SF Knight Gray Tees!

*** SEVERAL PEOPLE HAVE EXPRESSED AN INTEREST IN ORDERING THESE SHIRTS ONLINE. THE TEES ARE $25 USD, PLUS $6 SHIPPING & HANDLING. FOR SERIOUS PURCHASING INQUIRIES, EMAIL ME: HIREDMEAT@GMAIL.COM. INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING WILL BE CALCULATED ON A PER-ORDER BASIS. THANKS! ***

Just thought I'd share a few photos of yours truly, modeling the "San Francisco Knight" tees that Deadbeatsister printed up for last weekend's Treasure Island Music Festival. For the tees, the image is wrapping around from the right side of the garment, rather than just being placed dead-center on the chest. This is the white-on-gray tee, obviously, but she also put the image on zip-up & pull-over hoodies, tunic dresses, and scarves. I'll get photos of that apparel up here sooner or later.


Now, I'm off to the reception for "Suite Jesus." Wish me luck!
-Bunker, out for art and booze.

Wonder Woman, Lady Justice, and a Lucky Robot!

Check out these new images I've been working on. Two are for charity event auctions, and the other is a tattoo commission.


This Wonder Woman drawing is for Wonder Woman Day 3, an event raising money and awareness for domestic violence shelters and a woman's crisis line. For more info, check out the Wonder Woman Day 3 website. I'm going to hit this up with some watercolor and marker, so look for the colorized version post week.


This is my "Lucky Robot," for From The Land Beyond: Sacramento's Horror & Sci-Fi show. It will be part of their Charity Art Auction to benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and Loaves & Fishes Mustard Seed School for Homeless Children.


Last, but not least, this Riot Grrl Lady Justice is a tattoo commission I'm doing for a lawyer-in-training I met out here in The Bay. Whoop!

And that's all for today. Next week, I'll be posting photos from my weekend at The Treasure Island Music Festival with the lovely Deadbeatsister. We'll both be there, selling her latest apparel wares, including some collabo-pieces. If you're in The Bay and headed to the Festival, definitely come see us. For more info, check out The Treasure Island Music Festival. Fer shizz.

Bunker, out.

Skritchy-Skratch, Sketchy-Sketch!

I'm just kicking it today, taking care of business and listening to this dope-ass hip-hop mix Mike Huddleston gave me during Comic-Con. Incredible stuff! Anyway, thought I'd take a moment to share some recent drawings and noodle-doodles with ya'll. Dig it!


"Outgunned" - 9 x 12" ink and watercolor drawing on sketchbook paper. Pitting some of my soldiers against insurmountable odds. I think this was inspired by some of the recent reports on the war in Afghanistan. It's pretty frightening, the fact that we've had people fighting over there for seven years now, and the violence is as hot as ever.


"Travel Shooter" - 9 x 6" gray brush pen drawing on sketchbook paper. I've been watching "Carrier," a PBS documentary about life aboard The USS Nimitz, a US aircraft carrier. That's got my back-burner brain cooking up pieces exploring the theme of "I get to travel the world, just to blow stuff up." Again, too, with the Afghanistan war... I recently saw a report on Battle Company (an American Army unit) that's over there fighting in the Korengal Valley. The valley, itself, is just naturally beautiful... as beautiful as any forest or mountain range I've ever visited in the States. But it's also teeming with Taliban fighters, bombs, and danger. To learn more, check out this Vanity Fair story, "Return to the Valley of Death." This sketch was particularly inspired by that story.


"Blam." - 9 x 12" ink and marker drawing on bristol board. This is actually a quick sketch I did during a comic convention sometime last year. I unearthed it awhile ago, and was putting off scanning it until today. No big theme behind this. Just a saucy lady with a fur-lined hood, blowing away a robot. He prolly' stepped on her new Jordans or some scandelous shit like that.


"Fire Breather" - 9 x 12" brush pen and ink drawing on sketchbook paper. I just invested in a nice, cartridge-loaded, Japanese brush pen, and this is one of the first pieces I've made with it ("Outgunned" and the two drawings below were made with the same pen). Just test driving my new toy, on this one. That, and playing with light and shadow. The larger areas were filled in with a couple brushes and some Black Magic drawing ink. Ah, how I do love my art arsenal.


"Sucker Punch" 9 x 12" brush pen drawing on sketchbook paper. This is me exploring more of my recent obsession with boxing. I've got eyes on doing a larger piece like this... maybe a painting or just a large, color drawing. I dig the idea of a guy getting popped in the jaw and a bunch of lollipops flying out of his mouth/head. Bonus - A bunch of the art from this post was made when I couldn't sleep two nights ago. I just stayed up drawing and watching episodes of The Wire. on this one, notice that I jotted down a quote from Omar Little that was just priceless.


