst of the three

Loose Spirit Blanket

2005-08-24T13:23:00.000-04:00

I think this drawing was a direct rebellion against the pen drawings, a pretty percise pattern filled in with a red masonry pencil, really loosely . Reminds me of a quilt... feels incomplete, but something possesed me to draw this pattern

drawing more successful as an idea

2005-08-24T13:13:00.000-04:00

Drawing as a circle, the top and bottom connect as one image, kind of like a mad magazine fold in as a tube, I like the idea a lot more than the actual drawing

hey, nice slacks

2005-08-22T18:26:00.000-04:00

From Nolen:

actually slacking is not nice.

i've not had scanner access for a week.

that should change tomorrow and youll all get a big lovely PILE of drawings to look through and talk smack on.

i coulda done that stuff today but I was at MICA doing "New Faculty Orientation" which was totally surreal.

see you tomorrow.

Ryan says he'll have stuff up tonight.

Monday

2005-08-19T14:05:00.000-04:00

Playing off the "cave" idea Nolen mentioned in chewing smoke, I drew this "sacred mountain" "alchemist's stone" "philosophers rock" Picking up on "psychedelic" themes in color and shape, while referencing 60's minimalist....Two things I have been very interested in recently.

Still jamming along with the cheap gel pens. Nikki was asking me why I've been using them, which is a good question cause they are about the furthest from ideal a tool I could use for my work, but perhaps that is the reason why.

Also the immediacy of them is attractive, and the commitment that comes with using pen...

while we await the end of technical difficulties...

2005-08-18T13:35:00.000-04:00

check out www.jareddrewmoody.com

drawings

2005-08-17T17:04:00.000-04:00

for monday/tuesday/wednesday should be up tomorrow as well as the logo stuffs mentioned monday. look out, honey, just blame the technology.

Goodbye Anonymity

2005-08-17T09:21:00.000-04:00

Why?

Ryan and I are both putting ourselves out here, showing ourselves struggling to regain some artistic footing. Trying new things, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so. You are more than welcome to comment on what we're doing, if that were not the case we would not have shared the URL with you or made it open to comment. But here's the thing...

This is very raw, unrefined, everything we're doing for this. Sometimes we're posting stuff we're not happy with, or that's (in our minds) sub-par, but that's part of the process of this. Step, step, fall, get up and take another step. We've got to keep it honest, and we are.

The least you can do, as a responder, is to be honest. That said, no comments will be left up that are Anonymous. If we can put out stumbling points with our name on it, then you can put up your few words with your name on it.

When you go to the comments function. There's a selection for "Other,"click that. Type in your name (first and last would be appreciated, or if you're a mutual friend, a first will suffice, or last initial). You're seeing who we are, the least you can do is return the favor. You don't have to enter a website under your name on there to be able to post as Other.

Thanks for respecting this decision.
Hey, Duffy, I had your bottom poster with me last time i was in new york...oh right...you didnt make it out to the FREE event i was at... ;)

Psychedelic Debris (Sunday)

2005-08-16T18:31:00.000-04:00

Psychedelic Debris
shattered lava lamp skull
spilled lyseric blood on
the page

Hidden Tapestry (saturday)

2005-08-16T18:27:00.000-04:00

In response the the ball point drawings, I busted out this graphite piece. Which started out very graphic as well, but then I decided to make it as faint as possible and slide over the image with some loose graphite.

Chewing Smoke (Friday)

2005-08-16T18:25:00.000-04:00

Inspired by Kenneth Anger, an all ball point jam. Ball Point is trickey because it is such a graphic medium to being with. I'm pretty pleased with this drawing though...I think the "white" shape on the left is going to get some color eventually but right now i'm just leaving it white

still having scanner problems...

2005-08-16T16:24:00.000-04:00

so no drawings today. tomorrow it should be operational again.

for now here's a flyer i did (drawn with illustrator) to keep me sane.

