Smooth lines and tracing in Illustrator

Here’s a quick tutorial on making smooth lines (which are helpful for tracing etc) in Illustrator, here’s a tutorial on using the Pen tool, here’s a quick post about situations in which to use the pen tool versus the pencil tool …

The Art of Rick Fork–Headhunter Records ads, Drive Like Jehu, Rocket From the Crypt, etc

In the 1990s San Diego was a happening place for a few indie, punk, and postpunk bands, some of the most notable were Drive Like Jehu, Rocket From the Crypt, and Pitchfork.  Many were on a label Headhunter Records. Singer/guitarist/artist Rick Fork/Rick Froberg/Rick Farr did the art for a lot of these bands and Headhunter Records ads.  Here are some scans of some of the art he did for Headhunter Records including ads for Drive Like Jehu and Rocket from the Crypt. Some of the scans were contributed by Paul Stanley and Jeffrey from the Swami Records forum. ..

The Best Comic Books of the 1980s: Alan Moore’s Miracleman and Frank Miller’s Elektra Assassin

Okay, this is highly subjective of course but Alan Moore’s Miracleman and Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz ‘s Elektra: Assassin might be the best comic books ever made (or, at the very least,  my favorites).  The plots are intricate and evocative, the scripting and dialogue is unique, and the art in Elektra Assassin and Miracleman (specifically the issues drawn by John Totleben) is innovative and often breath-taking, moving way beyond comic book art into realms of finer art and illustration.

So of course there are runners up which others may find more important to them:  The Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Akira (not that the writing in Akira was great by any means, but for the time the novely of the Japanese elements and setting, the great art, and some of the ideas, in a pre-anime-popularity era in the US, was pretty noteworthy).  Note that most of these comics are also by Frank Miller and Alan Moore, who in the 1980s and transformed the notion of what comics could be and created truly graphic “novels” instead of just “comic books”.   Some of the writing and ideas were to standard comic book fare what Kurt Vonnegut and Don DeLillo are to more typical fiction, what David Cronenberg is to more typical movie directors, what Voivod’s Killing Technology, Dimension Hatross, and Nothingface were to typical metal in the 1980s, and what Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation was to typical punk and guitar pop when it came out in 1988.  The 80s, what a heady time for art and culture the 80s were!

BTW I think some of Bill Sienkiewicz’s best art is reminiscent of Ezra Jack Keat’s amazing childrens book illustrations!

Awesome piano: Thollem McDonas and Frank Abbinanti; awesome art openings/events at the Fine Arts Building

From our Chicago correspondent:

Just saw the phenomenal Thollem McDonas play at the awesome Pianoforte gallery in Chicago, with pianist Frank Abbinanti. Thollem McDonas plays all sorts of piano; his sound ranges from classical to experimental indie music, prog rock, death metal, it’s hard to explain, but it’s fantastic. I imagine fans of any classical to music like Sonic Youth and Don Caballero and Slayer would enjoy his playing. Frank Abbinati is also awesome though I can’t find any videos of his stuff on YouTube. His playing was amazing though kind of scary! My wife liked Frank Abbinati’s performance the best and I liked Thollem McDonas’ performance the best, so it was a great night all around. Check out these videos of Thollem McDonas playing. I bought two of his CDs last night which I haven’t listened to yet. I heard him first on the WNUR, Northwestern University, and lo and behold, I found out he was playing the same week in Chicago! He lives in the Bay Area and travels playing around a lot, so if you like any kind of music, make sure you see him, it’s quite a treat.

The piano show was put on by the Pianoforte Foundation, which puts on lots of piano shows in a variety of venues, and they have a piano showroom/store also in the building, as well as their performance studio where we saw the show.

The show was in the Fine Arts Building, a hidden treasure on Michigan Ave in the Loop in Chicago, just a few blocks from the park and the downtown library. It’s amazing; a whole building with tons of art galleries, music stores and performance spaces, and every second friday each month they have a killer open house kind of thing, where all these galleries etc put on shows and have wine and cheese and art openings. It’s like a dream, kind of a multi-level art opening/hotel/co-op/mall/party. You literally can walk up and down the stairs and there are art shows and openings on every floor with great art, nice people, wine and cheese, etc. Going up and down on the elevators you can look out onto each floor thinking, “Wow, that looks amazing, I’d better stop off on that floor later!”

