ARRUK ON FLAPJACKS

The Four Armed Terror  by Scott Redding  -  8.5 x 11 injet print

I attended the Central Canada Comic Con here in Winnipeg this past weekend. I met a lot of great artists and ended up with a couple of fun pieces of artwork. 

The Four Armed Terror I just found out is from a story in Jimmy Olsen #137 illustrated by Jack Kirby. I gotta look for this one. Arruk!

The printing process for the Flapjack Monster is one I had never heard of before. It was big in Japan for the past 25 years but has dwindled and found a new home in the DIY folks here. It's called Gocco and is a cross between screen printing and rubber stamping. Great for small prints and cards I gather. Oh and the artist is no other than one half of Grumble Toys who make cute vinyl monsters. Check out the link below. 

  

Flapjack Monster by Chris Bryan - 8.5 x 11 Gocco print -  No.8 of 24

MASH-UPS

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

I can't throw anything out, so the vine which was attached to the tomato I bought, was left on the kitchen table to dry. Then I noticed what perfect arms and legs it had. "I've got the perfect head for you, little guy, but where was it?" It took six months before I came across it. (I don't look for things anymore at the studio, I just have to come across it again.) As the vine dried up more its shape changed and the lovely green changed to brown so I painted him up nice and green again. Don't get scared. 

 

Here is the Mars-1 figure that I was saying I did not like so much because it seemed that the head was missing. There was a stump but no head.  Then I so happened to find a cowboy guy with no head....and their colors were so perfect for each other. More exciting than the Cowboys and Aliens film, wouldn't'cha say? 

INVISIBLE PLAN

These are the most incredible vinyl figures I own! Designed by the out of this world artist/ painter MARS-1 and produced through the company Strangeco in 2006. I am showing 9 of the 12 in the set which is called INVISIBLE PLAN. There is a set in each of the two color fields, brown or green. The one drawback or mystery (whatever you prefer) is that you did not know which one you were purchasing when you bought a box. The only thing you could do is feel the weight of the box to see if you have a larger figure or smaller figure. I only have 10 of them because of this. I was pretty lucky using this method and only had a couple doubles. 

I am only unhappy with one of the figures that I have  because it seems that it is missing a head. I know this is a weird statement because it's not as if the rest of them are normal figures. These are certainly way out of the box more so than anything I have seen. This one below is one of my favorites because it is of the regular two inch size like a lot the other small plastic figures such as army guys or cowboys and indians, so amongst them all this figure is truly alien.

  

Merinuk's Huge Brains

©2011 Darren Merinuk - 11 x 17 poster

Aside from Merinuk's poster making abilities he may also have a huge brain. I'm not sure. I do know that he does have a huge collection of posters and vinyl covers that he's made throughout the years.

 

Here are a couple fabulous posters worthy of Smashmonster. The Misfists poster is from last year and my copy is a huge silk screen that I was lucky enough to stumble across while visiting my friend Frieso Boning who owns Omniscreen, who are the ones that printed this. The Brains is from right now and is all over Winnipeg as a 11 x 17 poster. I hope there is a large SS version as well. Love that Yellow, Green and Black combo. Good job! You can find Darren on Facebook.

©2010 Darren Merinuk - 15.25 x 23 in. -3 color silk screen - printed by Omniscreen

 

Minotaur_Hong_Kong_Phooey

No one told me Hong Kong would be like this!

©2011 Don Bindas  - acrylic on wood - 26 x 26 inches  

Yay, I own this panting and I LOVE it!

 

Its got COLOR smashing your brain, It's got ACTION to to keep you on your toes, it's got VICTORY to keep you happy & it's got MYSTERY to get you thinking!

 

Well it's got me thinking anyway. I don't think the artist will agree with me, but I think these two characters look pretty happy together. I think they're a team and ready to chop and strangle some heads. They just pretend to fight, then when the enemy gets curious enough and decides to pick sides and help out to eliminate one of these dudes, POW! The enemy is no more.

     

This is what Don Bindas has to say -

"The minotaur painting (I don't remember the title but it probably seems inappropriate at first)... Hmmm. It originally started out as a painting about Canadian troops disembarking in Hong Kong during WWII but things changed about halfway through and it just got silly after that. It is mixed media. There is a lot of tissue paper incorporated in it as well as cheap acrylic paint used for textural purposes and it is painted on top of a thin plywood (balsaboard?). I used to play dungeons and dragons so maybe there is some of that leaking out. In addition to history and mysteries, have read a lot of fantasy and science fiction, some of which was dreadful, and that may also be influencing me."

 

"Is there any deeper message underlaying the piece? Possibly but if so it hasn't revealed itself to me. I often wonder why I am painting something only to understand it after it's finished. Sometimes there is humour or playfulness but there can be a deeper or darker aspect to it as well. Some are still too personal for me to discuss."

Don Bindas is my friend and I feel is turning into a fine painter who I can see has loads of fun. Through his wacky ideas and methods he works up a storm, then like a tornado, his work leaves your brain all twisted and scattered across the room trying to find its way back to sanity. 

I CRUSH YOU! ... or did he say I love you?

We all know who this is really supposed to be! Even though it is not technically Godzilla  sans atomic breath and glowing back fins, but what other reptillian monster towers over skyscrapers, rips them in two like Lego, has a series of jets flying overhead him and can take a good wollup of ammo fire and still smile for the camera? Well at least I always thought of this Black Light poster as Godzilla, and still do. There are two posters that I take everywhere. The Roger Dean poster that came with the first art book I ever bought myself called Views and this poster called Crusher. From my bedroom studio at 14 to my present studio at 47, and every place in between, they are up on my wall.

  

Ben Grimm as the THING from The Fantastic Four 

I love comic books and I used to copy pictures from them a lot when I was a kid. It's a good exercise for eye/hand coordination. When I bought my first technical drawing ink pens, I continued to copy, but straight without any underlying framework or sketching with the pencil first and certainly without tracing..... and no whiteout!  I look back and think that it must be someone else, but there were a few others drawings done at that time with my name on it.

  

The Thing -  1977/78 - Staedtler technical pen/ink on paper - 8.5 x 11 in. 

Godzilla Weekend

Here are a couple new pieces of monster art I did during my GODZILLA WEEKEND 2011. It was a long weekend and also the symbolic end of summer, so I wanted to get as much childs' play as I could into it. Not that I ever needed an excuse in the past mind you, but nobody was really around the house this weekend so I immersed myself in all things Godzilla such as watching the movies Godzilla Tokyo S.O.S and Godzilla Vs Megaguirus. As a kid who did not love going to matinees? I was also looking through and reading past issues of G-Fan Magazine and of course I was sketching and drawing. I was kinda hoping to get a Rodan or Mothra painting done but I did have some real life stuff to attend to.  At any rate I had a lot of fun and created some fun art. I almost even made myself some t-shirts to commemorate the weekend.