Merry Christmas Everyone

Now, I ask you, is there a better Santa than the Coca-Cola Santa? I don't think so. Take care and I'll see you in 2010.

I'm In Nagel Heaven

Collector's Gallery serigraph 60 x 29"

Patrick Nagel has been my favorite contemporary artist since around the time I was in high school. While I was in art school in New York City I pretty much wanted to BE him, as he was at the top of his game and the very definition of the art world celebrity-of-the-moment. His style perfectly captured the way I liked to draw, and I even practiced duplicating his technique using french curves and india ink technical pens. I'd pencil my design on tracing paper, transfer it to illustration board, fill in the color areas with acrylic or gouache, then lay in the black lines with the ink pen or rapidograph. Eyes were always the most difficult. Trying to get them both to look in the same direction often gave me fits.

Yes, Mr. Nagel was my superstar art idol because he was the master of the clean and precise line, and he painted nothing but fantastically beautiful women - what could be better? I met him once at the opening of his solo show at the Dyansen Gallery in SoHo in '83. As a starving art school student, I couldn't afford to buy a print and have him sign it, but I had brought one of his post cards with me and had him autograph it. He was very friendly and gracious and chatted with me for a few minutes, though I'm sure I came off as somewhat star struck.

The next year he died of a heart attack. He was only 38.

Drawing for Collector's Gallery on the left. Nagel used photocopied enlargements of his pencil roughs to transfer the images to illustration board for final inking. Click images for a larger view.

Over the years I've built a small collection of a dozen or so Nagel prints, and still regularly keep my eye on eBay to see what's for sale and what its going for. A few weeks ago I spotted a print for sale from a guy I had bought one from some years back - in '01 I think. He turned out to be fairly local, so we met at a Starbucks in Huntington Beach to do the exchange, where we sat and talked Nagel stuff for a while. Turns out this guy - Julian was his name - was part of the whole Mirage gallery organization in Santa Monica (Nagel's official publisher) back in the day and said he had a large collection of Nagel's work - signed and unsigned prints from official editions, some one-off prints (directly from Wasserman and Samper in Los Angeles, the silkscreeners who made Nagel's serigraphs) and even some of Nagel's original artwork. I didn't have much money to spend at the time but bought a small printer's proof serigraph - one of only two in existence, he says - from him, and before he had to go he suggested I come down to Carlsbad sometime to view the rest of his collection. Unfortunately that never happened.

The guy could draw.

Back to 2009. After seeing Julian's new eBay auction I decided to email him to say hello. I reminded him of our previous meeting and in his reply he said he remembered me. Turns out he's now living in Reno, working up in Tahoe, and was down in Carlsbad to pack up all his artwork and move it up north. Once again he invites me down to look at his Nagel archive, as he knows how much of a slobbering Nagel fan I am. Not wanting to miss the opportunity again, I arranged to meet him at his storage facility the very next weekend.

Pencil study for the San Francisco Art Expo poster and the final image. On the right, one of Nagel's rare male figures.

So Saturday afternoon rolls around and I take a spin down the 5 to Carlsbad. It's only about 60 Miles from HB. Julian, a tall, wiry guy, looks virtually unchanged since our last meeting years ago, though the foot-long pony tail he used to sport has been updated to a more contemporary spec, now cut short and skillfully unkempt. He meets me at the gate, buzzes me in and we ride the elevator up to the second floor. His storage unit turns out to be a 10'x10' crammed with tons of framed artwork, piles of large folders, cases filled with prints and one very large metal flat-file with about ten drawers full of hidden treasure. He also collects Warhol prints and has quite a few. After 15 minutes or so of sifting through various piles and drawers, he finally finds what he's looking for and pulls out a large folder containing what I've really come down to see: some of Nagel's preliminary sketches - photocopied enlargements of final pencil drawings - and some original ink-on-board drawings by Nagel himself.

Original ink on board for 'Lori' and the final serigraph for comparison.

