Meathaus GO FOR THE GOLD! 4 - Sketchbook Anthology

Meathaus, a force of collective comics and cartoon energy (a group of which I am proud to call myself a member) is releasing it’s fourth “GO FOR THE GOLD!” book. GFTG is an anthology of sketchbook work from the groundbreaking independent and ever-expanding Meathaus Comics Collective.

You can pre-order the book now from the Haus. I believe it ships in about two weeks. To see a video with samples of the interior, CLICK HERE to head on over to the Meathaus site. Chris McDonnell edited the book and also did the awesome cover.

This is an amazing opportunity to pull back the curtain and see what raw thought and work goes on behind the scenes with amazing comics artists and cartoonists such as Dash Shaw, Jesse Moynihan, Thomas Herpich, Tomer Hanuka, Brandon Graham, Mu Pan, Jim Rugg, Chris McDonnell, Farel Dalrymple, and Jason Sacher. Here are samples to two of my pages, culled from old sketchbook work and mashed into pages for GFTG! 4:

3rd Annual Black Landlord BBQ Poster

The following piece is a poster I just designed for Black Landlord. I have done work before for them in the past. You can view a gig poster I recently did by clicking HERE and a flier I designed a couple years back by clicking HERE. I love their music. I love that they rock a full-on funk band and have Maxx S. Williams as lead MC. It’s just really great music. It’s strong, home-grown Philly party music. But it’s also smart and well executed. So I am happy when Black Landlord asks me to do some work.

I’m always going on about music on here, about how it affects the lines I draw while I am working. Music is super-important to me and my work. I rely on it like fuel. So to have my work associated publicly with music that I really like is a great promotional portfolio piece for me.

This poster is for the upcoming 3^rd Annual Black Landlord BBQ. It’s pretty self-explanatory. The BBQ is a local summer music festival. I tried to portray Maxx (as I always do) as a larger than life party animal. I had a lot of fun messing with transparency gradients in Photoshop for the subtle smoke and charcoal layers. I know the subject matter is very simple, but I was pleased with this project. People who know me know that I am a BBQ maniac. I’m always rocking my Char-Griller and slow cooking ribs, chicken, etc. It’s nice to get a project like this. Even though there was a decent amount of work involved, the hours flew by because I had so much fun doing it. Plus it is for a great cause.

Jeff Kilpatrick Harry Potter vs. Dr. Who Shirt on Teefury.com Tuesday, August 9

Sorry for the shameless plug here on my blog. I have been doing a good amount of T-Shirt designs lately. Some of the shirts I design and get made (like the North Catholic shirts). Sometimes I do these online submission sites. So far, Teefury has accepted two of my designs, this being the first. Teefury gets a whole lot of (but not only) fan traffic from sci-fi, fantasy film, television, and cult movie fanatics. And the folks who frequent these sites and buy the shirts are very passionate about their fandom.

There is a HUGE Dr. Who audience on the site, and there seems to be a big following of Harry Potter fans too. Anyways, the first design I tried my hand at was a combination/parody of those two characters. The reason being mostly was the scarves. It just seemed like a striking visual element to base the design on. Plus, one of the challenges of the designs for these sites is using a limited number of colors. The maximum number of colors Teefury allows is six. Sometimes, giving myself a very limited palette and a strict set of guidelines can be a good catalyst for finishing a project. Anyhow, the shirt is for sale only today, then it goes into the “Gallery” section if you’d like to view the design later.

Click here to see the shirt on Teefury.

www.teefury.com

Jeffro Kilpatrick is the "Geek of the Week" on Geekadelphia

Hey, I am proud to call myself a Geek this week. I was interviewed by Geekadelphian Dave Goodman. If you'd like to read the interview, CLICK HERE.

Star Wars Fan Art - Mos Eisley Bar Swarm

Chris Patchell asked me to post this original black and white ink drawing:

Not sure what's going to become of this piece. I think I posted here a while back that my favorite parts of the Star Wars movies are the monster scenes. I get kind of bored after the bar scene in the first movie. I also get kind of bored after Jabba the Hutt's court scene in Return of the Jedi. But those scenes are very captivating to me, and I believe they had a profound influence on me as a kid. I would play for hours with my Star Wars toys. My Godmother and Aunt Gerry gave me Greedo, Walrus Man, Luke Skywalker, R5-D4, and the Landspeeder for my 5th birthday. I was blown away, and I don't think I ever remember being so excited about a gift. I also have very vivid memories of getting my allowance and my folks driving us to the Toy Store for Star Wars action figures when I was a kid. At that young age, like many kids of my generation, I lived for my toys. And I think this is what led to my early fascination with monsters.

My fascination with bars and barflies came much later. I have done a lot of bar drawings since my college years. But as I look back, I realize they were all just a rehash of the Mos Eisley Cantina scene from the first Star Wars movie. So I wanted to do a drawing where all these creatures were just hanging out having an awesome time at the bar. Anyway, I did this initial drawing on 14" x 11" bristol board in ink. The colors I did in Photoshop and Illustrator. The font is just my own shaky, hand-drawn version of the Star Wars lettering. Maybe the colors will change. Maybe the text will change. I am not sure. But I finished this draft last night, so I am posting it.

Falcon Beach T-Shirt

I recently partnered up with the Spirit Newspapers to create limited edition North Catholic T-Shirts. Every month or so, we will make a new North Catholic shirt to hnor the school that meant so much to us. If you are a follower of this blog, you probably know that I taught and worked for the school for 7 years, and I went down with the ship. The Spirit was always a really strong supporter of North. My cousin Tommy, one of the co-owners of the paper, is a graduate like myself. We wanted to keep North alive in some small way. During my time at North, I designed most of the shirts, including the annual Thanksgiving Day Game shirt. I figured we can make shirts in short run, no more than 150-200 shirts per design. That way we wouldn't risk losing too much money, and people who bought the shirts would have a limited edition product.

The guys at Awesome Dudes printed this shirt. Joannie's oldest, Brandon, went with me to pick them up. He was nice enough to humor me and model the shirt when we got them back to the Spirit offices.

The shirts are available for sale at the Spirit Newspaper offices (1428 Susquehanna Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19125). They are $15 apiece. We only made 150 shirts this time, so if you are interested, you should call: (215) 423-6246.

Update: Frédéric Chopin Historic Trauma Illustration

I finished this piece for Advance News Magazines. I posted the pencil draft of the illustration HERE. Since there only seemed to be one photograph taken of Chopin shortly before he died, the reference I had was kind of ghoulish. Nonetheless, it was a fun picture to draw. I took a slightly different approach this time. I kept the original drawing in pencil in my sketchbook and did the inks on tracing paper. I actually did the inks on several layers of tracing paper and scanned them in as separate layers in Photoshop, giving me a little more play once I got into the colors.