Some days you get emailed images of your T-Rex tattooed on a girls’ body.

I have gotten the “can I have the permission to get a tattoo of your drawing” a few times now. My response is always yes just send photos (which people never do) so I can brag about it.

I don’t normally do tattoo designs however I have made exceptions. Sometimes I have been paid for it( never got photos), other times people have offered to pay me( and I got way too busy to do it…sorry).

This dinosaur enthusiast just wanted to use a drawing I already had. This one I assume:

Which I made for a painting a few years back.

You never know what your artistic legacy will be. Second to Winterbottom I get the most response from this set of T-Rex drawings from my site.

I am happy people like it them so much, and that there is at least one person walking around with a T-Rex on their stomach (where it belongs).
Thanks for the pics Stephanie T. !

More photos:

“This Tattoo artist did an awesome job! ( don’t know his name yet but Kudos)”

” Kapow Sucka!”

It is a beautiful magazine and I would highly recommend it. Their T-Shirt Club which is where they teamed up with a bunch of game designers to create one limited edition shirt each month. November is month two of this operation and features my design. You can purchase the shirt here, but get on it since it it is limited a limited run. I believe you can pre-order them now but they are available beginning 11/16/2010. They are definitely a day one perch. Don’t be caught at work, on a train, in a boat, nor during recess without one on your body.

Here is the image that made it onto the shirt.

A quick case study:

I was given the freedom to so just about anything as long as it felt like it came from The Odd Gentlemen and included the Kill Screen Logo. So ya know, Pipes and Tentacles how can you resist?
Actually according to the below scribbles the design was going to originally include some crows. At a point one would wear an aviator camp…I wasn’t really feeling it so that didn’t make it farther than these napkin drawings.

I then switched courses and started drawing tentacles. I only did this small scribble before moving onto the final. I imaged this cool dude sitting on the type and letting some of his limbs dangle off and on of the logo.

I got this far was satisfied with the idea and composition than said “F-it” and jumped into free handing the final drawing onto bristol paper. I am trying to work more this way now since it helps the final ink job feel more fresh and alive. I used to do drawing after drawing tightening and polishing an image before transferring it to paper be inked. But the result just ended up looking too stiff and too planned too many times. So now If i have a good idea and composition worked out I just get started on the final.

After the drawing was done I digitally colored the image

We actually went through a few different color choices before settling on this one. Here are a few other options:

That’s about that, it was a super fun project, it’s an awesome shirt and the kill Screen people are cool dudes.
Everything is right with the world apparently.

I have another little treat. You can buy the original line work drawing that was used on the shirt over at my Etsy store. I made the design using the old fashioned tools of pen, brush, and ink and then colored the whole deal digitally. It was drawn on 14″ x 17″ 300 Series Bristol Paper and is a beauty in my humble opinion.

Till later,

VP

A sampling of the many images Victoria delivered to me.

I did all this to kick off a series of posts that will featured selections from my sketchbooks.  I am going to shoot for pulling images from one book per post.  There is  no time-line for this series really, but it struck me as a goodway  to update the site when I have nothing to say or plug.  Check back in the near future( where we will ride rocketships and the internet will send data to your brain)  for updates.

This post contains entries from two books: The first set are from  a Black Moleskine( 5” x 8 ¼”) and the other is a Muse Touch Landscape (w/ Water Color Paper)  . I am terrible at dating my sketch pages but by I recall these were all completed from 2008-2009.

Spooky dude first sketched as an intro page and later became a painting.

Paulette Goddard

Chickens in Taiwan.

Caricature of Stephanie and a goblin she speaks too…I dunno

Another Chicken different style same great taste.

This should be in the Winterbottom page actually. As these were my first Drawings of the big boss evil Chronoberry Pie that taunts PBW in the game.

Stephanie Fishing

When in doubt I draw crocodiles/alligators.

Masks in my room, for real.

See what I mean.

-end-

Celebrities have always fascinated me. When I was first getting out of school I had done a few illustrations of famous people. This tapered off, as I wanted to find my own voice or whatever. But every now and again while reading a gossip column I get an urge to put pen to paper in tribute to my will power crushing under the weight of my guilty pleasure.

