UL Symphony Halloween Orchestra

When I saw that this Friday's UL Symphony Halloween Concert didn't have a Facebook event to promote it, I decided it'd be fun to quickly illustrate a "poster" to help promote it. So, I came up with this and used it on the Facebook event page, which I just made. Haha, just helping out in my own silly way. Hope it gets some additional people to attend!

Super CookNight 2: Eat American

Our CookNight is hosting the second-ever SUPER COOKNIGHT on July 3, so I made this poster just for funsies. I made a poster for the first one, as well, which was titled "Gobbledown," as it was during the Thanksgiving holiday. Since this one is the weekend of Independence Day, it's dubbed "Eat American." BON APPETITE!

Help Japan

Dirty Coast asked me to design a poster to help raise money for the Japanese relief effort. I'm to be one of several artists designing posters to be sold to raise funds to donate. This is the concept I pursued. On the first version, I had the word "NOW" in white in the dot. It brought a little more balance, but it took away from the "Japanese flag" reference. I think I prefer this version.

I hope I'm able to help the effort somewhat with this design. It's nice to do something that actually has an effect on something other than just making people laugh a little, right?

Locally Produced

Here's a pro-bono poster design that I just wrapped up. Photoshop decided that it would flatten all of my layers and then save and quit. Luckily, the design was OK'd before that happened. Phew. I will have to create a direct mail invite out of it, so I'll have to go in and fight with the flattened artwork, but I guess it won't be SUPER BRUTAL.

Anyway, I really like how it came out. EarthShare Gardens is a local community garden that is hosting an upcoming fundraiser, which the poster and soon-to-be invitations will promote. Glad to help out!

Beaux Arts Ball Posters

Here are two posters that I designed and illustrated (at BBR Creative) for the Beaux Arts Ball costumed fund-raising event put on by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Specifically, the College of the Arts.

The theme, as the posters state, is "Re-New, Re-Vision, Re-Cycle," and promotes making costumes out of found objects and recycled materials. I figured it would be fun to do a mirrored pair of posters, featuring decked-out recycled costume party people. I like how they have a proud air to them while being covered in repurposed materials.

The posters are actually being silk-screened and sold at the event to raise money for the College of the Arts. Woo-hoo!

"Save the Gulf" Poster Prints

The photos above are of my Save the Gulf poster design that my friend Jude Landry was kind enough to offer to screen print. The posters will be on sale at The Great Oil Leak Poster Project gallery showings, coming up soon. I'll also be putting some up for sale online. Part of the proceeds will go towards Gulf Aid, to assist those whose lives and jobs were affected by the oil spill.

More info to come!

Photos by Tim Landry.

Zach & Zach

Last week (or so), my friend Zach (Broussard) posted a note on Facebook about how he needed an artist to whip up some art for a new podcast and comedy tour featuring himself and his friend Zach (Sims). I responded that I'd like to help. But, knowing me, it turned into a full-blown illustration, including hand-drawn type and all. Haha, the things I get myself into!

I also resized/reworked this image to fit the square iTunes album artwork size. And did a borderless version and a grayscale version to cover all printing bases.

From what I gather, it'll be a fun, "character-driven" podcast with our two Zachs and featuring special guests. Maybe they'll tour the USA, saving Community Centers as they go. It's comedy, folks.

LAUGH.

Save Our Gulf.

That horrid mess in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Louisana, has been going on for over a month now. Even if they plug up the leak tomorrow, the mess will definitely still be there, in the Gulf and on the coast.

A couple of week ago I woke up with this idea in my head. I figured the way I could help most with this situation would be to design an emotional poster that could potentially reach people and let them know (if they haven't already heard) the plight in the Gulf. Side note: If you didn't know, I live in Lafayette, LA.

There's oil, oil everywhere! Many areas of the coast have been shut down and closed off. It ain't pretty.

The illustration's message is that this oil leak disaster is telling us something. If people aren't prepared to handle every sort of oilfield emergency, there's going to be harsh repercussions. Who knows the extent of the effect this spill will have on the coastal ecosystem.

It's the least I can do as a designer, a Louisianian and a rational human to try to communicate this message. I don't have the funds to have this silk-screened and posted up, but I can post it online. If the message reaches you, please spread it.

Thanks!

UPDATE Due to the strong positive reaction to the design, I will be pursuing getting this design printed on shirts and stickers and having the proceeds go to helping clean up the mess. I'll be looking into that this week.