Ah, their website blurb reads, “The Fine Arts Building in Chicago is a haven for artists. Established in 1885, it has become an all artists colony that promotes all the arts.” It’s an f’n arts colony! That is a great description. I kept thinking of the Happiness Hotel in the Muppets Movie, I’ll have to see if that is an apt comparison, I saw it so long ago.

A great night all around and quite a find. If you like music and art at all, you will probably enjoy visiting second fridays at the Fine Arts building!

Top photo by mascaracan. Other two by ihynz

The Cure’s “Fascination Street” is Based on Kool & The Gang’s “Fresh,” and The Dazz Band’s “Let it Whip” is Based on The Sweet’s “Love is Like Oxygen” (See the videos!)

The Cure’s “Fascination Street” is based on Kool & The Gang’s “Fresh” (video)

Okay, I’ve mentioned these before, that The Cure’s “Fascination Street” is based on Kool & The Gang’s “Fresh” and that The Dazz Band’s “Let it Whip” is based on The Sweet’s “Love is Like Oxygen”, but now you can watch these videos which demonstrate how–you can tell that the bands practiced their versions over these songs that they liked by the other bands. Check it out!

The Dazz Band’s “Let it Whip” is based on The Sweet’s “Love is Like Oxygen” (video)

Here are the mp3s:
The Cure–Kool & the Gang-Fascination Street–Fresh (mix)(mp3)

The Sweet-The Dazz Band–Let it Whip–Love is Like Oxygen (mix)(mp3)

The videos and mixes were created by the Lock and Shawl–check out the Lock and Shawl’s new indie/postpunk album, in the instrumental vein of The Cure, Sonic Youth, Drive Like Jehu, and Voivod:
Lock and Shawl–Random Sounds with Rhythm (mp3s)

New album: Lock and Shawl–Random Sounds with Rhythm (mp3s)

Someone posting as “anything” has been writing about the Cure/Kool & the Gang connection, and influences of David Bowie’s Let’s Dance on the lyrics of Fascination Street at:
at
http://www.cureconnections.com/new-20-years-of-disintegration/6266-fascination-street-is-based-on-kool-and-the-gangs-fresh-see-the-video.html

Also, fans of the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” will surely love the first 12 seconds (and again later during the choruses) of Wire’s “Ex Lion Tamer” from 1977′s “Pink Flag” album.

Wire–Ex Lion Tamer

Here’s another great Wire song for good measure:

Wire–Mannequin
I think this song was covered by fIREHOSE in the 1990s…

80s Aesthetics Mania Has Not Even Begun Yet

The finer points of 80s aesthetics are still just being mined and rediscovered…now people are picking out the best aspects of 80s aesthetics which also had traces of the best of 70s aesthetics in them as well. I think it probably goes way deeper than what has been brought to light so far, as much activity so far has just been picking out superficial signifiers of the 80s. Even though 80s revivalism started back in the mid/late 90s, it is still going strong and has probably the surface has only just been scratched. Here are some recent examples, notable for how mainstream and current everything 80s is beginning to seem…

Housse de Racket – ” Oh Yeah “
Geez, everything from the Prince album to the NES cartridges to the tennis fashion…and look at all that wonderful 70s/80s gear in the photo above!!!

Evian commercial–Roller Babies

A lot of retro and current design/fashion/style can be seen on the The Cool Hunter (http://www.thecoolhunter.net) website, which has some pretty fantastic stuff.

By the way, speaking of aesthetics, this is like the first photo I’ve ever seen of a real band using/posing for photos with a Fender Squire guitar!!! I only ever played a Squire because it was the only guitar I could buy at the time!!! Now, that is quirky/art!

Reshaping Education in America: Careers and Context

I think what is shockingly absent from any education I’ve ever received, from some fine educational institutions, is any mention of careers and context–why you’re learning, what live after school will look like, the fact that you’ll have to find a job, what kinds of jobs and careers are out there, etc.  Schools leave that totally up to parents. And our schools are so liberal arts oriented–you take so many English and arts etc classes–where are the business, economics, etc classes in junior high, high school, in the required courses in college???  Why was I required to take all these English classes, sociology classes, etc, but not one single econ or business class in undergrad?

