Happy Halloween!

Happy halloween everyone!  I'll be spending Halloween night sitting in the airport waiting for my 1am flight to Indonesia!  Crazy!

Anyway, enjoy this quick digital paint and I'll see you in a few weeks!

Cthulhu t-shirts

So I just read "At the Mountains of Madness" by H.P. Lovecraft, and decided to re-read some of his other work and got on a Cthulhu kick, and decided to print up some Cthulhu shirts.  So I basically abandoned everything else for a good couple of hours and banged out a new shirt design.

EDIT:  Come check out our "kickstarter" campaign that we're running ourselves over at: http://www.monkeyandseal.com/shop/cthulhu.html for fun videos as well as more swag!

"Cthulhu Fhtagn"

ANYWAY, so I decided to run a super quick pre-sale to see if anyone was interested in actually buying this, so I'm offering it at $16.00 + $3 s/h + tax (US orders only for now, if you're international, email me).  It's Alternative Apparel, so the sizes go from S-3XL (2XL and 3XL are $17, sorry, they charge me more for larger shirts).  The sizing chart is below.  One last thing - the exact color of green might not be 100% matchy-matchy...you know, monitor color calibrations, matching silkscreen inks, etc. etc.


Just FYI, if enough people are into this design over the weekend and order, after I get back the price is going up to $20 + s/h + tax and all that, so get yours before the Monday deadline!

So all shirts ordered by Monday at noon (10/24) will be shipped out on Saturday, 10/29.  I'll be out of the country after that, so any orders made after Monday won't go out until November 16th or so, depending on my jetlag recovery.

New art, stickers

So I finally updated the painting section on www.rickkitagawa.com to include the Alone in the Dark series (thus far) and added some flavor text.  Cool.

This was a painting I did while hanging out at Artspan.  Acrylic on canvas.  The original concept was that he was going to be some creature that sort of fades up into the sky, but I ended up really wanted to paint the background blue, then went with the complementary contrast color scheme and did orange.  So now, he's just a burning mummy sort of "fading up" into the sky, but only via flames, and less ethereal planeshifting.

Also, I have stickers!  They're 2.75" x 2.75".  You can pick them up (for free) at Big Umbrella Studios, or paypal me $1 (or more if you want) and I'll send you a few.    You can also send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Rick Kitagawa c/o Big Umbrella Studios, Attn: Create or Die,  906.5 Divisadero St., San Francisco, CA 94115.  Cool.

The Witch

Did this painting on the A-frame sign that we use for Big Umbrella in honor of the Witches of Wonder show that opened Friday night and runs through November 11th.  Eve has two great paintings in it, and there is a lot of other cool work too!

Defending the Homeland

Digital quick sketch. "Defending the homeland."

Morquat turned back to the last remaining defenders. 'I need more time!!" He quickly returned to focusing his energies on the task at hand - the last remaining bridge. Morquat could feel the heat of the plasma as it flew but a few feet overhead. As he closed his eyes to focus on channeling the forest energy, he heard the unearthy howl of the lumbering beast just yards away. He wondered if the plasma bolts were doing anything but enraging the invader further..




So Eve got a subscription to the Gnomon workshops, and after watching one where Scott Roberts uses markers and overlays them on top of each other to get weird compositions for landscapes, I sort of tweaked it using a mix of digital and traditional media to get a basic shape, then figured out a story (and of course, carved out a monster).  It's not a lot different from the process I outlined in my monster book for my monster sketches, so it was really natural for me to work this way.


I'm definitely looking forward to learning some new techniques to improve my art as a whole.  Cool.

Condriano

"Condriano" Acrylic on wood

After a few weeks of being completely swamped with ye old retail job, silkscreen printing, and stuff for the gallery, I finally got a bit of a break to do some work for myself.

I did the initial design in my sketchbook, then used it as reference to bang out this painting in a night.

In other news, I think I'm going to be nutso busy until the end of the year.  I've got a small group show at a shop in the Haight next week or so, we've got the Alternative Press Expo on October 1+2 (stop by Monkey + Seal, booth #532), I'll be live painting on October 8th from 1-4 at Flax, I'm also doing Open Studios at Big Umbrella on Oct 8+9, I'll be live screenprinting at Urban Bazaar on October 16, and I'll be part of a show at Eth-No-Tec on October 29th.

Pretty crazy, but it's a good crazy, so I'm excited for October. Oh yeah, I also quit my job at the retail spot, and tomorrow is my last day!  Time to do the scary dance of doing art for a living 100%.  Nutso!

Update

Ug, sorry little bloggy, no love for you, apparently.

In other news, I just finished live painting at 111 Minna for a fundraiser/awareness raising campaign about sharks.  I painted a Jaguar Shark (from the Life Aquatic).  Will post pics soon.

Also, people seemed to be really into the Alone in the Dark paintings I did for the "Evilest Place on Earth" show for the gallery.  Once again, pics soon.

Finally, I'm thinking about trying to get together a small little book of monsters.  I won't have it in time for the SF Zine Fest (SOOO SOOON!!  Sept. 3+4), but I might be able to get it done in time for APE.  Not sure, but I'll try.  Yay!