I am just in heaven looking at this stuff! I've always wanted to take a peek behind the curtain and see Nagel's process - the work he did BEFORE he got to the final image - and now here was some of it - fantastic! Julian let me take some pictures with my iPhone - the quality is crap but at least I've got something. Nagel's pencil drawings are amazing - I think I almost like some of them more than the final prints that were ultimately made from them!

Pencils of two images I've never seen before. Apologies for the rather poor image quality, these were shot with my iPhone in a dim hallway of a storage facility!

Then Julian rummages in a dark corner and pulls out a large, loosely rolled up print, titled 'Collectors Gallery', that's always been one of my top two or three favorite Nagel images (in fact the small (24" wide) print I previously bought from Julian is the same). But this one is a HUGE 60" wide and is absolutely stunning! It's in rather rough shape though: There's one area of one color where some ink bled out a little during the screening process, it has a long scrape across the upper left area and there are several smudgy and dirty areas on it that hopefully will clean up - I haven't attempted anything yet. Because of the bleeding, it was a rejected print from the original edition of only 90 signed and numbered prints done in 1982 - thankfully someone decided not to destroy it. And it is also untrimmed - it still has the registration marks visible outside the image area - I think I'm going to leave it like that. It's my little piece of Nagel history.

Art Therapy For Gearheads

Automobilia - Sneak peek at a few images I've been tweaking in Photoshop for an upcoming art card series featuring photos taken at various California car shows. Eventually these will be available through an online shop I'll set up at zazzle.com. I'm also thinking about doing some posters from some of the images as well. We'll see what develops. Click to view pics larger.

Steve Jobs' Evil Power Button Conspiracy

Once upon a time, back in the age when Apple computers were beige boxes and still had floppy disk drives - probably somewhere in the early- to mid-90's - Mac keyboards included a dedicated key at the far right of the top row which would, when pressed, power up the computer. Good idea, right? If you're like me and your computer is positioned on (or near) the floor under your desk, this useful feature (one of Apple's core competencies) meant no more inconvenient leaning down to hit the power button on the front of the computer.

I'm not sure exactly when the change came, but somewhere around the release of the original iMac in 1998 Apple keyboards suddenly no longer had the power-up key feature and we, the Mac faithful, were once again relegated to the daily ritual of stooping over, as if we were tying our shoes, to turn on our computers. This was not progress. This was not an improved user experience.

This was very un-Apple.

Including a power switch right there on the keyboard was such a no-brainer - so why the change - why the step backwards? Why remove a feature that made working with a computer every day just a little bit more pleasant?

Here's what I think. In 1997, when Steve Jobs returned as CEO of Apple after being booted by the board a decade prior, he made sweeping changes to better the company. Chief among them was a renewed focus on the industrial design of Apple products. The original iMac was a smashing success not only for the way it worked, but also for the way it looked. There had never been anything like its all-in-one concept with its user-friendly form factor (it had a built-in handle!) and eye-popping juicy-fruit colors.

Steve Jobs obviously wants us to look at his creations, not just use them, and it's this vanity that got the convenient power button forever banished from Apple keyboards. Think about it. If you could power up and shut down a Mac directly from the keyboard, then there'd be no need to keep the computer directly at hand and visible - if only to feed it the occasional CD or DVD (and seriously, when's the last time you did that?). It may as well live its life out of the way - unseen inside a desk or cabinet.

But no, Mr. Jobs must have reasoned, this would simply not do. So the keyboard power-up button vanished in a puff of fabled reality distortion field magic dust, and ever since then we've all had to work practically on top of our admittedly gorgeous MacPro towers, and actually reach down every day and physically touch them to turn them on.

But Steve wasn't quite done jacking with us yet...

Notice the 'home' button on the iPhone. It's concave shape makes it easy to locate and use by touch alone - you don't even have to see it. Now notice the power button on the front panel of the MacPro, on the right above. It's a little hard to tell in the photo, but it sits completely flush with the surface of the panel and does not have a concave, easy to locate by touch alone, shape to it. What this means is that, unlike with the smartly designed iPhone home button, it's difficult to reach down and find the MacPro power button by feel. So you have to actually look at the computer when you're turning it on!

And this, my friends, is exactly the way Steve Jobs wants it.

Supercool Retro 'UP' Posters Released!