I like Amy Winehouse, she is a strange figure in the tragedy that is gossip news. Sure being a female artist locked in a downward spiral of booze, drugs and police attention that pales her artistic accomplishments isn’t exactly a rare mineral these days.

But she seems to not care about her imminent destruction in a way that is downright depraved and echoes the insane behavior of Rock Stars, not pop tarts. She doesn’t get drunk at some hot new Hollywood club with an obnoxious name, than run over the foot of a paparazzi with her fancy car. No she gets into a bar fight, then she shoves McDonalds in her face.

I would tussle with Lohan, but no way in hell would I mess with Winehouse. She is like the Kurgan from the film “Highlander”. You would make an off color comment on her beehive hair and before you know it she’d take you down while screaming ” It’s better to burn in HELL than fade away!”.

We need more pop stars like her, true raw primal insanity with heavy eyeliner. At least then they would be famous for something, like rage, instead of the fluffy overproduced music they call their art.

I have often been confused for belonging to an ethnicity besides my own. Mexican American is what I am, but something about the structure of my face seems to trick people’s eyes. I have been mistaken for everything from Middle Eastern to Italian, but mainly I am confused for an Indian (from India.) Usually this is expressed by people giving me the wink and the nod, as if to say “Hey…one of us!” This is compounded by the fact that I speak almost no Spanish.

Shameful, I know…especially being from a Mexican Mecca like Los Angeles and all. However I have come to some terms with it. Occasionally though a friend will be searching for a phrase in Espanol and then give me the “Help me out buddy…” kind of a look. To which I usually reply much like our wiggly-armed pal here. It is an awkward situation topped off with shrugged shoulders and usually my apology (to my people).

…and yes that is the Super Mario 3 frog suit he is line drying. why was frog suit so worthless in that game?

A month back I got the chance to write a bio for the illustrator Ryan Graber , for an upcoming feature on him over at Illustration Mundo. We met while in art school, and weren’t exactly the best of friends right away. However years have passed since our rocky meeting, and now I feel it is adequate to say he has become one of my closest friends.

So when I heard he needed to put a write up together I jumped at the chance. I wrestled the responsibility away from him and below is what I came up with. I saw this as a unique challenge, plus it would give me the opportunity to make an illustration for it.

How do you adequately describe someone with such a unique personality? Sure one could list accomplishments and important dates, but where is the commentary in that! They teach you to add a secondary element to a portrait of someone, something that beyond the accuracy of a rendering makes up their likeness. Ryan has a tough face to draw, which is why I recommend adding cartoon violence as the secondary element to back up and likeness troubles.

I present to you a portrait of a unique artist, accompanied for the first time ever by a portrait of the artist.

“Looking over the heads of strangers: The Ryan Graber story”
by Vincent Perea

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Ryan Grabber has a love of sitting on rooftops. Standing at 6’6” one would think that this vertical distance from the average person would be enough to satisfy any man. However if your fingertips just barely brushed against the glittering lights of the stars, the teasing laps of their tongues would be maddening. One so tall would be compelled to gain even more height so he could snatch them clear out of the sky with out having to jump.

This is only one theory, but much speculation exists as to how Ryan came to develop his unique visual and editorial style. His delicate lines and energetic textures describe a world of absurd possibilities. With an offbeat sense of humor he is able to capture the often-ignored ridiculousness present in everyday life.

Does this come from time spent in a compactly built metropolis? Having lived in two such locales, SF and NY, there is no doubt that the rough pastiche of imagery and human insanity has affected his work deeply.

First and foremost Ryan is a man, a man with a quirky out look on life and a strong sense of humor, line, and commentary.

He is a man who wants to meet someone taller, so he may ridicule him or her by asking if they perchance…play basketball.

He graduated from the California College of the Arts (and Crafts) and he has worked for a variety of clients including: Google, New York Magazine, Visa, MSN, Popular Mechanics, and American Airlines.

He has recently returned home to the Southern California after 8 years, and he will not stop emailing me inappropriate but hilarious “You Tube” videos.