van o the week "Zodiac"

Xmas '97

With Stace and Mike somewhere in Ottawa back in '97.
I know I'm handsome!

Xmas day egge and booze blog

merry xmas

van o the week "vantana"

everyone likes books!

If you care, some do some don't but I figured for the ones who do I would give ya a little heads up. These are a few recent books I have had my works featured in amongst other artists.
Speedseekers just hit bookstore shelves this month and was a labour of love for our pal Alexandra Lier and loaded with the writings of none other than my pal and fellow Gearhead magazine writer Kevin Thomson.

jones big ass storage

Got this from my buddy Adam.

standard issue

Standard Issue zine.
Lets start with the cover of #4.
"Cheaper than sniffing markers and almost half as awesome!"
And follow up with what you can expect inside their awesomely independent photo copied covers. (on stolen paper none the less.)
How to fight
Fake Punks
Lotery numbers
poo transplants
Manliness
Single moms
cockroaches
This is the stuff greatness is made of. Oriana and I laughed our faces off. The writing is great and the art is so good/bad it hurts.
my first introduction was this from their facebook page:
All you need to know about Standard iSsue Trainwreck Of-A-Magazine is:
-It's from Ottawa, Canada;
-It's the illegitimate love child of the magazines PUNK, THRASHER and MAD;
-It's free and you can have one, and;
-The internet is lame/for kooks.
Check out Standardissuemag.com
Get your $3 shipping together and e mail Ben at jensen_ben@hotmail.com

Large, Glossy and snobby magazines take note, you might open your eyes one day and realise you've been flanked!

van o the week "the dodge house"

old lady wall paper

Just finished this print.
It will be available after the show at the Secret Serpents

james hetfield's cigar store indian

James Hetfield Hired me to paint his fibreglass cigar store Indian this fall so I decided to document it.
That's when my pal Jon Bastien came in with his Super 8 cam and editing skills. (Thanks bro!)
The Indian it's self was in ruff shape and the finish quite porous so I teemed up with my pal Rolfe Britain to smooth it all out, Bondo and shoot the flake. Unfortunately I didn't get any shots of the airbrushing and candy process.
After the initial paint I broke out the 1-shot and went to work.

van of the week rolling thunder

I was flipping threw my van archives and came across this one.
I figured it was the perfect van post for this week to go with the Cigar store Indian video. (posting today)

rip jorrest j. ackerman aka the acker monster

Forrest J Ackerman spent a lifetime amassing what has been called the world's largest personal collection of sci-fi, monster and fantasy memorabilia.
He was better know for the Famous Monsters Of Filmland magazine.
Forry was 92.

Here is an online interview.
Forrest J Akerman

van o the week "jaguar"

shrunken head gift set

Each year around the holidays I make a little limited item.
This year I decided to make the decanter/mug/skateboard/shelf set.
I figured this would be a good thing to do as the decanters are on there last run and will most likely be out of stock sometime in '09. The set is limited to 100 signed and numbered.
The sets are $100 plus shipping and you can get them at secretserpents

plymouth

satellite update

Who cares.

van o the week "jack vaniels"

lehi

the fantasy art of jeff easley

The fantasy art of Jeff Easley kicks ass. He is yet another artist who's book covers burned themselves into my brain as a kid. Sure D&D gets a horrible wrap amongst, well, everybody but you can not ignore Jeff's incredible artwork on the covers of lots of these books.

Fact
Some of his notable works include the cover art of the 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons incarnations of the Monster Manual II, Unearthed Arcana, and Oriental Adventures as well as the 2nd edition core books (the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monstrous Manual). He also provided the artwork for Italian power metal band Rhapsody of Fire's 2006 album Triumph or Agony.

more than meets the eye

Here is the finished poster of the black line I posted earlier.
Obviously It's my take on a Transformer. Here is the the box art that influenced the poster layout.