To celebrate the DVD and Blu-Ray release of Pixar's latest animated movie 'UP', the studio has commissioned these wonderful retro-travel-themed posters. And the good news is, if you're a fan of the flick or just dig the artwork, you can download high resolution (12 x 18 inches at 300 pixels per inch) versions. I grabbed mine through Ain't It Cool here.

Most of the posters were designed and illustrated by Paul Conrad, a freelance artist formerly with Pixar Animation Studios. You can see more of his amazing illustration work on his website SuperRobotMonster.com

More Shameless BSK:BLK Store Promotion

For the discerning consumer who craves unnecessary adornment, I've created the BSK:BLK store on Zazzle - see their whiz-bang flash animated plug-in above. I've just uploaded the first in a series of art cards featuring my automotive photography and graphic manipulation. This set of five cards follows the 'American Muscle' theme and features an artsy rough pastel look to the images.

Buy one or buy 'em all - I think you get a discount and a nice little box to keep the cards in if you order ten, so that'd be my recommendation. Here's a look at the first five - click below to enlarge.

BSK:BLK store now online!

Who doesn't need a black t-shirt now and then right? Problem is, you don't even want to go out looking anything like Simon Cowell, so you need to put something on that black t-shirt. A symbol or a logo, something that you can identify with. Something perhaps so obscure that 99% of the black t-shirt wearing public out there won't get the reference. Oh, but you and that remaining 1% will be like some secret society - like the Freemasons or the Vampire Weekend-haters Club - passing knowing glances on the street as you casually plot world domination. Yeah you need a shirt like that.

BSK:BLK (Basic Black) is your new source for shirts that are somewhat esoteric, sometimes cryptic and somehow just a little more arcane than you're used to. Don't let that scare you though. The concept is simple - black shirt, white graphic, oblique message - maybe even a little bit of fun too. Trust me. I'm a professional. And I know what's good for you.

To see what's new in the BSK:BLK retail store on Zazzle, click here and bookmark the link. I'll be adding new stuff all the time. If you have any questions, ideas or suggestions, shoot me an email or leave a comment, thanks!

Brain Salad Surgery

The Vinyl Project 10.12.09 Picked this one up at the swap meet a couple of weeks ago mostly for the creepy and disturbing cover artwork by H.R. Giger, one of my favorite artists. The record itself ended up being way too scratchy to be of any use - hey a few random clicks and pops make for a nostalgic vinyl listening experience, but too much of that will just make you want to rip the disc off the turntable and chuck it against a wall - but there's simply no ignoring the Giger sleeve. This is the original release of the 1973 ELP album and has a the split-in-half front cover, which when opened reveals the the ethereal image of a woman's face (Giger's wife I discovered) done in his signature biomechanical style...

Some info on the album and the cover artwork can be found on Wikipedia here.

And some behind-the-scenes notes on producing the paintings for the album can be found on H.R. Giger's official website here.

Battle for Milkquarius

'You love my hair, don't you?

The world's most milktastic rock star is at it again - this time starring in his own epic adventure: Battle for Milquarius!

Will the heroine be rescued? Will the villain be vanquished? Will all the stolen milk be returned to Milquarius? Click HERE to find out!

The Vinyl Project 09.28.09

Ok so I'm at the swap meet yesterday attempting to track down a certain specific and not-available-in-stores item from my brother's birthday list, when out of the corner of my super vinyl-spotting bionic eye I notice, on the ground towards the rear of a crowded single-wide swap meet space, a long double-row of boxes containing probably two thousand records in total. A daunting task now presented itself - it was going to take a super-human effort to kneel down on the pavement (my body was simply not designed for working on the ground) and flip through these dusty albums, but this particular situation had two incentives going that prompted my commitment to the cause: The price - a smokin' fifty cents per album (that's fully half my impulse-purchase threshold of a buck!) and, even better, the entire row of record boxes was sitting in the shade thrown by a nearby box van. I was goin' in!