AWESOME...

2005-08-15T19:04:00.000-04:00

MY CAMERA JUST RAN OUT OF BATTERIES...

I need to break down one day soon and buy a scanner...

have no fear the drawings will be posted soon (i hope)

What a weekend...

2005-08-15T09:23:00.000-04:00

From the desk of Nolen...

Those of you expecting to see scans of the logo drawings i'm working on for you, you can see those up here later today. They're just not posted yet coz the scanner we have at the office is one of those copiers that you can use as a scanner and after scanning these drawings here, an engineer with a big deadline this morning came in and had to use the copier...so...later today...you'll see more posts from me.

For now: this was half-off weekend for me...
First drawing is the new windbreaker i got that was ridiculously overpriced, but I got it for half-off on Friday.
I wanted to draw it for the same reason i got it, I liked the abstractness of the shape it makes. The black is really light-absorbing, so drawing something so nebulous would be a challenge for the surface work. I'm showing the entire page it was drawn on coz it made an okay overall composition.
My favorite part of this is the left hand (holding the book). I think i Really nailed the bend/knuckles on the hand really well. Hands have always been my strong suit, luckily.

Second drawing is from a photo of Johnny Rotten in the book I'm holding/using as my hard pad in the first drawing. It's a Rolling Stone book about the 70's. It's a picture of Johnyn Rotten. Maybe because I was so smitten with the hands in the first drawing I was drawn to it. Maybe just coz I'm always attracted to images of old punks. I dunno. It's an okay drawing. Again I like the composition, and the challenge here was to position everything properly spaced from each other, without the aid of the connecting lines/bodyparts/masses. So while it looks arty, it's also functional in that sense.

Third drawing is a sketch for a Stars Turn Cold teeshirt for their fall tour. It looks really rough/early now. It'll be tight once it's done. Just wait and see.

Last is an IKEA Expedit bookshelf I bought with Sara for half-off the original price (thanks to Craigslist and thanks to Lee for the lift to get it to our house!). Elementary perspective study from the vantage point of the desk that the shelf sits behind. I think I'm gonna document some of the new apartment for this series, coz I like how our house looks and coz it'll be good perspective/object drawing. There's some sorta semi-fish-eye lens thing happening on the right edge. I'm guessing this is because of how close i was sitting to the shelf that there was a bit of natural distortion in my view? I dunno...

Busy Weekend

2005-08-14T23:49:00.000-04:00

It's been a busy weekend. Expect a post from me tomorrow night with 4 drawings...
I'm pretty stoked on some of this stuff too....

that's the bag I'm in.
-PRB-

Lucifer Rising...

2005-08-13T10:44:00.000-04:00

Got this poster in the mail yesterday. It was drawn by famous psychadelic poster artist rick griffin for the kenneth anger film Lucifer Rising. it's almost 40 years old and in great shape. The only wear it shows is some yellow spotting around the edges. Which can easily be restored if I ever want to pay an art restorer to do so...But I am so pumped that I finally got this poster...oh and I paid a dirt cheap price for it!!

Kenneth Anger is a huge influence on my recent work...and I've always thought a lot about Rick Griffin. Even though this poster isn't in his trademark style I think it's a wonderful example of his amazing skill. This poster is a piece that means a lot to me on a bunch of different levels

RYAN

Not a drawing by either of us but...

2005-08-12T22:26:00.000-04:00

...a really inspirational drawing for me is this cover of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. I read this book in 7th grade and it blew my mind. I still think it's a great book, and they just issued the 50th anniversary with the original cover art printed on it. If you know the story, the drawing is brilliant, if you don't, it's still a beautiful image, a man in a suit of armor made of pages of books, on fire. I own multiple copies of several Ray Bradbury books because the covers are almost always great.

sorry for the digression (but as the interview with bradbury at the back of the book states, digressions and such extras are what give things life). so, not sorry.

