This piece and more can be seen at my gallery…

Lately I’ve been doing little experiments in Adobe Illustrator.  Trying to make things look like natural media.

This piece is 100% vector.

GREE 2013

I replaced the ui designer who had created the original style guide.   Working with the lead artist and product managers for the game I was able to bring some vintage baseball graphic design flair as well as ESPN-inspired accents to this smartphone game.

Here is my latest tattoo – another collaboration with the amazing Angelique Sanders.

Fortunately for me she was visiting San Francisco and guesting at  One Shot Tattoo – my favorite place to get inked in The City.

I spent a few weeks finalizing my design. The hardest part was  trying to figure out which symbols, elements and aspects I had to cut out of the composition.  After adjusting and refining my drawing to work better as a tattoo, Angel cranked this “little” piece out in under 7 hours.   Like our last piece (Saraswati) this tattoo is healing quickly, clean and not giving me too much discomfort.  Angel truly has the magic touch!

Shiva is the third member of the Hindu Trinity and my favorite of our Gods.  He is a complicated deity full of paradoxes. On one hand he is the ultimate warrior – literally the force of destruction that destroys evil, ignorance and removes the old and decaying to make way for the new.  On the other hand he is also a benevolent creator god, the creator of  yoga, music and dance.  He is the ultimate outsider shunning  gold and riches to wear simple tribal jewelry and dress in a tiger skin while travelling with his bull Nandi (the very symbol of the sacred cow of India), wearing snakes and followed by an army of monsters, ghosts and other crazy creatures.  Shiva is also the lord of all animals (hence the deer jumping out of one of his hands).   Shiva is also the very model of the ideal husband and father. He is both terrifying and benevolent.  Confusing to non-Hindus I think.  Wikipedia has got a good overview on him at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva .

* “Desi”  (sounds kinda like “they see”)  in several Indian languages   refers to people or things from India.  It can roughly be translated also as “native”.

Just a little political themed artwork.   I’ve had this sitting around for a few months and finally got around to finishing it.

Metallica rocking The Polo Fields at Golden Gate Park. Photo by Khouryp23 on Flickr.

How do you forget that you bought tickets to one of the biggest music festivals ever?  That’s exactly what I did.  Thankfully, I remembered on Thursday night about tickets I had bought months ago!

Kristen and I trying to stay warm as we wait for Metallica

Day 1.
Kristen and I just finished day 3 of   Outside Lands 2012.  Held in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for the last few years; and it was our first time attending.  Actually we’ve never really needed to go since we can actually hear most of it from our apartment. But when I saw the line-up announced I couldn’t resist buying tickets and then forgetting about them!

Foo Fighters! Photo by David Hall, for the Register

Friday night we saw the Foo Fighters for the first time.  Fantastic performance!  They were a lot of fun and having seen one of their concerts on tv I knew they would put on a great show.   Afterwards we saw Neil Young & Crazyhorse.  We saw some of his set before heading home.

Day 2.
Saturday afternoon we saw a little bit of Michael Kiwanuka, The Kills, and then the heavy metal titans: Metallica.

James & Lars of Metallica. Kristen took this pic.

with Marilyn at Metallica – one of the coolest moms on the planet!

Being a huge fan, and having seen them several times before I knew they would put on an amazing show.  They didn’t disappoint and surprised the audience with a new laser light show, jets of fire and a mini fireworks show.   Metallica opened with  Hit The Lights.  They played  a lot of their thrash masterpieces including: Master of Puppets, Battery, Sanitarium, One, For Whom The Bell Tolls, Orion, and Blackened.  Fuel, The Memory remains,  To Hell And Back, and crowd favorite Enter Sandman were mixed in until at the end of their set (and encore) they finished with their classic thrash song Seek And Destroy.

They were in top form as this was the last date of their summer tour. I’ve seen them live many times but it is always great to see them in their hometown.  The fact that it was blocks from my home made it even more special.

Stevie Wonder at the beginning of his set. Another pic by Kristen.

Heather hiding under “The Shroud”. We thought she was lighting up. 15 minutes later two members of the event staff came by to make sure she wasn’t dead! Good times.

Day 3.

We  arrived as Regina Spektor was ending her set.  Jack White was excellent. Finally the legendary Stevie Wonder closed the festival down in style. He covered John Lennon’s Imagine,  Michael Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel,  and The Beatles She Loves Me.  But he played an amazing selection of his own music including: Sir Duke, Isn’t She Lovely, I Just called to Say I Love You, Signed Sealed Delivered, Higher Ground and my personal favorite Superstition.

We had a lot of fun as well as a fair bit of frustration.  The crowds were huge as to be expected…but a lot of the attendees were absolute jerks with little sense of concert etiquette.  Overall though I’ll say that I’m glad we went to the festival this year.

Here are some more random photos from my phone:

James Hetfield talking to the crowd. by me.

american rock and roll. by me.

end of the show. end of the tour. by me.

