I have been slacking a bit the last few days, trying to complete my visa request for Japan and other things that had to wait. Today I sat down, sketching a bit in Painter and this is what I came up with: a silly monkey-esque creature with a bit too much skin.

In other news I have joined a blog created by my good friend Alexander Draude. R0108 is shorthand for the studio where we work here at my university. It is our outlet for all kinds of silly things, thoughts and everything else concerning our odd life here. LINK

Yesterday I posted about the artwork I made for the Delicious Generation Party at Aftermodern Gallery in San Francisco during the Apple WWDC. It is cool to see photos pop up on the net here and there with my artwork in the background. Wouldn’t have thought though to be featured as prominently as in this particular picture by flickr.com user cjmartin.

More pictures can be seen here, here and maybe some other places as well.

Update: For another little recap of the party read Phill Ryu’s entry on his blog. Oh, and it seems the curator of Aftermodern Gallery wanted to keep the prints for a while longer. If you haven’t seen them yet, hurry up.

A few days ago (monday, 4th to be exact) I was contacted unexpectedly by my old friend Phill Ryu asking me if I was up to the task of creating some artwork for a little and special party. Turns out the event is not that little and the people even more special than I thought. It is common experience that as an artist you get asked to create something for free or low cost with the addition of it being a good for you to gain exposure. A lot of times this is just a simple excuse and very well shows how little people value the hard work that is put into art. Why am I saying this? I do not quite know but maybe because this time it is indeed good exposure. Just check out the Delicious Generation site and have a look at the people that are going to attend and then bite your own butt for not going there. I know I would have if I was anywhere near SF.

So as you look through the inked and colored illustrations you may ask yourself what the common denominator between these pictures and a bunch of indy software developers might be. Well, I was asked to generate the content based on some of the applications that are (were?) going to be demoed live at the party. As time was little I needed a good character and since I didn’t want to waste too much time trying to create something new I took out my collection of sketch books to see if I could find something appropriate. I found something in my most recent book and started to modify that a bit.

So, you may ask yourself why a character that is not shaved properly and looks like he’s been working (or partying) one night too many? In my mind this is a fitting picture for the kind of people that I know work on these applications. It’s not necessarily that they live in disregard to their bodily needs but they show a lot of devotion and dedication to their cause. Sometimes your work is so important to you that you forget to shave or to sleep. It’s just too much fun.

So without further ado…

Color versions

Most important annoucement today? Idleware is now officially loving your money. Just navigate to my newly build store and spent some dough on good art (and make me smile in return – the greedy-dollar-sign-smile, of course). More things will be added soon. Look out for artbooks, prints and other cool things.

Other cool things today? Markus and Lea came in and brought this awesome print with them in exchange for some of my artwork. Ever since they made this print I wanted one copy. Oh, did I mention it is a linocut limited to only 20 prints? Nya nya.

Sometimes I wished I had a more regular and steady stream of output but it seems that only with a certain of pressure I can really gear up to create stuff without wasting time. After basically two and a half continuous days of work I can proudly present four new illustrations. As I said earlier I tried to mimic the effect of my previous lithography a bit and stumbled over a nice effect. Basically I prepared certain parts of the images with NIVEA and then applied ink with a soft brush over it. Sometimes I even used turpentine to light up other areas and reverse the effect of the cream.