"The Prepared" - 9 x 12" brush pen drawing on sketchbook paper. Last but not least, this is another of my grappler brutes. He's brandishing his fist and a fair amount of facial bruises. But from the looks of the battered heavy punching bag behind him, he's ready to give some of that pain back. Biggety-bam!

And that's all she wrote for now. I'm still painting & tainting, in preparation for Suite Jesus at 111 Minna in SF, on September 26th. I'm also getting ready to launch a big sale of 36 original works from the Hiredmeat Archives. That should launch on Monday, so keep an eye out.

In the meantime, take a short one and have a sexy weekend. You've earned it.

-Bunker, out like lake trout.

Boxers!

Lately, I've been obsessed with drawing and painting images of boxers. The whole idea of sports (specifically, contact sports) is very interesting to me. The concept of humans being brought into close, physical competition, sparks my imagination. It makes me think about how closely this relates to the way we treat animals... how we'll have cock fights and dog fights, horse and dog races. Or on an even more basic level, the way animals interact in the wild. Birds and beasts fight for everything from life and limb, to food and social standing. This draws me directly to that relationship in sports, because it's about as simple as you can get... destroy the other guy before they destroy you.


Now, I realize that's a very bare-bones breakdown of the way sports work. When you take the time to analyze them, boxing, football, sprinting, etc... they can be considered a science, or even an art. But that's not what I'm focusing on in these new boxer pieces. I'm going for the gut, visually... the visceral edge of it. I'm expressing the brutality of it in the gruesome features and physiques of the fighters. In some of the other sketches I've been cooking up, I touch on the sexual side of it... the pairing of powerful athletes (modern gladiators, if you will) with the finest mates. I want to explore the cheering mob of a crowd, and get into the primal bloodlust that organized fighting brings out of fans and everyday viewers.

The process in these boxing works is a little surprising for me, compared to my previous fine art stuff. It's mainly because the images are coming to me before the ideas behind them. One day, last weekend, I was reading The Muhammad Ali Reader (a great collection of journalists writing about Ali, From George Plimpton to Hunter Thompson... a really awesome read), and suddenly I couldn't stop imagining paintings of boxers. I'd had that sort of excitement a couple years ago, when I first started learning more about the life of Cassius Clay, saw a great documentary on Jack Johnson, and read the autobiography of Malcolm X. But this most recent inspiration-zap was so intense. I couldn't even sit still. I just HAD to start putting these fighters and their trainers, their girlfriends and fans all down on paper.


And in the past week, as I've been making the art, I've been deconstructing the thinking behind it. Kinda like how early scientists took apart cadavers to figure out the inner workings of the human body. And I have to tell you, it's probably the most exciting time I've had in my work for months.

I'm going to keep birthing these pieces from my brain to the page. I'll definitely be showing these guys at 111 Minna in downtown SF, at the end of this month. I just started a 34" x 40" oil painting of two boxers approaching each other in the ring, as the crowd spurs them on. So that piece might go in the show, too. I really can't say enough, though, just how wonderful it feels to be making this stuff.

Hope the weekend's been good to ya'll.
-Bunker, out.

Belle & Sebastian Art on Exhibit in SF This Month

Howdy, all. I'm showing some comic pages in the September group exhibit at The Artist-XChange in San Francisco's Mission District. But these aren't any normal, black and white comic pages, yo. These are the pages from "Beautiful," my 10-page short in Image Comics' critically acclaimed Belle & Sebastian anthology, "Put The Book Back On The Shelf."

These originals are mixed media, and closer to my fine art work. I made them using a combination of watercolors, markers, and collage. A lot of folks don't expect to see this stuff from me, and I seldom offer up my solo comic originals for sale. So I'm very excited at having the chance to share some of my rarities with the art-loving, art-buying public.

You can learn more about the Artist-XChange show, as well as preview 5 pages of "Beautiful" at my website, www.hiredmeat.com

With poppy, Brit-band love....
-Bunker, out.

San Francisco Knight!

Since Kelly (my Special Ladyfriend) is Deadbeatsister in her work and I'm Hiredmeat in mine, we combine to form DeadMeat. Check out this new design we've come up with:

It's called "San Francisco Knight." He's one of my Floating City characters, who are akin to the Iron Gods I draw and paint. They float thru massive skies, with buildings and telephone wires sprouting from their backs. This guy, of course, is totally meant to represent SF.

We're going to be featuring this image on scarves, shirts, and zip-up-hoodies. Kelly printed the hell outta this, today, in her studio. I'll try to get some photos of the results up soon.

In the meantime, Happy Labor Day!
-Bunker, oot!