Also, some local designers are rallying to get all interested individuals to come together and design posters to raise awareness about the Gulf oil spill. They are accepting entries for a couple more weeks. You can find out more at The Great Oil Leak.

GRINDER Poster Printing

Here's a little video I took to document the screen printing of my Grinder poster. It was a lot easier working with a team than doing everything solo! Much thanks to my friends that helped out.

See you all at Grinder! January 9th at Nitetown, downtown.

Dirty Posters

Here's the aftermath of screen printing the Dirty Jokes comedy show poster. Though it was a learning experience (I messed up a few times), I did manage to get a very good number of prints done out of the fifty pages I had on which to print.

Also, RIP undershirt.

So, I think I'll declare this a success. We'll see if people like 'em enough to buy 'em at the show.

:crosses cramped fingers:

The Grinding Process

I thought it'd be a good idea to post the development of this latest Grinder poster, in case anyone was interested.


Here it is actually after the second day of drawing. I didn't think to take pictures of the daily stages until several monkeys were penned. I didn't plan the entire poster out in pencil. Instead, I would just draw each monkey as I came to an open space, matching the available area with whatever random monkey pose that I could imagine.

Hamlet Monkey and Boombox Monkey were early favs.



Third stage. More monkeys! Probably about 6 hours of art right here. Gotta love Gravedigging Monkey and Cowboy Monkey.



Fourth stage. MORE MONKEYS. This is around the 10 hour mark. Disco Monkey, Mad Scientist Monkey, Ninja & Pirate Monkeys! SO MANY MONKEYS.



Fifth stage. 14 hours. Zombie Monkey is my absolute favorite.



Sixth and final stage of inking. I think I logged about 20 hours total on this illustration. Because I love drawing silly things and I love GRINDER. Poor organ grinder man!

The final artwork is very close to what is shown here, except I rotated a monkey slightly and shifted the bottom section about a quarter inch to the left.

Anyway, there you have it. You can almost see my mind working through the poster. The NEXT stage is actual screen printing it. As a matter of fact, I just received the burned screens today. I'll get started on printing this weekend! Expect more pictures.

Back to the Grind(er)

The next Lafayette Grinder rockin' kick-butt event is scheduled for January 9th. Yes, this upcoming January 9th. Which is great news, since we've been wanting to put on another Grinder for over a year now.

Live art.
Live music.
Live local artist showing and selling their lively works.

Two drum sets going simultaneously. The local Sketchgroup crew doing live art. It's mad fun.

We're doing several fun promo items/posters/flyers. I illustrated this poster specifically to be a one-color screenprint to be sold at the event. I spent a lot of time on it and I do love how it came out.

Ohhh, it's going to be a fun time. I'll post more info about the event as it becomes concrete.

See you there, hopefully!

Dirty Jokes

Last week, my friend Zach asked me if I would like to design a poster/flyer for an upcoming comedy show featuring himself and another one of my friends, Tim. I said yes, of course, and was then elated to hear the name of the show:

"Dirty Jokes with Tim Landry and Zach Broussard"

Within two minutes I had the concept and rough illustration in my head. I'll let you play with the image/wordplay. I decided that I wanted to make this a one-color screenprint, so I went ahead and ordered some screenprinting supplies. Finally taking that plunge.

So what you see above is basically a comp of what the final printed poster will look like. The ink will be black-brown on top of a gray-tan-green paper stock (I'm doing everything possible to give it a "dirty" feel). The posters will be about 10x19 inches. They actually won't have the distressed edges; that's just for the web promotion.

Quite a fun project, wouldn't you say? If you'll be around Lafayette on December 26, come check out the show. They are funny dudes!

Andrew Bird

Here's a poster I did for Andrew Bird's upcoming show at the House of Blues, New Orleans. I designed it as a personal project and to help promote the show. The music has influenced me greatly, to the point that I bought a violin and started taking lessons. I owe a lot to Mr. Bird and I thought this would be a good way to express my appreciation for the music. As well as come up with a nice portfolio piece.

Unfortunately, it was too costly to screen print. It was also too costly to digital print on nice paper. So I, for the moment, am stuck with just being able to post it online. Sorry, Mr. Bird. I did all I could.

Anyway, I started off making the silhouette and type in Illustrator. I printed out and traced everything with a Sharpie to get a hand-drawn feel, then scanned & vectored it. And voila.

Hope everyone likes it. I know I'll have a blast at the show! Ohhhh, that's in two days! Hahaha.