After you graduate you learn, oh wait, why didn’t any teacher I ever had even hint at how the real world works?  And most schools I have ever been to are so liberally biased that in the absence of any clues from parents, neighbors, or friends, all I ever got it in my head to do was oh, art and English.  Did I, my parents, or friends know anyone who was a doctor, lawyer, computer scientist?  No.  It’s totally the rationale of the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad.  If you don’t have parents, friends, and neighbors who clue you in to the wider world of career options, who invite you to the party, you may be out of luck, because for the most part teachers won’t.

So, I think schools should do a much better job at alerting kids to job trends, career options, etc.  Parents and teachers should give kids goals and options, not just say, “Get good grades,” “do your homework,” and then let the hippie schools brainwash the kids into thinking just English and art will lead to happy and fulfilling careers, because that’s just not the way the world works!!!!!

It’s like nature and nurture–kids’ understandings of how the world and business and careers work needs to be nurtured by teachers in school, not just parents–the average American parent probably doesn’t know much either–it’s sad to let Walmart employee kids aspire to work at 7-11, middle class kids just want to be “writers” “artists” and “poets” while upper middle class kids are the only ones told that they could do any career they want including medicine, law, banking, business consulting, etc.

I’m not saying any one thing is better than the other but our educational system is so biased towards English and art as these sort of mushy defaults.  Yeah, who the heck wouldn’t want to do English and art all day but that’s just not the reality of the job market, now, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, or ever.  It’s all about giving kids a more *fair and balanced* picture of careers that are possible.

And without exposing kids to career options early on in schools, and if they don’t have good career guidance from parents, kids are more susceptible to fall prey to all sorts of ideas about what is “cool or not cool” in life from bad role models (punk rock, Kurt Cobain, musicians, actors, etc) who portray life as an event where you can play and party all day, emote that suits suck, businesses suck, you have to stick it to the “man,” etc.  Maybe those were ideas more in the 1980s and 1990s, but still…there’s always been an undercurrent of anti-intellectualism, anti-career, anti-money, anti-business in popular music etc, that kids can fall for to the detriment of pursuing more interesting things in life.

Now I’m not saying these sentiments are bad per se in moderation, as dissenting voices and alternate viewpoints, but for kids without good guidance from parents and teachers, these messages can take on too large of a role in their consciousness and how they interpret the world and in how they make plans for their future.

Update:
read The Big Lie About the ‘Life of the Mind’ and Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go by Thomas H. Benton in The Chronicle of Higher Education for more analysis.

Lupe Fiasco Food and Liqour Cover Inspired By Alan Moore Miracleman Comic Art

Lupe Fiasco’s Food and Liqour album cover is very superhero-ish–check out the comparison with this panel from issue one of Alan Moore’s Miracleman comic.  Of course, there are probably shots like this in Akira too…I’m going to stay pretty confident it was inspired by this Miracleman art though, look at how the eyebrows and facial features, the head tilt lines up…look at the angle and positioning of the feet…

The whole Miracleman copyright dispute story (best comic book ever, has been out of print since they 1990s due to a copyright disupte) is a good illustration of how screwed up copyright law is sometimes, especially in the hands of irrational and greedy people…The trade paperback reprints now go for hundreds of dollars…people have scanned these classic comics and uploaded them onto BitTorrent to share and preserve these great stories…I like Miracleman even better than the great Watchmen series…

Steely Dan – Don’t Take Me Alive (Live 2003) and Babylon Sister (Live 2000)

Steely Dan–Don’t Take Me Alive (Live 2003)

Steely Dan…I can never tell if they’re “taking the piss,” if at all, or if 95% of the time, or if always.  Of course they have amazing songs like Deacon Blue and Peg (“it’s your favorite foreign movie”…) but there are rather few songs by them that I can listen to without having some nagging suspicion in my mind, and this is one of them…that there’s some sort of running in-joke in the whole concept of the band that I’m not privvy to, like that Steely Dan developed as some sort of warped jazz-rock elevator music ironic/satirical art project that just happened to be particularly successful in the music industry and they ran with it, not letting most people in on the joke/art/satire/commentary aspect of the band.  Like some of Frank Zappa’s music, but rather than blatantly advertise the commentary, they buried it deep beneath their smooth jazz cabaret exterior, out of sight of up to 95% or more of their fans.