I recently finished a commission for John Kelly’s novel Amazombia (available at Amazon).

This was a fun piece to work on!

As usual this and more of my work is available in my gallery.

Sunday night I met up with my buddy Toby and his lady Jessica at The Independent.   I think it’s one of my favorite  venues to see live music in San Francisco.  The event was Unknown Hinson live in concert.   Imagine Vegas-era Elvis combined with Dracula and it only begins to describe him.  Unknown is a wicked guitar player and a good singer.   Stylistically, he and his band  are a mixture of  country-western, rockabilly and hard rock.

here’s a photo i shot:

Unknown is most widely known as the voice of Early the Appalachian Mud Squid in Cartoon Network’s Squidbillies cartoon. Instead of an opening band they showed a couple episodes of the show.  Unknown rocked the house for nearly 2 hours.  He doesn’t tour on the west coast often, but I hope he comes back real soon!   Don’t forget to check out: unknownhinson.com

I just finished this digital painting a few minutes ago. This and more are in my gallery.

I am proud to announce that my first book is now available to the public!  The book measures in at 10 by 8 inches and is filled with 74 pages of full color glossy images.  It shows off the various styles and subjects I like to play with.  Makes a great holiday gift for the art enthusiast or pop culture geek.

Check it out at Blurb.com

While we were waiting for the event  to being video messages were shown on the big screen. These were messages from: Jimmy Page, Brian May, Lemmy, Green Day, Dream Theater, Anthrax, Death Angel, Aerosmith, Slayer, Hatebreed, Dillinger Escape Plan, Lamb of God, Wolfmother, Mastodon, The Scorpions, MSG, actor Peter Coyote  and several sports stars as well.  One of the funniest clips was from U2 – in a group therapy session, spoofing Metallica’s documentary movie Some Kind of Monster.

So check this out, the first opening band was The Soul Rebels  - a New Orleans brass-band who came in blasting their arrangement of  Enter Sandman!   The came walking in from behind the audience from the lobby.  The followed it up with Battery and ended with The Memory Remains.  This one was actually my favorite. They took the main riff and turned it into what would be great intro-music for a boxer or for some kind of sporting event!

Metallica walked onto the stage to welcome us all and then to introduce the host for the evening comedian Jim Breuer. He was hilarious telling jokes, impersonating  Lars and James, Ozzy & Sharon Osbourne and Brian Johnson of AC/DC.  He also did a little game show where 3 audience members came up to test their Metallica trivia knowledge.

The band took the stage again to introduce the opening act,  a band called  Lääz Rockit.   The were on stage for about 30 minutes before Metallica got on stage to work. Here is the evening’s setlist:

Suicide & Redemption

Master of Puppets

…And Justice for All

Of Wolf and Man

Fade to Black

The Thing That Should Not Be

I Disappear

The Outlaw Torn

Hell and Back

Blitzkrieg performed with Joseph Guariglia – an audience member who played rhythm guitar perfectly with  James.

For Whom the Bell Tolls with Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains!

Nothing Else Matters – also with Jerry Cantrell.

So What! with Anti-Nowhere League’s Animal (Nick Culmer).

Tuesday’s Gone with  Gary Rossington (Lynrd Skynrd), Pepper Keenen (Corrosion of Conformity/ Down), Jerry Cantrell, and Jim Martin (Faith no More).

After the stage cleared,  James said to the audience, “You know he’s here…So let’s just bring Jason out here now.”  At this point everyone in the house went crazy as former bassist Jason Newstead walked out towards the center of the stage. Hugs were exchanged as the audience was chanting his name for something like 2 minutes!  He strapped on a bass, stood next to current bassist Rob Trujillo as  James Hetfield barked out the opening words to Fuel!

Jason stuck around to play Fight Fire with Fire.

Next Glenn Danzig (Misfits/Danzig) walks out and performs Die, Die My Darling and Green Hell.

As if the evening couldn’t have been any more amazing, James addresses us again saying,” Our next guest is a heavy metal icon… and the weirdest thing is that the older he gets – the better he sounds.  Ladies and gentlemen…  Mr. Rob Halford!” Yes, Rob Halford of Judas Priest – that Rob Halford!  He came out and rocked the song Rapid Fire.

Finally, to close the show, Metallica asked everyone who was on stage earlier to come out and join them for their classic Seek and Destroy.  We’re talking everyone: Laaz Rockit, Jason, Jerry, Pepper, Jim, Danzig, Animal  - and the Soul Rebels brass band.  They all took the stage and practically brought the house down.  Near the end of the song a couple hundred balloons were dropped along with confetti.

Simply put it may have been the most amazing concert I’ve been to so far!  Here are all the photos I took that night (plus a few i added from Metallica’s site):

Here it is folks. A preview of the big project I’ve been hinting at for months.   I’ve been wanting to do something like this for years and I finally got serious about this earlier this year.