Most of the record sleeves were in pretty rough shape, which is usually a good indicator of the condition of the actual record within. Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Nothing was organized according to music type - there was Julio Iglesias next to a Benny Goodman box set and music from 2001: A Space Odyssey next to The Go-go's, with loose records and empty record sleeves mixed in for good measure. Was this going to be worth it? I pressed on...

And after a while a few gems did turn up. Hmm, a Jethro Tull greatest hits album. I'll try it. Music from the movie 'The Stunt Man'... I have no idea - but it's 50 cents! Some 80's pop looking thing I've never heard of - but it's produced by Thomas Dolby! - so why not? ELP's 'Brain Salad Surgery' with a creepy-beautiful sleeve by H.R. Giger? Check. Then there was this:

:: click images to enlarge ::

I grabbed it purely for the sleeve artwork. I haven't seen the movie in ages, so I don't recall Jerry Goldsmith's score at all. But no matter - the cover art is pure 70's pop sci-fi genius! Here's a close-up of the center panel collage made up of scenes from the film:

And yes, that is Farrah Fawcett over there on the right. The album cover artwork, taken directly from the Logan's Run movie poster, was illustrated by Charles Moll. I couldn't find much information on him, but a couple of his other movie posters can be seen here.

Now I'm totally in the mood for 'TRON' which just arrived from NetFlix over the weekend...

City Center Las Vegas

Just got back from Vegas on Saturday. I was at the Sands Expo and Convention Center (in the Venetian) with my brother for InterBike - the bicycle industry's annual trade show (thanks for the passes, Dad!). The turnout was a little smaller than last year - understandable considering the current economic situation, which hasn't spared the cycling industry any. Many of the larger bicycle manufacturers were showing not even close to full product lines in greatly scaled-back booth spaces, or were conspicuous by their absence from the show floor altogether.

For me the show is less about business - I'm in the motocross industry now (which is having its own set of problems!) - and more about catching up with friends I worked with during my many years with GT Bicycles. It's like an annual high school reunion for me where I never know who I might run into.

I always take my camera with me to Vegas - I finally got to the famous neon sign graveyard a few years ago and I'll share some photos in a future post - and before leaving town I had to stop and get some in-progress pictures of the incredible City Center going up right across Las Vegas Blvd. from the now completely lackluster Harley Davidson Cafe.

Billed as the largest and most expensive construction project currently underway in the world, the $11+ billion ultra-modern City Center, located on 67 acres at the heart of the Las Vegas Strip, looks to not only live up to, but completely blow away its massively hyped expectations.

Here's a shot of the main street entrance to City Center I shot last year:

:: as always, click on photos for a larger view ::

This year I took multiple series' of shots to stitch together in photoshop, using the new 'photomerge' feature to create some amazing panoramas. Here's the same location as the above photo, one year later:And here's another panorama shot from across the street, showing the scope of the entire project:More photos and info on the City Center project can be found at their official site here. If you're heading to Vegas, check it out. It's supposed to be open sometime this year.

Swap Meet Gold

I've often said I'll buy anything for a buck. And I think most people's impulse-purchase threshold also probably hovers right around the magic dollar mark. Apple must think so too, as most of the songs available in their iTunes music store, as well as the majority of apps available for the iPhone, go for 99 cents. So it'll come as no big surprise that little brightens my day at the local swap meet more than a huge stack of CDs with a hastily-scrawled-on-cardboard sign reading 'CDs $1.00' leaning against the pile.

In these days of iPods and MP3 files, a lot of people are dumping their CD collections - just like in the 90's when they dumped their vinyl record collections once they had replaced everything with CDs - so there have been a lot of compact disc collections showing up at swap meets lately.

Sometimes the stuff is even worth risking a sunburn on the back of my neck to take the time to flip through, and that's just how I came across the two Korn CDs I'd like to share with you here. They're both multi-disc albums and for me what really made the sale was the high-quality creative package design. It isn't often that a band will spring for non-standard (read: more expensive) packaging for a CD release - the form factor is just too small for impressive design to have much of an impact.

Lucky for us, the boys in Korn, a multi-platinum selling hard rock outfit originally from Bakersfield, California, decided to make the investment on these two albums.

