Happy Birthday Jewel!

Imagine that a precocious and weird, quirky kid, just on the cusp of adolescence, jumps over your fence and is heading for your front door. There's a younger, even weirder kid waiting behind the fence with a guy that looks suspiciously like Bill Murray.

As he gets nearer, you see that he's wearing a green corduroy sport jacket with leather patches on the elbows, a red vintage Italian scooter helmet, plaid dress shirt, and orange pants. He has a battered valise covered in travel stickers in one hand and a dark pink box with a bow around it in the other.

He puts the box on your front doorstep and periodically turns to look for signs of life at your window before leaving.

Inside the box there's a bulky pink velum envelope wrapped with a red ribbon, and inside that, there is a folded old gig poster wrapped in pink onion skin. This is that poster.

Happy birthday Jewel, don't overdose on whimsy!

Also there's some delightful French music playing in the background.
EXTREMELY delightful.

Happy Birthday Bob!

2015 is the year of the gig poster for me. While I knew that I was going to be doing illustrations for people's birthdays again this year, it was during a fit of sleeplessness that my tortured brain decided to go with this format. Don't bother looking up any of these fake bands on the internet...but feel free to steal any of the names for your fake garage bands.

So happy birthday Bob! Pile into the van for your gig with all those other bands. House gets a cut of the door and the t-shirt sales...if you don't like it, hit the bricks kid.

This piece's main figure is based on this figure drawing sketch by John Singer Sargent for his 'Joyful Mysteries' mural at the Boston City Public Library.

As this seems to be my way these days, this poster is accompanied by my obsessive need to record my artistic process. Music by Spin Day.