Nolen

click image to view larger

2005-08-12T11:12:00.000-04:00

i didnt know if that was obvious or not.

but yeah. you can do that.

Day Two

2005-08-12T10:34:00.000-04:00

This is my second drawing. Not done as part of this, necessarily, but I didnt get any other drawings done the second day.

This is a sketch (with spot color) for an illustration for an article in a local university's magazine. Illustrations like this are the reason I need to get my skills back up again. Granted, this is just a sketch, but hoo-boy some of the flaws in this!

I wanna beef up the physical drawing skills again so I can more easily, and more skillfully, abstract/cartoon again. As out-there as some of my ideas and work can be, I still hold to the traditional belief that you have to learn the rules before you break them. Right now I'm just trying to relearn them, coz I got so far from the basics, that my forays into advanced drawing were slipping.

I think today's drawing will probly end up being letters.

--Nolen

2nd Drawing

2005-08-12T10:22:00.000-04:00

Yesterdays drawing... Day two made me realize I need to scale down from my original intnentions for this project...make it more realistic.

This drawing is pretty much unfinished, pretty much sucks also. I also have three drawings in their beginning stages laying here on my desk, but they are much more developed, Which led me to realize I need to shift gears...

I've been obsessed with the image of the skull, no clue why, want to find a way to use it and not have it be mega chessey

Both day one and day two's drawings are much more graphic than my work usually appears when it is painted. The medium they are done in though seems to lend it self to that.

RYAN

Day One

2005-08-12T10:17:00.001-04:00

The first day I'll admit I just worked back into a drawing...but am pleased with the results. I started thinking I was going to be large developed drawings, on nice paper, multi-media, but with in these first days realized that due to time constraints and the way I think I could not keep up this pace if I did drawings like that. So now I am buying some small sketch books with decent drawing paper in them so I can carry them around and work all day whenever I want too...

RYAN

Nolen's First Drawing

2005-08-12T08:49:00.000-04:00

Okay so I just erased my post. I'm new to this so that'll probly happen a lot.

Here's my frist drawing. Riding a bus taht was surprisingly empty up front.
You never realize how complex the front part of a bus is, really, until you try to draw it.

Observational drawing is something I haven't done in forever, so this was a bit of a challenge, in addition to the rough ride thanks to the quality of Baltimore's streets.
Somebody sat in the seats nearest to me on the right after I had completed them, and I considered ghosting him in, but that woulda changed the spirit of the drawing (no pun intended) and I wanted to do something strictly freshman-year-dry style to start off.

Gotta rebuild from the foundation up, can't jump ahead to the windows.

Oh I guess I should tell Ryan we have this blog now so that he can post his first one before I post my second. Today is day three. The blog idea came late.

99 drawings. brief background

2005-08-12T07:58:00.000-04:00

This is the place where Ryan Brown and Nolen Strals will post 99 drawing done over the course of 99 days.

Nolen and Ryan met the first week of Ryan's freshman year at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where Strals was already a sophomore. While in school they played in a band together called League of Death. Strals graduate in 01 and stayed in Baltimore, Brown completed his degree in 02 and ran like the carpet bagger he is back to New York City.

Nolen's a relatively accomplished graphic designer who's won a few awards, been in a few prominent books, and still makes very little money. Ryan hasn't made his giant impact on the art world yet, but give it time. He paints and draws and lately seems to have an interest in taking these into 3 dimensions.

Ryan has been thinking about his art too much, and not actually making it.

Nolen has been programmed by his computer so much he never makes design by hand or draws anymore.

These 99 drawings are to being donen to get the creative gears turning for real, and not just theoretically. To grow our hands back. To get back to the primal act of just making art from instinct, instead of thinking about it too much beforehand, the way we all used to make art.

This isn't the best introduction, but it'll do for now. I'm late for work.

First drawings (from two days ago) to be posted later today. And hopefully yesterday's drawings to be posted as well.

Nolen