The SubZero Street Fair is next weekend. Friday & Saturday. It’s an art festival that I’ve been vending at for a few years now. Today I went online to order blanks to print more San Jose tees but they were sold out at all the places I shop at. Luckily, I have 45 blank tees sitting in a box that were originally going to used for my original Eyes, Mouths & Noses design. EMN will have to wait because the San Jo’ tees sell better. I’m waiting to hear back from my screen printers to get the ball rolling and drop off the blanks. I hope I can get them back in time before next Friday.

Today I took a break from working on the mural design. Instead I worked on the 31 Skulls campaign for Local Color by posting some pictures of the skulls to social media, made a minor website update, and went shopping for food and drinks for the event on Saturday. I can't wait to finally be done with 31 Skulls so I can focus on the upcoming mural!

I had so much fun painting a mural alongside my friends TWC (Together We Create) at Viva Calle this morning and into the afternoon. I was so so focused on my work (being in the zone) the 5 hours just flew by. I painted the EMN sketch I drew last night. I used yellow because it was the paint I had the most of. I wasn't happy with the black paint because it didn't cover well but it looked fine from a distance, and in pictures. I had to rush to get as far as I did before the event ended. I didn't completely finish. The eye with two pupils, at the bottom, didn't get a white fill. I also didn't outline the pink hot-dog shape (with my name) or anything above it. I'm still really happy with the way it turned out. In the end, the panel was taken apart and hauled away. Some day, the folks in TWC, will paint at another event and reuse the panels and paint over them. I knew that going in and was totally ok with it.

A few things I learned:

• Painting the background, drawing the shapes in chalk, and doing the white fill-ins are boring to watch. The sooner I get to outlining, the better. Maybe next time I I wait to fill in the whites at the end.
• I need to step back more often and look at the mural as whole. I was up close most of the time, about a foot and half away from whatever I was painting. It looks different when you step back. You don't see a lot of the details. Up close, the black paint looked like shit but when you stepped back 5 to 10 feet, it looked fine.
• Buy better black paint! I bought a can of Painter's Touch Flat Black and it looked like crap up close. It didn't cover the yellow well. Next time I'm gonna buy some of the good stuff!
• Don't use chalk to draw on the wall/panels. I did the same thing when I painted my brother's logo on the wall of his studio. The chalk made it almost impossible to paint clean lines. The dust also accumulated on the brush which was really annoying.

I recently got invited by my friends in TWC (Together We Create) to join them in live-painting at Viva Calle tomorrow. Viva Calle is where they close down some streets to car traffic and open them up to bicyclists, pedestrians, skaters, etc. I rode my bike at the last one and visited the TWC folks while they painted. Now it's my turn to paint. I just finished a sketch for tomorrow which I'll be painting on an 8 foot square panel. It's my EMN design.

I started drawing/painting on my skull with black markers this evening and it's starting to come alive. I have to be really careful not to smudge the wet paint while I'm holding the it so I only did half the skull tonight. I was running out of spots I could hold. I hope I can finish it by tomorrow night.

In other 31 Skulls news, the video I edited finally got posted on Local Color's Instagram & Facebook pages to promote the skulls giveaway + art party on November 20th.

Today was a lazy Sunday. I watched a couple movies, worked on my skull a little bit, and sketched out the four drawings I need to catch up for Inktober.

I'm behind schedule on the skull I'm painting for Local Color's fundraiser, 31 Skulls. I spent most of the day trying to decide what I was going to draw on the skull. I was torn between the Eyes, Mouths & Noses motif or the brains I usually draw. I also tested out different markers, paints and brushes.In the end I went with EMN using oil based markers.

I'm also a day behind on my Inktober drawings. I't's day 10 but I'm on drawing 9. I drew this chunky demon guy marching along.

...with the EMN Layla-Mae & Phoenix project. I printed them out on adhesive vinyl sheets and cut them to size tonight. The blue fill on Phoenix’s stickers didn’t come out as clean as the green fill on Layla’s which I’m not happy about. It’s something to do with the vinyl sheets. All I gotta do now is find an envelope to ship them out.

The Layla-Mae & Phoenix sticker sheets are ready to print! I’m waiting on the client (my cousin) to let me know how many of each he wants. Then I’ll print them out on adhesive vinyl sheets, cut them and mail them out. While I’ve been waiting I pulled out the spare Raspberry Pi, attached to a 7” touchscreen, that I had laying around. I installed the latest OS and managed to get Disney+ to run on it, but not very well. I also tried installing Retropie, to play old school video games, but had no luck getting that to work. I’m on the lookout for something cool to with my second Pi computer but everything is either lame or above my skill level.

Mira, mira! I printed the names in 5 different sizes and cut them out to see how they look. They look great! I’ll probably skip the smallest size since it’s not much different than the next size up. Besides that, they’re about ready to print on adhesive vinyl sheets and get turned into stickers.

I keep saying that about this project. I printed both pieces after going over them with a fine tooth comb and cleaning up all the little imperfections. They look super crisp at full, half & quarter sheets. I want to see how small I can print them so I'm waiting on my printer to spit out the 6-up & 9-up sheets. It's taking forever so I'm going to bed. They should be ready when I wake up.

Kept it low key for New Years, cause of covid and I'm old. I made a little animation for those who went out and gathered in groups. If they get covid, fuck em! After 9 months I'm tired of feeling bad, plus we should all know better by this point. If they get other people sick, well then then they're assholes too. Besides folks ringing in the new year with covid, I've plotted a short hike at Grant Park, to do later today with my buddies, and got back to work on the EMN Phoenix project I should have finished by now. Happy New Year... even though not a damn thing's changed!

Before printing this out I brought the artwork into Illustrator and went through every eye, mouth & nose to clean them up. I also a brought in the vectorized Layla-Mae, instead of the rasterized graphic I'd been using in it's place, so now the name looks way sharper. Tomorrow I'll print smaller versions to see how they look.

I think it’s gonna need one more pass to clean up any of those pesky leftover slivers. Then Layla-Mae will be ready to print!

These remind of when you’d get your assignment back from the teacher and they marked all the mistakes you made. The best was when you had the opportunity to fix the mistakes and turn it back in for a better grade. That’s basically what I’m doing here. I’m going for that A++++

I’ve been saying that for weeks. Hopefully it’s for reals this time.

I’ve been making edits to the EMN Layla-Mae & Phoenix artwork based on the notes I scribbled after printing them out a couple times now. Some details were too small or busy and had to be made bigger and more defined. I’ve also been going around erasing a bunch of thin slivers which are partially erased brush strokes. They’re so thin they’re practically invisible on screen but on paper they print out as black marks and they’re all over the artwork. Going forward, I gotta be better about drawing & erasing so I don’t have to comb thru the whole image at the highest zoom setting looking for tiny blemishes that can ruin a print.

I finished another round of tweaks. I’m going to print it again tomorrow to see how it looks before moving on.

I'm almost done with these. I printed them out in different sizes and scribbled some notes on what needs tweaking. In the end they'll be printed on vinyl stickers.

Incase you missed the sign on the front page or my Instagram posts earlier this evening... I put my t-shirts on sale for $25 each (including shipping & handling) by using coupon code IGOT5ONIT at checkout. The offer is limited to t-shirts currently in stock and runs until December 25, 2020. This sale is in response to Black Friday, (which was today) Small Business Saturday, and all live vending opportunities being shut down due to covid. It’s a small effort to make a few sales before the end of the year and get rid of some inventory that’s been sitting in boxes all year.

I also made my FRANKIE MCFLY kiss-cut stickers 2 for $5. No coupon necessary.

Gettin there...