Dan Bones!

new piece i’ve been working on for …quite a while now. i’m really happy with the end result though. i’m pitching this as the cover artwork for the Revolta/Concussion split 7″ that’s currently in the works.

the image is initially based of of my own irrational fears; amputation and wasps. from there, it deals with the sting of disloyalty and subsequently being rendered useless (armless). if i may be so candid, a lotta people that are very important to me have been royally screwing me over lately. so i draw stuff about it. enjoy.

also, Concussion’s “Dried Blood” EP is off getting mastered right now, but we’ve posted the mixed tracks up online at http://myspace.com/concussionbk. give it a listen ‘n come see us rock out ‘n stuff.

click on each piece for the full sized image.

Deth King

Thom Smith, one of my best friends and the drummer for my band Haunted Castle, taught me how to carve linoleum blocks and how to hand pull prints from them on high quality paper. the top image, “Deth King” is a print from my first block. 3×4″ on RFK creme paper. email me at Danbones@danbones.com if you’d like a print, i’ve got a bunch just sitting around.

HasiBGB’s - Dick Jones

Next up is the second collaborative piece between myself and Nick James, better known as Dick Jones. This was the flier artwork for a house party at my apartment (now known best as HasiBGB’s), where I did the linework and Nick did the watercolor work. Nick is one of my favorite artists currently active right now. He also moved to SLC and i miss the hell out of him.

Eastern Goldfinch Wedding

The third image here are the the Eastern Goldfinches with the absurdly floral patterned background. i love love love this piece, and i’m really glad i committed to completing it. This was a wedding present for my step brother Gary, and the Goldfinches are the state bird of New Jersey to represent the best the state has to offer, and the pink peonies are a blessing for a long and happy marriage. I was pretty happy with how this one came out.

Flying Death

Not to dwell on Thom Smith or anything, but the last image is my submission for Thom’s zine, Submit To Satan. This is for the first issue, which has 17 artists from all around the world contributing all sorts of metal themed artwork. I’m really stoked I got to be a part of it, and I’m dying to see the ‘zine when its finished.

Ok, now I’ll dwell on Thom. The dude is one of my best friends in New York and he’s moving to Japan in a week. This means my band Haunted Castle is breaking up, but it also means that two of my closest friends have moved out of the city in the past year. Its not that I’m hard up on friends or nothin’, I’m just awful at travelling to visit friends and keeping in touch in general.
So, we’re having our farewell show at my house (HasiBGB’s) this saturday, 1/09/10 as Thom’s going away party and one last boozed up thrash fest for a band that finally got its shit together and doesn’t suck. so come on over!

So, I’ve got five different drawings i wanna get done within the next week, and I sorta fell into a rut where I’m getting NONE of them done. I’ve also spent the entire week completely out of it. I’ve been in sleepwalk mode for like five days straight now. Total suck. I got this done though.

However! Its been a fairly eventful week anyway, especially when it comes to rockin’ out. First off, Thom ‘n I went to see Converge last friday night. I’ve been trying to see this band for SEVEN YEARS now, and i finally did. Completely blew me away. Say what you want about this band, but this was one of the best live sets I’ve ever seen. They played “The Saddest Day”, they played new stuff, and they covered “Wolverine Blues” by Entombed! Entombed!!! Oh, and Thom ‘n I were in total Booze Tornado mode. Trouble/adventures everywhere.

Monday night, Haunted Castle finished writing our 4th song, sans Doug and vocals.

Haunted Castle - “G.F.T.D. (A.G.T.H.)” rough practice - 033009 from Dan Bones on Vimeo.
We’ve got a pretty solid setlist right now, and I’m extremely amped for our next show, which is in two weeks at the Charleston.

We’re playing with Nanda Devi from Portland, who are super heavy doom metal, and We Are All Savages, who are good friends of ours, and tear stuff up pretty hard. Do me a favor and repost this damned flyer.

WAAS also played Fontana’s in the Lower East Side on Wednesday night, and I took a ton of photos.



They also did an amazing His Hero is Gone cover.

We Are All Savages - Fontana’s - 4/1/09 from Dan Bones on Vimeo.

As if that wasn’t enough of these dudes, Jack Crank also interviewed singer/guitarist Junior for No Gods No Vegetables

Aaaaand to round out things nicely, THE SLEEPIES ARE PLAYING TOMORROW NIGHT!

Stupid jerk lovable bastards. It’s Josh’s birthday soon, so come out tomorrow night and throw beer cans at these guys extra hard. Circle Pits everywhere!

Here’s a little of what I’ve been workin’ on these days.

I am super happy with this piece, and I got a call yesterday afternoon from my mom saying it arrived safe ‘n sound in the mail. AWESOME.

This is the half finished version I started in photoshop, scrapped, and have since redone entirely in watercolor.

What do these two pieces have in common? They’re both birthday presents! I’ll post up the Watercolor version of this as soon as i get a decent photo of it. too big to scan properly…

One more;

This was a piece i had initially started for the Rat Pack Hustle sprint series i throw in the Fall. I’ve since changed focus and i’m really really excited to see this one when its done.

Anyway, I’ve got a bunch of things in the works at the moment, so I should have steady updates for at least the next month. Also, I’ve been regularly updating my Chainsaw Portraits, which never gets old for me.

So, I’ve finally gotten around to re-exporting a bunch of my old film and animation work from college, and little by little I’ll be uploading the brunt of it to this Vimeo.com account I’ve got.

So far I have the first piece I ever animated and the last piece I’ve animated to date up as low res versions. “Nintendo Chower” was done with pencil and pen in a 3×5″ flip book in early 2004, and “The Haunted Ghost Factory” was my final senior project I did over the course of a full semester. I had help with the lighting and filming from my good friends Tim Whitney and Louie Tremblay, and all of the audio design was done by Chris Shanley (the audio was exported extremely low).

If you’re on my facebook account anytime soon, you can find a photoset of the construction process for the Haunted Ghost Factory.

In the next post, i’ll go into how Nick James and I have fiiiiiinally collaborated together on a watercolor/pen ‘n ink piece loosely titled “Dick Jones Does Birthday Parties”, I’ve got new pieces done for fun and new pieces done for class and an awful lot more old animation to post up in the next few weeks, so keep checking back here and I’ll have all sorts of fun stuff for you.

-Dan

College!!!

So, I graduated Emerson College with a film degree in ‘06, and I loved every minute of it. …of college. Graduation was cool too, ’cause John Kerry shook my hand when i got my diploma- oh whatever. The point is that college was an amazing point in my life where I could stay incredibly busy and incredibly productive while ruining my financial life. Hell yeah!

Lately I’ve been gettin’ a hankerin’ for a little more structure and direction in my artwork, and my friend Josh from The Sleepies got me into the idea of Continuing Ed courses at the School of Visual Arts. These courses are less than $500 to enroll for a semester. I mean, that’s not really easy money, but considering its actually less that what i pay each month in student loans right now, I might as well. Thus, me taking Illustration Portfolio has happened.

Here’s what I’ve done in my first week.

each one is 5×7″ micron pen and prismacolor/copic marker. This week I’ll be takin’ that top on there and expanding it into a larger full color piece as my second assignment. That bottom one there was just sorta… not good. However, it led to a total overhaul of concept, and has now become this!

I’ve got a couple other pieces i’m workin’ on, and I’m gonna get better about updatin’ this thing here.

-bones