:: Click on images to see them larger ::

1. Korn - See You on the Other Side - Cover and back coverInside the front cover there's this pop-up book style flap......and the whole thing slides out of this slip-case style clear sleeve.The amazing paintings for See You on the Other Side were done by David Soupakis. More artwork from this deluxe CD release, and some work-in-progress photos, can be found here.

2. Korn - Untitled (yes, that's the name of the album) - Top and bottom sides to the 3/4" tall box that holds the CDs and other cool bonus stuff.3 insert cards (front and back sides) featuring the band members.
Printed CDs and their disc sleeves......and the opened box with some of its contents.Richard Kirk did the illustrations and design for Korn's 'Untitled' album, released in 2007. You can see more of his strange and beautiful artwork at his website here.

HB Sunset Pano

Eye Candy - Took a ride up to the pier on Friday after work. The sky was on fire - awesome! This image was assembled in Photoshop from 8 shots taken with my iPhone. Click for larger version.

The Vinyl Projekt 09.09.09

:: click on images to embiggen ::

Meat Beat Manifesto :: Subliminal Sandwich
Double-LP w/bonus disc :: 1996

I'm in the middle of ripping this one into the computer right now and I thought it would make a good first look into some of the cooler record sleeves from my collection. The artwork and design was done by Rich Borge out of New York City. I love his style - combining photos of creepy dolls and other 3D elements he makes himself with distressed typography and other grungy graphics.

The high-quality artwork definitely lured me into purchasing this album, as at the time I was not too familiar with Meat Beat Manifesto - and this was back before there was any real way of sampling an album before purchasing it. I know, sounds crazy now doesn't it?

If you'd like to see more of Rich Borge's work, check the links below:

www.richardborge.com
http://altpick.com/borge
www.gravityworkshop.com

The Vinyl Projekt

If you're under 20 years of age, and heaven forbid you get dragged to a swap meet by one of your apparently clueless, nostalgia-obsessed parents, you're bound to see a lot of ratty cardboard boxes, and sometimes plastic milk crates, scattered amongst the sad and sun-faded framed family photos, Big Wheels with missing seats and chipped lead-glass ashtrays. These boxes will often have a youngish hipster in torn jeans, worn black Chucks and a well-washed Pennywise t-shirt painfully hunched over them, eyes darting left and right to ward off any interlopers as they peruse the rare bounty within.

The thin, colorful alien artifacts in these boxes, so prized and sought after by bargain hunters, disgruntled audiophiles and well, just plain crazy people, are in fact vinyl records. And before the advent of the MP3 file and the iPod, before the near prehistoric CD format and even before the completely deceased cassette tape, records were the only delivery system for purchased music throughout the world.

My own history with the vinyl record began - well, I'm not going to tell you when because then you'd have to classify me as an old nostalgia-obsessed parent or a crazy disgruntled audiophile or maybe even both - so I'll just say it involved my father's enrollment in Columbia Record Club (12 albums for a penny!) and choosing albums from Elton John (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road), The Who (Tommy) and KISS (KISS Alive II) from the catalog, and waiting not so patiently for them to arrive in the mail so we could wear them out on our trusty B•I•C turntable.

I was by no means very knowledgeable musically and by high school pretty much all I had was the entire Led Zeppelin catalog on vinyl. All that was about to change though my first year in college - my roommate had a massive music collection and I was about to catch the bug bigtime.

Fast forward to today. My record collection has grown to a modest size by some standards, ridiculously large by others. I've been hauling this stuff around, from place to place, and its been easily over a decade since any of it has seen daylight on a record player. I've decided that's about to change.

No, I'm not determined to hook the turntable up to the surround sound system in the living room and go all analog crazy. Our listening habits have changed so much: When CDs came out suddenly fussing with records was way too much trouble - and it was! Then, even more quickly, now audio files and computers have made dealing with a CD seem inconvenient and slow.

For some time now I've thought about recording all my vinyl into the computer, but have been put off by the enormity of the task. I have over 800 records - granted most of them are 12" singles, not LP's - but still, everything has to be recorded into .aiff format (CD quality audio) in real time (no ripping a full CD in a minute or two like with iTunes). The individual tracks must then be manually identified, separated and named using the waveform, filters run if the audio isn't so hot (as with some older records or if the record is scratchy) and finally saved to a backup drive before importing them into iTunes as MP3 or AAC files for listening.