the devil and daniel johnston

The Devil and Daniel Johnston
What a great film/documentary...lets call it a movie.
It came out in '06 but I just got a chance to watch it tonight.
Que this up on your net flix!
http://www.sonyclassics.com/devilanddaniel/

fast times the tv show

Yup, they actually did a spin off TV series. And yes, it was bad and only lasted one season. Doesn't have any of the actors from the movie 'cept a few teachers and Mr. Hand. But hey, It wasn't that bad, I mean compared to what was on early evening TV in the 80's. Most people don't remember this and it has never been back in syndicate let alone put to VHS or DVD, at least not as far as I know.
So every once in a wile I do a little google search for it and about a month ago up it pops at www.classics2dvd.com
OK, so I haven't seen this show since the mid 80's and who is the first person I recognise, Lee Ving of FEAR, haha, amazing! So yes, it's worth the $12 for a shit TV to VHS to DVD copy and even though it's cheesy it's still kinda fun to watch.
for more info visit Fast Times

new black line

New poster in the works. I've been wanting to do a Old school Transformers drawing for a long time now. I remember being a kid showing my dad a transformer I bough and him commenting on how cool the box art looked, and that stuck with me. They had great packaging and artwork. I won't even get into the new movie, it doesn't exist to me, I put me to sleep. They look like magnet stick-men rolled in smashed VCR parts. So when I got asked to do this Poster with an AC/DC Trans-Am twist I came up with this.

my car club

Kozik asked me to join his car club today. A club where late 60's Mopars rule. And with a logo like that? Fuck yeah I'm in.

interior

Ya-ya, I know to most people it's kinda boring but I figure it's like a monthly car update. Lot's has happened to the Satellite in the last month but not to many photos.
Basically in a nut shell I got my pal Scott Mugford of Blue Collar Customs Sacramento on board to help with my motor. Under Scott's guidance we dropped the virgin block off at racing legend Rex Hutchison of Rex Hutchison's Racing Engines where Rex and his team went to work on it. Scott is now in the process of building it, more on that later. Wile that part of the car is getting it's attention I've been hard at work in my garage installing my rebuilt everything, dash, steering column, heater box and upholstery. Not to mention the grill and bumpers, she's staring to look like a car again.

van o the week "high country"

wham o wheeliebar

I first saw this commercial a few years back when it was passed around by a friend.
The fine folks at Crown Cycles have my shruneknHead crate bike in production. Not sure when it will be out (These things take time!) but I'll post the prototypes here soon.

hairy hornes and coffee with bela

Famous Monsters:
"A demon of the mind conjured up in one of Lugosi's rarest films I LED TWO LIVES"
And me in the morning after a few cups of coffee.

oh shit

Go for his ankle man, the ankle!!!

Monsters 10 12 '08

You know what, I though about it and I don't really feel like doing monster of the week cause I'm kinda lazy this week. So I'm just going to post what ever junk up here I feel like. Maybe I'll post a monster or some shit next week, maybe, we'll see how I feel K? I'm also thinking of buying a He Man play set on E bay. I know when it comes in the mail I'll be stoked and then I'll be like "Where the fuck am I going to put this shit" and then I'll make a spot and I'll stare at it for a long time and make stupid voices into the snake mountain microphone like I did when I was a kid and then I'll get board of it but it will still look cool on my shelf. Can't wait to get it.

friend profile: trevor borrens

Friend profile:Trevor Borrens
Trev is a working artist that hails from Ottawa Canada.
He plays drums like Animal from the Muppets and has a lump on his head he refused to get removed. I first met Trevor in grade school when I got sent to the principals office. He was also in shit and waiting to see the principal.
We've been friends ever since.

Q: What is your favorite He-man villain and why?
Trevor: Was there ever a movie or a video game or something where He-Man and Skeletor and all of them beat the shit out of Lion-O and those other wankers from the thunder cats? I think I remember that, or maybe it was just from me playing when I was a kid. Ether way, I love that fucking movie/video game. I think a couple of the parts that made up Voltron were in it too.
I hate to choose the obvious but, my favorite He-Man villain was always Skeletor. His face is a fucking skull! It is pretty hard to compete with that.The only bad thing you could say about the guy is that maybe his loincloth is a little to revealing.
Q: Just why?
T: Infinite monkeys typing on infinite keyboards.
Q: What do you hate?
T: Large groups of people, and running out of pot
Q: What do you like?
T: Pot
Q: What do you drive?
T: I don't