I mean…Steely Dan is sort of like Throbbing Gristle or the Swans in wielding and creating a sort of extreme element of musical aural attack/musical offense except their weapon isn’t noise it’s sort of this artificial-machine made-saccharine sweet-plastic smooth-granite cold machine sheen of sort of killer smoothness…like an artificial intelligence program is pumping out what are supposed to be “smooth” licks all day but it’s some sort of cognitive experiment too…kind of scary.

I feel like the music may be composed by some AI machine built at MIT in the 70s, hence the “Steely Dan” reference (look it up on Wikipedia)–they’re actually trying to tell us that the music is created by a machine, a machine pleasuring device in not strictly the physical sense but in the aural sense…maybe that’s the secret pun, they seem to be pretty super-intellectual, punny people, I’m sure the irony of the name “Steely Dan” as an artifical pleasuring device did not escape them at all during any part of their career but in fact was a founding principle/guiding force of the band.

That said, of course they are great musicians.  I like the sort of LA jazz rock sound, I slightly prefer that kind of sound on Joni Mitchell’s 70s albums like Court and Spark and Hissing of Summer Lawns (with Larry Carlton, etc), as it’s done so much more organically, a lot less elevator music-like, on those albums.  What would be great is if Joni Mitchell had a new album with Steely Dan as the backing band, yeah.

Steely Dan–Babylon Sister (Live 2000)

Daft Punk, Jeff Koons, and Ed Paschke

Ed Paschke’s getting major props from Daft Punk and Jeff Koons. This Paper Magazine interview of Daft Punk features the human/robotic duo lounging in some office with an array of brilliant Ed Paschke paintings on the wall. Makes sense–Ed Paschke was way ahead of his time, making flourescent and neon art that looks like it was made by a computer–a sort of manually created digital-like image manipulation that predated Photoshop and other common digital image manipulation software. At a retrospective show at the Chicago History Museum, I gathered from a video and a recreation of his studio that perhaps Paschke had developed a technique using sponges to apply paint to looks like it was airbrushed, but I’m not sure, and his unusual technique wasn’t explicitly addressed (look up close at his work, and it looks computer generated or airbrushed, quite unique and mysterious–no globs of paint, no brush lines, etc, very smooth and seamless ).

Jeff Koons has an exhibit, “Everything’s Here: Jeff Koons and his experience of Chicago,” June 14 – October 26, 2008, the for which the main image pictured is an Ed Paschke painting. According to the description:

Everything’s Here is an exhibition drawn largely from the MCA’s Collection that focuses on the art and artists Jeff Koons was interested in and influenced by during his formative years as a young artist in Chicago.

Koons attended the School of the Art Institute in 1975-76 on a student mobility program at the Maryland Institute, where he received his BFA. His interest in the artists and art of Chicago predated his residence here, as he first encountered the work of Jim Nutt in his MCA-organized 1974 exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Especially important to Koons was the work of and his personal relationship with Ed Paschke, often considered the most prominent of the generation of Chicago-based artists who are collectively known as the Imagists. H.C. Westermann was also an inspirational figure to Koons, and his woodblock print The Dance of Death is featured in Koons’s Elvis, 2003.

One of my favorite Ed Paschke paintings is held by the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, but I can’t find an image of it online…

I hope that the Chicago History Museum makes a catalog for the Ed Paschke show and at puts up a website describing the show, I can’t hardly find any details of it on their website! The man surely deserves better remembrance than that and it was a great show–but where’s the catalog?

Here’s an interview with Ed Paschke on YouTube:

Here’s a great comment on the YouTube video:

7blackhole9 (7 months ago)

My fucking hero, former next door neighbor, and inspiration(Mr.Paschke)). Next century he will be infamous. Every artist should understand the power of origin, a definition of culture, and resource the void to create from within. Ed Paschke is a genius.