Originally made with pen while waiting for quick bursts of rain to let up at KBJ’s vacation place in Florida.
Printed in an initial run of 25 on high-quality #100 stock paper sized at 11×17. Signed and numbered on the back this time.
Post this up, stare, and get lost in the maze.
Pick one up here!
New logo!
Decided to make something to coincide with the Made in Nashville event coming up in September. (Don’t worry; the hourglass will return another day.)
For now? It’s kinda fun to be a cartoon.
Round II of the Broadway in Nashville prints are in the shop and available NOW —
I did a round of 50 prints of this painting last fall and they sold out in 8 days. (!) I’m still astounded by it really. But, I’m proud to finally have another round ready for sale!
These are 18 x 24 inches, hand-numbered in a second edition set of 100, and signed on a 1 inch white border around the image. These are printed on a high-quality paper in Franklin, Tn (close enough.).
These are available now for $40. You can order one online, or just email, tweet, or facebook me if you are in the area and want to avoid shipping.
Don’t forget, these make great gifts. Send someone a little piece of this beautiful city!
Nashville, I’m excited to say I’ll be posted up at the second annual Made in Nashville local arts celebration at Centennial Park’s Event Pavilion on September 14th from 11am – 5pm!
This is a free event of local music, local food, local craft beer and spirits, local artists and much more. Should be fun times!
I’ll have the following up for grabs —
I’ve only just heard about this event, but it sounds like a blast. Hope to see you there!
Comic/character practice. These are photos of a (pre-captions) comic made for my old squad at SMS Holdings here in Nashville.
Again, coloring with pencil on black…it can be tricky. Or — you can just color on white, use this guide to know what colors to work with, then invert colors via Photoshop. Like this!
Ever wanted to do a colored pencil illustration on dark paper? Most colors generally won’t show up on a darker medium but you can use this guide to trick the system instead. Just draw on white and invert the image to get the colors you originally pictured. So, here’s the guide —
how to color on black
1. Find the color you hope to achieve in the inverted image (on black).
2. Look to the corresponding square in the original image (on white).
3. Draw with that color on your white or lightly colored medium.
4. Repeat, etc, finish drawing…
5. Scan, load to Photoshop, rasterize layer, and go to “Image” -> “Adjustments” -> “Invert”
Voila!
To get really accurate results based off this key — I made it with the 72-pack of Prismacolor soft-colored pencils (which I could not recommend more!) with colors ordered as they are in the insert included with the pencils. Or, you can just email me if you want to know the exact name/hex#/etc of any of these colors.
EDIT: Tested out this little tool with an abstract drawing here.
Made this wayy back when sometime. Since it had a little resurgence during the Metrostation e.t.i.t.y. video, why not put it out there now.
Tripp called and basically asked if I could run with some skyscrapers and shapes in a “30th century neo tokyo meets F-zero” kinda format. Of course, I was instantly on board.
I sketched up a whole bunch of futuristic towers during which Tripp added the additional instruction to aim for “pretentiously thin and tall.” And that was all it took to catch the vibe. Tripp and Jenna envisioned a specific environment and just asked for additional elements as needed.
From a little over 50 pencil sketches of various geometric abstraction and sci-fi affinity, we selected the strongest items for me to ink, scan, and vector.
It was important to get bold, crisp lines in the inking stage in order to get a strong definitive scan. I then fiddled around with Illustrator’s Live Trace settings to recreate the scanned illustrations as vectors.
Now, Jenna could copy and paste an infinite number of each tower, colorize them separately, resize them, reverse them, distort them to kingdom come. An enormous city could now be built from transformed versions of each building.
Meanwhile, Tripp replicated several of the geometric illustrations in order to design intense patterns and tunnels for the camera (and motorcycle) to race through. I am still catching subtle uses of these drawings every time I watch the video. For example, see if you can recognize the skid marks from the motorcycles tires as it tears through the track from one of the illustrations.
Always a thrill to be a part of another astoundingly deep world devised by the genius directors behind WATTS.
EDIT: Here’s the vimeo version aka way better HD.
Metro Station: “Every Time I Touch You (E.T.I.T.Y)” Official Music Video from WATTS on Vimeo.
Welcome to the blog of Levi Watson, an artist and illustrator who can't stop thinking about geometry, strange worlds, and endless skies.
Art + Illustration + Design by Levi Watson.
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