DVD for Death Metal Band

In today's post we will go back about ten years to a project from my days as a graphic art student at our underrated local community college. This DVD cover and disc art was one of my earliest attempts at working with Photoshop. The assignment required us to make a DVD cover for any type of movie we desired as long as it was an original idea. I decided to make mine a cover for a fictitious death metal band with the most inappropriate name I could think of, "Fetal Position".  On the front cover I used a promotional photo of an actual metal band that would not be easily recognizable here in the States. (Mega bonus points if anyone can name the real band. I'll give you a hint; their name begins with an "S".) I made the original band photo look creepy by posterizing the image, and then changing the original colors to a gray scale. It was also fun to make the eyes glow with evil. 

What I really need to do at some point is re-consider the band logo as it is truly a fail. But it was the best I could do back then with my lack of knowledge, and the amount of time I had. The front cover was intentionally understated with the back cover photo being warm and active. My favorite part of this project was creating the song titles which are rather Spinal Tap-ish; and the warping guitar on the disc itself. 

Redneck Employment Program

Traditionally, Country & Western is an uncomplicated, and uncluttered style of music that requires only a few instruments. One of the signature attributes of C&W is the use of space within the song composition. This being true it has always puzzled me that in many C&W bands there are a plethora of guitar players. Far more than necessary. Multitudes and minimalism are in opposition to each other and yet there is a strong tendency to fill the stage with guys holding "ghee-tarz". This idea may be a holdover from back in the days when playing music was a big social activity, so the more participants the better. The fun and challenging part about drawing this cartoon was creating a different look for each one of the extraneous guitarists. 

The Rock, Metal, and Pop genres have their own set of quirks as well and literally beg for parody. This has been brilliantly accomplished by the likes of: Frank Zappa, Spinal Tap, Weird Al, Tenacious D, and most recently Steel Panthers.

The approaching 2nd anniversary of BuckToonz blog has me feeling a bit magnanimous today-- so here is a bonus cartoon. This toon was originally created in the 90s for submission to a music magazine. The editors enjoyed my effort but there was no room for unsolicited work. I have left it unaltered in it's original, glorious, black & white. Enjoy.

Fine Art

This semester I have been taking an Art History class that has helped me to have a greater understanding of fine art. It has also revealed some oddities. Such as painters in certain eras, giving a title to their works that is blatantly obvious to the viewer. This week's cartoon "Nude Woman on Couch with Guitar” is an example of that. A more interesting title might be, “My Mistress with Her Favorite Guitar”. Now isn't that better? We are given a little more information, and it seems less condescending. But then there is the opposite approach which is to not name a painting at all by using “Untitled”.  I realize that titles imply meanings, and some artists may not want to put  preconceived ideas into the viewer's mind. But I think "Untitled" gets over used, and I find that a bit lazy.  Do not worry art world, I'm quite capable of deriving my own meanings from art works regardless of the given title. How about this; an artist gets to name just one of their works “Untitled”,  and they can do this one time in every media that they work in. After that, they have to commit to actually naming what they create.

However, beyond an obvious title or no title at all, there is then supposedly all sorts of symbolic imagery loaded into a painting. Perhaps so much so that only an art historian can decipher it for you--yikes! To loosely paraphrase Freud, can't a painting, be just a painting? Are there some people in the art world who want to over complicate things in order to seem smart, and important? That would not be surprizing as it is human nature to do so. But perhaps I'm still a Neanderthal when it comes to all this, and I may develop a different opinion as I go further down the art history road....next semester.

I encourage people to read Tom Wolfe’s, The Painted Word.  It’s a fast, and fun read that gives valuable insight into the peculiar world of modern art.