hey Guys, before the holidays I put up an image of a 303 flask that I made on facebook and it was very well received – so I decided to do a run of these for all the old school gear heads I’m friends with. These will be a limited run and once they are gone who knows if or when Ill do another run.
About the Flask – This is a stainless steel flask that is powder coated with glossy black paint, the sandblasting etches away the black and gives a very nice high contrast scratch resistant etch. The design won’t fade smudge or wear over time unless you are a complete rager and drag it along the floor of the club as you are getting dragged to the curb by the bouncers.
The cost is $25 (includes shipping in the US) The artwork was meticulously redrawn in illustrator and I sandblast them myself in the shop. I can ship internationally but the total cost is $30 to most places. If you would like quantity of these please contact me.
Feel free to ask my any questions you have either here or on facebook
kris
I work for a company called Astral Buoyancy, they make really nice lifevests for insane kayakers who throw themselves off 200 foot waterfalls in large pieces of plastic. Every year we goto this really large event called Outdoor Sport retailer. I spent some time going around snapping photos (with permission of course) of my favorite booths there and also got some photos of products I had my artistic input in
The Temple
Columbia Sportswears Future Lounge
Oh man… futuristic logos
North Faces Set up.
Northface interactive display
Keens set up. I shoulda stuck around for happy hour.
Ospreys super function layout
Sorry I forgot which booth this awesome was attached to
I’m a long time Si Begg fan, even his noisy, feedback screeching “gone too far” stuff that seems to drive everyone else crazy (well my wife at least) So being asked by my good friends over at Addictech to design an ep cover for his benefit EP for Japan was a definite honor.
SUPPORTING JAPAN
I think it was noble of Si to contribute all proceeds from this project to the people of Japan and if you would like to support this cause please visit the page where you can purchase these pretty wicked tracks over at Addictech
ABOUT THE ART
For this project I played with a lot of concepts and really settled on wanting to keep a muted subdued feel while at the same time incorporating the japanese flag since the red and white works both for the ‘rising sun’ as well as first aid. I created the line work in Illustrator using a new method I’ve been exploring where I create a blend from one pattern to another and then create a pattern brush out of it, and then create a new pattern brush from that etc etc. The result is a whole new way of infinitely twisting and tweaking line art without degradation like you would normally get with raster graphics.
I realize that I don’t really have a page going over all the window art I’ve done. So here it is. From the humble beginnings to wherever its at right now. You can view the folder of more images including some of the process by clicking here
I’ve been working on the art for this piece for a while now… drawing redrawing sketching tracing redrawing and then redrawing again. I decided to put the drawing to the test and try out my new Montana spraypaints. You can see the process of the piece in my little photoblog below. This piece is most likely spoken for but if you want one like it let me know.
I recently re-licensed a couple of my fractals for elementary school math books and decided it was time to revisit the old fractal program and see if I could come up with some new designs. I also discovered a neat batch rendering window which I hadnt noticed before which really helps me to crank out variations. Feel free to contact me if you would like to license any of these images.
It’s hard to trace where this fascination come obsession really started for me; from my early childhood I’ve been a fan of MC Escher and the way he conveys mathematical concepts through highly precise and ultimately unforgiving mediums such as lithography. As I’ve grown older and subsequently geekier I’ve come to understand more of the ideas that underlie MC Eschers work and meanwhile playing with my own process oriented art including the ever evolving window art Ive been doing, which while is nowhere near the same caliber it still really requires you to plan things out so you don’t make a royal mess of things.
Line art study for the window
Orcas – window with spraypaint – for photos detailing the process click the photo
Since I’ve been using line art for my windows, lately I’ve been really taken with woodblock cuts, particularly the late 18th century Flammarion woodblock which depicts a man poking his head through the sky to see the inner workings of the universe (as depicted by the wheel within the wheel)
the caption in french stating “A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touched…”
As I have a shared love for this print with my friend/ music partner Rubin I decided I would remix / redraw this piece to paint on a window and subsequently like any true nerd would, decided to research the subject and see what else was out there. Of course there is the piece that Rubin first sent to me – Tuefels Dudelsack which is an amazingly executed, albiet twisted, woodcut of a furry owly demon playing a human head as a bagpipe. I’ve only managed to discover a few pieces of information about this woodcut (though I plan on digging deeper when time allows) The name translates in german to Devils Bagpipe, and it is a satirical cartoon depicting the devil playing a bagpipe made of Martin Luthers head.
A few other favorites include these three – Ive chosen to ommit “The sale of indulgences” woodcut because I fear I would want to write a whole post on that alone and end up sidetracked… but if you are the sort that is familiar with the Catholic church selling indulgences thereby bringing the printing press to popularity I would recommend check the link out.
So we recently went to the MC Escher exibit when it was here in Portland and what I loved most about it was the chronological ordering of his work and through the years you could see him work with various media and really refine his craft. I realized how many years he worked to get it down to the razor sharp cleanliness we’ve all come to know. There were also a number of studies which were my favorite part of his work as it shows the steps involved and thereby makes the whole thing more human and inspiring. While gaurds were looking the other way I had to sneak this photo of a study of his geometric progression study for angels and demons.
Additionally I checked out which of his pieces might translate into a nice window painting to adorn my house and at first thought the ants & mobius strip piece would translate nicely though would be an insane amount of work as there are soooooooo many lines.
If i ever feel up for it theres always the final piece MC Escher did before parting our mortal realm – Snakes which is a three color lithograph – which was highly efficient in that it only created blocks for 1/3 of the image and rotated them to create the whole thing. If only I could do the same for my process. I plan to someday paint this onto a circular piece of glass which I will then use as a table.
Lastly while doing this research I stumbled upon this 3d representation of Snakes which is really cool and reminds me of playing with xenodream.
Indra’s Web, is based on a buddhist spiritual metaphor of a web of consciousness connecting all life with each point in the web reflecting all the others. I first became aware of this concept through the book Indra’s Pearls – the vision of Felix Klein. The book uses the metaphor to describe Felix Kleins work which is somewhat difficult to understand without a decent mathematical background.
I chose to use an Apollonian gasket (which is derived from a Kleinian Group – so named after Klein of course) for the artwork for Renas CD. I took some liberties and remixed the Apollonian gasket for the CD face. The CD fits inside a perfect circle created from the same design which covers the inside three panels – this conceptually embodies the concept of the “one point containing & reflecting all others” See images below
For the cover of the cd I did a remix and created an action in photoshop and transformed the scale of the gasket dropping the transparency a little every time. I then overlaid some transparent 3D fractals I created using Xenodream.
I am going into detail because a number of people have asked me how I did this.
Below you can see the long view of the inside of the digipack containing the larger gasket which encapsulates the cd.
And finally the back cover – with the famous bubble chamber neutrino image as a background texture and a couple of images from the processing application I coded.
I went with Alisha and classmates to the coast to collect seaweed and chill at the beach. I took a number of macros at low tide which proved to be pretty difficult considering the waves crashing around and the razor sharp barnacles and my fear or broadcasting buttcrack to the world at large. Additionally since its somewhat relevant I put up a picture of my newest painting which is based on the San Juan islands (yeah thats right Orcas peeps!)
I wanted a nice vector line file of one of my favorite crop circles – the 2004 Silbury Hill “mayan” cropcircle so I sat down to recreate this from a series of files I found through google images. I also learned a lot about illustrator along the way including how to turn paths into guides and then to use smart guides to constrain all the new points I added.
