MidwestLove Art & Design

Old bros and past clients, The Color Morale recently signed a deal with mega-metal label Rise Records, and they commissioned me to design a logo for the front of their debut CD. They instructed me to make it intense, but still legible. Their music is straight up brutal, new-school hardcore wrapped around some fairly melodic guitar work, so I figured I should do something a bit more customized by hand instead of going with a typeface. Plus I really like these guys and wanted to do something special that would work for them for a while.

Now I only had one day to turn this around in order to make thier print deadline for their CDs, so I just ran with my first idea and threw out the rough sketch approval process. I painted out a good 13 or so logos until I had one that felt right. To make sure I got as much movement and “violence” into the strokes as possible, I got out my wife’s antique calligraphy nibs and india ink (please don’t tell her) and scratched and drug the nibs across some heavy weight textured watercolor paper getting all of that violent, splattery effect. Heather… nothing was damaged during the making of this logo and I washed off all of your pens when I was done. Please don’t kill me.

After a few minor changes in Illustrator (moving the “The” down), they were totally pleased with it, and it is now being used all over their myspace page and CD artwork and promo stuff.  The actual CD packaging and layout was done by the awesome guys at Synapse. Check it out -

On a personal note, I couldn’t be prouder of these guys watching where they came from, starting out in the scene a mere 3 or 4 years ago. I was at Garret and Steve’s first show (as a fairly different band) in a little record shop in Rockford, IL and I remember being blown away by their conviction to their music even back then. They are incredibly hardworking and talented and genuinely nice guys and they deserve all the success in the world. Congrats dudes.

-marky

Former client and friend Rick Bisenius asked me to draw up some custom illustrations for his and his fiance’s wedding invitations. They suggested a theme of “Robots In Love”. How could I resist that opportunity? I was pleased with the final results, so here they are…

Invite and RSVP Card-

Custom Envelope, Back and Front-

Feel free to print these off at will and RSVP to their wedding! I suggest getting the vegetable neopolitan.

-marky

Just launched the brand new www.KickstandProductions.net. Fully database driven so the Kickstandees can update with event info, band info, venue info and more. This was the first site that I worked on with my new web development parnter and all around good guy, Brad Manderscheid. Click around the site, let us know what you think and find a rad show to go see.

-marky

Wow… This has got to be one of the coolest events I’ve ever been able to design a poster for. John at Kickstand Productions put together this incredible bill comprised of one of the bands I’ve followed since my high school years, Alkaline Trio, and one of the bands I currently reside in, The Felix Culpa. Needless to say, I immediately jumped all over the opportunity to do a poster for this show. I wanted this one to be awesome so I took the opportunity to go all out with the over-the-top, whimsically dark style that Alkaline Trio has become synonymous with over the years. They always have such distinct visuals and I wanted this one to feel right at home along side their other stuff.

I was unsure of the type treatment at first, but it has actually started to grow on me. I think hand drawing the type would’ve been too much. It needed something to reign it all in. Hopefully it works. Let me know what you think.

These will be silk screened and available for purchase at the event, signed and numbered, limited to 30.

-marky

Fantastic Chicago promoter and good friend Rebecca of Betta Promotions asked me to draw up a poster in celebration of her 2 year anniversary show. I initially just did all the typesetting real quick in Illustrator, but thankfully she ever-so-politely pushed me to redraw all of the text by hand. It was the right call.

Congrats to Betta and her 2 years of keepin it real in Chicago!

-marky

I just had to share this, mostly because the illustration makes me laugh. Madison show promoters, TRAgency have commissioned me to do a series of printed posters for their upcoming shows. I was given complete artistic liscence to do whatever I wanted for each, so my goal for the series is to be as diverse as possible while remaining relevant to the style of each show, and also to try out some new techniques. This was a mix of illustration and digital art. The main character (I named him “Ponce DeLeChicken”) was done with pencil, inked and scanned. The backgroud is a blank page out of my wife’s grandmother’s antique scrapbook that I’ve been waiting to utilize for a while now. The big orange “C” has no significance whatsoever. It just looked right and framed the illustration nicely. I wish I had some more insight into it’s reason for being there, but there is none. Thus is life.

I’m going to try and make updates more frequently on here so all of you with RSS subscriptions can have more MidwestLove in your inbox everyday.

-marky

The guys in Uprising Records band Gloria asked me to draw up a little shirt called “Ball Pit Shark”. It was pretty self explanatory. Here’s what I came up with. I’ll be sure to get pictures of this one when it gets printed.

5 Colors on Teal.

-marky

Here’s a tshirt illustration that I put together for my band Venna. It was an attempt at mixing my own interpretations of traditional Norwegian folk art and 50’s kitch. It was done with pencil then inked and scanned and cleaned up in Illustrator. I’ve recently discovered these “Identipens” at Michaels that are cheap and seem to work really well for inking the more detailed illustrations. I know that’s probably not what I should be using to ink illustrations, but most of what you see up here is trail and error. Any suggestions on good inking pens? I have a $50 gift card to Hobby Lobby that I’ve been saving for some new art supplies.

And here’s what it looks like in print-

Beautifully printed, 1 color on chocolate brown by the always top notch RedWall Prints.  Just look at how the detail came out. Every line is perfect. Big thanks to Jeff at RedWall.

PURCHASE HERE on ETSY - $12

-marky

There aren’t very many straight up, rock-your-face-off-without-being-cute-or-ironic bands out there anymore. Most bands are trying so hard to be liked that they forget that rock n roll is supposed to be dangerous. A Dance Between Giants is one of the rare bastians of that old school mentality of rock that says that it’s ok play your songs loud and hard, yell when you can’t quite hit the notes, look like you just rolled out of bed from a hangover, and still take what you do seriously (and expect everyone else too as well). Personally, I miss that in rock n roll music. I wish more young bands weren’t so image conscious, didn’t worry about the mass-accessibility of their songs, wrote what they wanted to, and just plain kept the cute out of the “rock”. There’s nothing dangerous about watching a bunch of guys with straightened hair bounce around stage for half an hour in matching neon hightops. That being said, I made A Dance Between Giants a shirt with fairy tale characters dancing under big pink letters. Oh well.

It was drawn in Illustrator, and it looks like this in print-

Printed 2 colors on Charcoal Grey by RedWall Prints

-marky

Another one off Tshirt along the lines of animals destroying cities. Apparently this is my new thing. This one is for the new Rockford, IL pop rock band Action Madison!. They were VERY specific with what they wanted to see in the illustration, down to the details and facial expressions. Apparently I was able to get close enough to their artistic vision, because they liked it. Anyway, it was goofy enough that I figured I should post it.

Any other bands requiring illustrations of animals destroying cities, feel free to contact me.
-marky