I'm calling it The Vinyl Projekt - and it has officially begun as of a couple weeks ago. It's going to take a long time but the rewards are there too. Not only will I get to hear a lot of stuff that's been buried in my collection, unheard for years - and a lot of it not ever available on CD, but I'll also be experiencing the one thing that has elevated the 12" vinyl record above every other retail music format: The cover artwork!

As I work my way through my record shelves I'll scan and/or photograph record sleeves I find particularly cool, and periodically post them here. Stay tuned!

Fire Engine Red

Watercolorized - I got up early last Saturday (yes, a small miracle), grabbed my camera and headed a few blocks up to the weekly Donut Derelicts hot rod meet in the parking lot of Adams Donuts in HB. I don't know if it was all the fire trucks on the freeway headed up to the massive Station fire north of L.A. that injected the color red into my subconscious, but this freshly painted, impossibly red GMC pickup really stood out to me and I managed to snap a few shots before it rumbled out of the lot.

I think I mentioned before I'm your basic shoot-on-automatic amateur photographer. You'd think I'd be decent at it, considering I pay the bills by being a designer, but even the most basic points of composition, technique and exposure seem to elude me as soon as I put my eye behind the camera. This particular shot looked great on the itsy-bitsy LCD screen on the back of my trusty-but-aging Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, but when I brought it up on the screen at home it was . . . big sigh . . . out of focus!

Ok I still really liked this shot but there was no way I could use it 'as is'. It was just too soft. Time for Plan B. After messing with the posterized technique in Photoshop for the Ford GT image I covered a couple of weeks ago (in my very first blog post ever), I thought it might be just the thing to salvage this photo and turn it into art.

First I ran the 'posterize' filter on the original image. Photoshop lets you choose the level, or the number of color steps used, to get the look you want. I think I chose level 5, primarily looking at the way the red paint areas and the chrome broke up into steps...

[ Click on photos to enlarge ]

Holy funky color range Batman! - I then converted the image to CMYK, to have precise control over color value selection, and, creating numerous 'coverup' layers in Photoshop, began to adjust colors and clean up various areas, particularly the reds and all that weird stuff going on in the asphalt. Here are all the coverup layers isolated and merged together...

The final posterized image (with coverup layers) wasn't bad...

...but I thought I'd try one more step and messed around with the watercolor filter, which really produces some amazing results (final version is at the top of this post). What do you guys think? Here's the original photo with the soft glamour-style focus...

Etsy Connection

Step right up and get some crap! If you're more of the civic-minded type and, despite the fabulous state of our economy, feel compelled to support a struggling artiste... why not me? I've got a 'shop' on creative marketplace website Etsy.com here, where I offer prints for sale cheap!

Building An Image

So I had taken this photo of a new Ford GT supercar with a custom throwback paint scheme at a recent Saturday morning Cars & Coffee event at the (now former) PAG (Performance Auto Group) parking lot at the Irvine Spectrum and I thought the image lent itself well to a 'posterizing' treatment in Photoshop. It turned out to be not quite that simple. I'll take you through some of the steps it took to get to the final image below.

The original photo - unspectacular but had potential with a little post-production. Exposure isn't so hot - I think I left the white balance on 'daylight' even though it was an overcast morning. You can see the reflections of three people on the hood - getting rid of them was job number one.

Coverup layer - After adjusting exposure levels, color balance and contrast, and then posterizing the image using one of Photoshop's built-in filters, I wasn't happy with some of the color banding that resulted, so I isolated these areas on a separate layer and cleaned them up a bit. You can also see what I did to get rid of the reflections at the leading edge of the hood.

Overexposed - I created a duplicate layer of the car and purposely lightened it way up to bring out detail in the shadow areas underneath the car (left). The new isolated shadow is on the right. Finally, I added a black-to-gray gradient to clean up the background, and highlights on the windshield and headlight covers to get a final image I was happy with.