So for the last several months I’ve been working on new art, retouching some older art, designing the layouts, choosing fonts, organizing, selecting and then revising, revising and even more revising!

It was a thrill to come home from the office last night and see this sitting on the table waiting for me!   Just a couple more weeks and my book will be available online.   It’s 10″ x 8″ and has 74 pages in full color on glossy paper!

It only took me a year but I finally finished this tattoo design for my old friend Don Molumby.

He wanted the  Greco-Roman Lady Justice (Dike / Justice)  portrayed in a Hindu-style.  I chose to make her of the celestial race of Nagas making it a more striking design.

I’m close to revealing my big project to the world so Stay tuned for more info –  and as usual,

 this and more of my work can be seen in my gallery.

Today is Gandhi Jayanti – the (142nd) celebration of Mohandas K.  Gandhi’s birthday.  The United Nations has designated this also as International Day of Non-Violence.

This year I feel his birthday is more relevant than it has been in decades.  In the west he is perceived as some kind of Dalai Lama-esque figure who spouted out quotes that Americans love to put on t-shirts and bumper stickers: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” or “Be the change you want to see in the world.”     He energized and led millions of Indians to rise up and throw off the shackles of British rule through non-violent disobedience.

Previously, we had made several attempts to forcibly push the British out, but those  like the Indian Rebellion of 1857 ( also known as the Sepoy Mutiny) led to even harsher rule from our colonial masters.  It took several decades of speeches, rallies, and  protests which also led to many in the freedom movement having to endure beatings, imprisonment, torture, and in some cases death either in violent crackdowns or executions.   Eventually, his work led to India’s freedom in 1947.

Many also don’t know how profoundly Gandhi’s philosophies had affected Martin Luther King Jr. It was King’s 1959 visit to India that led him to say “Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.” It was these core principles of non-violent civil disobedience that powered the American Civil Right’s Movement in the 1960s. Like Gandhi, King also was martyred by an assassin’s bullet. Both paid the ultimate price to make sure the countries they loved became better places.

Last December the world witnessed the beginning of the “Arab Spring” set off by the Tunisian Revolution ousting longtime dictator Ben Ali. Then Egypt and the fall of Mubarak. Like wild fire we saw the protests spread to Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Oman, and Syria just to name a few. Libya’s revolution turned into a civil war, but it seems by and large the protests throughout the Middle East have been mostly non-violent. The spirit of Gandhi’s philosophy and methods are alive and well.

Finally, I hope President Assad of Syria and his cronies realize that the world is watching you and that history will remember you as bullies and cowards. The Syrian people are still out there protesting despite the killings and brutal repression by the state. My heart goes out to them. I hope their nightmare ends soon. Ironically, I can sum this up with one of Gandhi’s quotes:

“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”

After several weeks of struggling with this piece I managed to finish this yesterday.

This is yet another piece for my ongoing project. A few more weeks and all will be revealed!

Stay tuned for more info and as usual,   this and more of my work can be seen in my gallery.

So here it is, my latest painting.  Full of old-school original Star Trek goodness!

My crazy-big-secret project is in its final stages, and this is actually a part of it.

Stay tuned for more info and as usual,  this and more of my work can be seen in my gallery.

]]> http://mrsidslounge.com/archives/1730/feed 0 http://mrsidslounge.com/archives/2484 http://mrsidslounge.com/archives/2484#comments Wed, 07 Sep 2011 17:28:35 +0000 Mr. Sid http://mrsidslounge.com/?p=2484

Homage to one of my favorite episodes of  Trek – “Mirror Mirror”

Consider this a tale of two Spocks.

This and more of my work can be viewed in my gallery.

 

 

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digital over pencil, 2011

George was my Dutch rabbit and best friend for almost 10 years. This t-shirt design is a tribute to him. This is the latest evolution of the design which has been a work in progress since 1999.

Judy Meets the Landing Party

Digital over pencil, 2011

 This is a sample from a big project I’m working on right now.

Stay tuned for more info…

ps. and as usual this and more art can be seen in my gallery =)

]]> http://mrsidslounge.com/archives/1718/feed 0 http://mrsidslounge.com/archives/1692 http://mrsidslounge.com/archives/1692#comments Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:29:36 +0000 Mr. Sid http://mrsidslounge.com/?p=1692

Gikantikal: Angry Space

This is a reworking of a piece I originally did back in 2005.

I’m a huge sci-fi fan and wanted to have some fun.  Can you identify all the ships?

She and other works  can be seen in my gallery of course.

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After 3 nights of messing around in Illustrator and Photoshop this pin-up is finished.  I originally sketched her back in 2006.  I was going through a bunch of my old sketchbooks recently and decided to see if I could turn it into a finished piece. Additionally, I tried out a bunch of techniques to see if I could speed up my workflow.  Overall I’m happy with the results as well as the things I learned through this exercise.

She and other works  can be seen in my gallery of course.

I’ve got a lot of stuff I’m working on right now… so stay tuned for a big announcement soon.