5 Year Anniversary Painting

Today Devilicia and I celebrated 5 years together, and I gave her this 14" x 11" acrylic painting of her with her other boyfriend, Luigi..... a 1/2 fearsome, 1/2 kind-of-painfully-geeky sand tiger shark she fell in love with last year at the Golden Nugget Hotel's shark tank. I know this is the kind of shark diving she'd LIKE to do. As a little girl she used to draw pictures of the Great White from JAWS calling her up on the phone, asking her out on dates. Which pretty much sums up why we're together. (I've re-read JAWS more times than I can count, sitting in my bathtub with rubber sharks, eating Swedish Fish, while listening to the JAWS soundtrack). Happy Anniversary, Devilicia.

StrideRite Boogie Board Shoes and Flip Flops

Last year I was hired by StrideRite to design art for Boogie Board shoes and Flip Flops, and they're finally available online! My paintings are reproduced on the footbeds. I did lots of research to get the indigenous marine life right for each location, and had a lot of fun with these, despite getting really sick during the project.

Boys' "Surf" painting:


shoes:


and flip flops:



Girls' "Hawaii" painting:


shoes:


flip flops:


flip flops:


This "Australia" painting was designed to be Unisex, but now is listed in the Boys' section:


shoes:


flip flops:



Thanks again to Marc Loverin and all the Stride Rite designers I worked with for this fun assignment! After I finished these shoe paintings, Judi Marcelonis at StrideRite even commissioned me to come to her wedding and paint a scene of the reception. I shot over 200 photos for reference, and yes, everybody in this 16" x 20" acrylic painting is a real friend or family member of Judi and her new husband Brian!


Judi and Brian wanted to surprise their parents' with small gift paintings of their respective homes, too:




Thanks again, Judi and Brian, for all the work.

Editorial Jobs

This ran in today's Providence Phoenix paper for a story about the benefits of switching to renewable forms of energy like windpower. Editor Ian Donnis suggested I draw someone with a thought bubble thinking about renewable energy. Since my girlfriend works for a company that builds wind farms, I drew her on her Steve McQueen's "Great Escape"-esque Felt bike. I really like surprising friends and family by popping them into my illustrations, it gets lots of people excited for the paper to hit the stands, which is cool.


Here's another recent job where Ian came up with the idea and what he wanted written on the blackboard. This was to show Rhode Island Republicans were having trouble getting elected.

These next ones are all from back in the days before the Phoenix's re-design when I could still do paintings, show texture and brushstrokes, etc. instead of only working digitally.

sketch and final for story about people unable to pay their heating bills forced to live with shut-offs:



story about young people being active in elections while older people don't notice or care:


who pays for on the job injuries? Any day I get to draw a monkey and hurdy gurdy man is a good day


really brutal murderer who fought in court to force his ex-wife to bring their son to prison for visits:


people from all walks of life in a methadone treatment program:


seriously overcrowded prisons:


I honestly can't remember what this one was about. I even looked up different groups with the NSS acronym but no luck. ah well.


teens caught between adults who want to save them, either by educating them, or by keeping knowledge from them:


another one about the gas company shutting off heat to low-income citizens in spring, no matter what the actual weather here in New England is like. I can remember getting snow in April and May plenty of times:


Rhode Island's amazing shrinking bus service.


I really like playing with scale and making things ridiculous.


I drew my longtime Turkish penpal Irem on her cellphone at the bus stop:


and for the front cover spot illo (there was text printed on the purple):

MONSTERS OF ROCK Drawing Sessions

April 2nd, April 16th, and April 23rd I will once again put on my homemade monster masks and play guitar for life-drawing students at MassArt! Set lists will include lots of Man...Or Astroman?, classic surf, Misfits and Ramones, Sleep, classic Black Sabbath, Metallica, Slayer, some Iron Maiden, and more.

And the 2 last dates are geared towards potential incoming freshman who'll be revisiting the school then to decide if MassArt's the right fit for them. If the Frankenstein monster playing "Motorbreath" doesn't convince high school seniors that MassArt is a fun place, I don't think anything will. I love that my masking wire and tape monster heads will kind of be like MassArt recruiters.

(And like the recent Feast of Flesh poster, I doodled this self-portrait using my Wacom tablet in Photoshop instead of doing a traditional drawing. For me, this is very weird.)

Here's me outside my office at Massart after one of the last drawing sessions:

Photo by Linda Bourke, my former teacher and now my cool boss.

SPRING CLEANING ORIGINAL ART SALE ON ETSY

I took my dogs for a loooong walk today and it was really warm out. Spring is almost here! So I decided to start cleaning out my filing cabinets of older drawings and paintings, and listing them on my Etsy store with SERIOUS discounts. Scary-themed stuff, Dog-themed art, and all the remaining paintings from the "Alternagyrl" calendar will be going up on Etsy starting this weekend.

My Etsy page has the first 3 paintings listed, with many more to come.
Thanks for looking!

Roosh

Sketchbook from October 2000 - January 2001

now online here

Toot-Toot

My friends J. Cannibal and Mary Widow of Black Cat Burlesque are getting married this October and had me design their "Save the Date" postcards. The original is 9" x 12" Micron pen on 2-ply Bristol, with some muted Photoshop colors dropped in. This is the kind of thing I'd like to see way more often when cloud-watching.
Detail: