What Cheer? Brigade and Math The Band poster printing

(Please click on the pictures to view them not blurry)

Here’s a new poster myself and Kimberly Convery designed for the What Cheer? Brigade/Math The Band and The Outfits show at SPACE Gallery on May 25th. We had a ton of fun drawing and printing this poster. Basically we just hung out for a few hours and drew up a design for it, not much thinking ahead or planning out, we figured whatever happens, happens. We did the same while printing it, The digital version above has very specific colors for the text while we left the image area plain, but while printing we played around with different color gradients and changing up the colors a lot so each print is a bit different color wise while the black print is always the same. We finished these last night and couldn’t be happier. They will be for sale the night of the show for $5 or something cheap like that so please pick one up from us! I’ll those the leftovers online afterwords or email me at Krisgjohnsen@gmail.com if you are interested. There is an edition of 100 and they are printed on 70lb kraft paper.

Framed. Art Show at Pinecone+Chickadee

This First Friday, June 7th. I’m putting together a show at Pinecone+Chickadee in Portland, ME called Framed. Is a large group art show featuring all of my favorite local artists and giving them all old frames to work with to create a piece of art. Its that simple! We’ll be open all night for the show and it will be up for the month, please join us!

Our featured artists so far are:
Kris Johnsen, William Schaff, Amy Teh, Bevin Strider Holmberg, Kimberly Convery, Maria Wolff, Jon Allen, Adam Stockman, Katie Uffelman, Rosamaria Consuela, Tim Wilson, Elizabeth Long, Jacob Barnstein, Martha Kearsley, Willow Ross, Molly Steinmetz, Tanner Gasco-Wiggin, Jessica Hovey, Aubin Thomas, Allen West, Meghan Howland, Eric Drzewianowski, Piper Dean, Emily Everett, Leslie Wicks, Hannah Rosengren, Liza Vistoria Miller, Casey Turner, Kate Sullivan-Jones, Mandy Wheeler, Tara Cohen, Anne Buckwalter, Sam Cousins, Jo Ferry, Nick Reddy, Zach Howard, Claire Noonan, Mary Anne Lloyd, Matt Barter, John Jack Powell, Rachel K. Helm, Rachel McDonald, Sarah Perea-Kane, Lauren Montanaro Norster, Milo Moyer-Battick, Mark Marchesi, Kyle Bryant, Ryan LaMunyon, Kate Hargrave, Samantha Rocray, Chelsea Dowd, Jacqueline Dubois, Emilee Harper and many more!!!

Please visit our Facebook event page to RSVP.

isobell album art and promotional material

Here’s the booklet and album artwork for the band isobell‘s new album ‘Sea Spells’. I had a ton of fun making this record cover and experimented a lot while making it. Most of the artwork is watercolor blotches with pen drawings along with photography I took with 2 found images from old Polaroid photos I found flea marketing. Below you can see some process shots of creating the watercolor stains then I scanned them in and blocked certain parts out to create a circle theme throughout the whole packaging. The band is having their cd release party on June 1st at SPACE Gallery. I may or may not be doing visuals projected on the band as they play their set, we’ll see!

Inside digipak

Under cd tray

Booklet Cover

Inside booklet page 1

Booklet page 2

Booklet page 3

Booklet page 4

Booklet page 5

Booklet back

Facebook Header

Process

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Pictures of my finished Metryoshka Doll

This past month I was lucky enough to be part of a great group show at Pinecone+Chickadee in Portland. The store I also work at and put on art shows every now and then. The show featured the artists: Kate Hargrave, Jamie Hogan, Amy Teh, Bevin Holmberg, Ryan Lamunyon, Steve Zittel, Zach Howard, Matt Notterman, Laree Love, Kris Johnsen, Chelsea Dowd and Samantha Rocray. We were all given blank matryoshka dolls to paint whatever we wanted on them and turn them back in to be on display for our First Friday opening. Mine is above, the skull growing into a tree. With all the other artists below. It was a real challenge because I haven’t painted with real paint in awhile and had to basically learn it all again reminding me that I need to paint the undercolors first and the detail last, which I usually do the complete opposite when making a screen print design. I’m really happy with my outcome though and was pretty blown away by everyone else’s and was glad to be part of a different type of art show in Portland using an old medium.

Zach Howard

Ryan LaMunyon

Amy teh

Kate Hargrave

Laree Love

Steve Zittel

Jamie Hogan

Chelsea Dowd

Samantha Rocray

Bevin Holmberg

Stamps!

Got this awesome stamp in the mail today to put my name on smaller prints and things I don’t want to write my name all over. I got this made at Rubber Stamp Champs and was fairly cheap for a nicely made stamp. Now I just want to put this stamp on everything!

isobell promo posters

Recently I created packaging for the Portland, ME band isobell. above are two promo posters for their album release show at SPACE Gallery. If you would like to view all of the album art please go here, otherwise I will post it on this blog soon as soon as I get some good photos of the physical packaging.

Big Thaw on the Wall – First Friday May at Mayo Street Arts

Along with the Russian Nesting Doll Show at Pinecone+Chickadee I’ll also be showing new and newish work at Mayo St. Arts in Portland, ME’s East End along with the very talented Brooke Hoerner and Bevin Holmberg, Bevin is also painting a Doll for the Pinecone+Chickadee show. I hope you’ll come join me at the show as well for I will be in two places at once.

Matryoshka (Russian Nesting Dolls) Art Party on May 3rd at Pinecone+Chickadee

This First Friday at Pinecone+Chickadee I’m one of 12 artists drawing a Matryoshka Doll. Better known as a Russian Nesting Doll, probably because no one can say Matryoska, I don’t even know if I’m saying it right? Either way I’m making one! The picture above is my initial sketch of my idea and below you can see some process shots of my doll so far, I’ll be coating it with lacquer in the coming days and will be on display in the shop all month. it will be for sale along with all of the others for an as yet undetermined cost. I hope you’ll come hang out if you get a change and are in Portland, ME!

Here’s all the show info.

New Watercolor paintings with a bit of screen printing

Yesterday I spent the day taking a break of client work or anything I really SHOULD be working on. I was searching Etsy the other day and came across these older ads that used to run in Playboy. Besides them being pictures of naked ladies I really liked the imagery of them, most were cartoon women in kind of weird positions that made them look nice, but in the end these were all pretty un-natural positions for someone to be in. I played around with one of the images, turned it upside down and added some lines, then decided to make an edition print of it with 4 different watercolor layers. I printed the image on a transparency so I could over lay it on the paper and see where I needed to paint to be under the women’s body. Well the plastic started to touch the paper and ink and smudge it, I went with it and loved the outcome this smudging would do, you can see a closer view in the picture below.

These painting’s are not done yet but will be working on them a bit today and will be planning on showing one of them in an upcoming art show at Pinecone+Chickadee in Portland in a show I’m throwing called Framed. I’ll probably show them online at some point before hand once I can get good picture or scan of them.

Ponomo screen printed business cards

Just printed up this new batch of business cards for my friend Hannah at Ponomo. Which is a Portland based jewelry and leather working company. The pattern on one side of the cards was drawn by me and the text layout by her. These are all one color screen prints with both sides of the card being printed. You can view how I printed 9 cards at once in the 3rd picture, then cut down to size after.