Dancing Magnets

van o the week "covered wagon"

Great paint.

ugly earwig baby by trev

Another great new creation from Trev.
Contact him about his art at http://www.myspace.com/trevorborrens

scared stiff

I adore this artwork.
The games is fun too but not as cool at Elvira and the party monsters.

some old shit

Here is some old art I said I would post. All scanned, no filters, as is. These things used to take a wile, yup. It's all pencil/blue pen and Micron ink pens on 8 1/2 11 typewriter paper or now called printer paper. The second one, the Frankenstein I remember doing lightning fast in Montreal wile waiting for a friend to show up before we hit the bars. The 66sick just fit on the page and was one of the last ones in this format, it took a few days but there is nothing I don't like about it. The roughest is the tiki "two lane blacktop car. I did that one for producer Bob Rock. Look at how it's all chopped together on 3 pieces of paper. You would never know it if you saw the finished logo. I don't know why I'm posting this stuff, I guess it's cool to look back on it a little. Even though it's primitive as fuck, I still dig it. It's also a reminder to me, to not be so stubborn about tying new techniques. I didn't want to change my format cause it worked so well for me and I felt it was "my thing" boy I'm glad I use a brush now.
Thanks for reading/looking.

PS
Oh, I should mention that my styles and techniques have been totally forged from ignorance along with the inspiration and motivation to not work in at another Arbys, Pizza Hut (Fuck you Pizza hut Bells corners Ottawa!) or KFC ever again, even tho I liked the free food and stupid uniforms. Art school? Hell I never went to high school!

super touch shepard fairey interview

Jamie O'shea has a killer web site Super Touch and he has a great interview with Shepard Fairey about his campain poster for Barack Obama. I though this was realy cool and wanted to share it with the readers of my blog.
Read the interview here

monster of the week (tor johnson)

Tor Johnson Made a great monster. I don't know what else to say?

van o the week "hornet"

art

No point, just a Gremmie sketch and ink in the raw, no filters or clean up.
Did it and liked it that way. I've become obsessed with clean art and sometimes it's nice to leave the pencil lines in and do a quick ruff brush job. I'll post some of my older work this week.
I used to do everything on 8 1/2 by 11 type paper that was dirty yet very clean considering the tools I was using. I think years of raw materials helped mold my black line into what it is today. (what ever that is. better?)

sudsy rocks the theremin

The Ramshackle Romeos with guest Mr.Lucky last night at the Rite spot San Francisco.
Theremin one of the earliest electronic musical instruments.

'75 dodge van

happy halloween

London After Midnight.
Lon Chaney
The famous lost monster film.

ben cooper halloween costume

Ahhh, the good old days, when you could go to the local department store and pic threw hundreds of vinyl Ben Cooper Halloween costumes to make the big decision "should I be Han Solo or Chewbacca this year?" And who cares? Fuck it cause you'll still cut your tongue on the breathing hole!" Ben Cooper made stupid great costumes with that really basic but cool and colorful artwork. His box set costumes now command big bucks on the old e bay but I still see them at flee markets from time to time. The Frankenstein above is from my collection, it's pretty beat up but but I'm glad to still have it.
Dear Ben Cooper, I don't know what it is that I like so much about your crappy art buy man I sure love it!

out of the archive "box art/monster games"

As my blog goes on posts are getting buried deep. Every once in a wile I'm going to yank something out of the archive and dust it off with a repost. some things I think are to cool and deserve a repost.
Let's face it, not everyone has a year to read threw all this useless pop culture junk.
This time around I chose my monster game collection. Here are just but a select few from my collection. Another addition to Halloween week. Enjoy!

Oh, And do feel free to dig threw the archive, there is lots of tresure burried there!

"Originally on WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 2008"
Another obsession of mine is vintage box art, specifically monster art.
I've found some pretty cool monster games over the years at garage sales and flea markets.
Aside from the Roth and Weirdo model kit boxes I would have to say my favorite art is the THINGMAKER series.
You can still find them on e bay but they have become quite pricey.
The Green Ghost Game has one of the best box covers.
It has also recently been re released.
Here are a few pics from my collection.