I designed the 2016 International Nerdlesque Festival poster!

Happy to announce that I'm doing the art for The 2nd International Nerdlesque Festival this April 1st and 2nd in NYC! I had so much fun at the 1st one two years ago that I offered to do the artwork for the next Fest- and here I am! The last festival had so many amazing performances, I was thoroughly impressed. I highly suggest that if you are a fan of pop culture, nerdy stuff and sexy burlesque performances you should def come out to this show! I will also be vending at the festival both nights, so if you come out be sure to swing by my table and check out all my pinup goodies! 

The final versions:

Friday 4/1/15 at Webster Hall

Saturday 4/2/15 at Le Poisson Rouge

Progress pics:

My inspiration for the flyer came from 80's arcade art. I've been a fan of this type of art all my life, a good chunk of my adolescence was spent at the local arcades they had in the Maryland suburbs.

Some of the art I collected for inspiration.

I tried to break down the elements of my favorite pieces- limited palettes, rounded borders and starbursts were definitely takeaways. Even still I would love to do more artwork in this style. I think it's criminally under appreciated nowadays- there's such a masterful incorporation of stripes and geometric shapes. Total retro-futristic stuff going on. Love it. I still have so much to learn about harnessing it's aesthetic for my own work.

My initial sketch. I knew right off the bat that I wanted a Statue of Liberty figure with a burlesquey/sci-fi spin- adding a bubble helmet, torch scepter and upgrading her stone tablet to a electronic one.



After I got my initial sketch down, I scan it into Photoshop and adjust proportions and posing. I then lighten all my linework to a non-photo blue, and print out the sketch on bristol or card stock copy paper. I then start a second more refined drawing on top of the blue lined sketch, refining my linework and starting to focus on the fine details like her hair, face, and the flow of the dress. The benefit of the blue lined printout under the drawing is that it's eraser-proof, so it's almost like an analog save. There have been too many times in my history of drawing where I thought I should erased something and do it better, only to find out that the version I drew 2-3 erases ago was perfect and I should have just left it alone. When I draw I use a 2H pencil for my layouts (the H stands for hard, it gives a lighter line on the paper) and then go back in to details with an HB pencil (which is somewhat darker, the B stands for bold).



After I have my pencils where I want them, I take a sheet of vellum and tape it over top of my pencils so I can start inking. I tend to always use Micron pens- I've used them since high school and they're one of my favorite brands. They're easy to get ahold of and reasonably priced, plus it's just what I'm used to working in. 

Left- inks right after scanning, Right- inks after cleanup

After I finish inking I scan Space Princess Statue of Liberty into my computer, usually at 300-400 dpi and open her up in Photoshop. Make sure she's whatever size you need her to be- for this poster I will be working in 11x17". Here I start to clean up the linework- erasing any screw ups I may have made on the actual inks and use the Level Tool (Ctrl + L) to bump up the contrast so the lines are more clear. I also go in with the Dodge (set to Highlights at 20% exposure) and Burn (set to Shadows at 50% exposure) tools to eliminate any shadows from scanning the vellum and to darken any fine lines that were starting to grey out. Once I get my line work clear enough, I go to Image > Adjustments > Threshold to make the linework all a sharp, solid black. This may require some adjustments of the slider bar and you may even need to go back yet again and color in some lines that have gaps in them. Once I feel happy with my inks I start my coloring process.

**Depending on how tight my deadline is- I may go even further with cleaning up my inks by importing them over to Illustrator and vectorizing them, then individually adjusting each Bézier curve with the Pen tool. I actually have a segment on how I do this here on Natalie Kin's It's a Draw! video tutorial series. However be warned, it can easily add at least another day to your work and I only suggest it for very clean, open, graphic drawings free of any textures like hatching, stippling, etc.



Wee! Coloring time! So now that our inks are all pretty and sleek and flat black, I start making my layers for coloring. For such a simple palette, I only really worked in about 10 layers for the figure, which I laid out in this GIF:



One of these days I'll break down my coloring methods even further, but that's a progress blog post for another day.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯



Now for the HARD PART.



After I got my figure and my palette sorted I started sketching out in Photoshop what I want the actual poster to look like. At the time I didn't have all the information of where the Festival was being held, or when, or any of that good stuff, so I concentrated on the upper 2/3rds of the poster. This is usually how I lay out all of my posters- scribbling in an inordinate amount of layers, squashing and stretching elements to make them fit in various spots. I have to laugh when people think the hardest part of the poster for me is drawing the main figure, when drawing cute girls is (for me, at least) second nature at this point. It's actually all the typography, design elements and general composition that drive me to beat my head against the wall.



Then I start designing my type! For this part, I open up Illustrator and start looking at fonts (of which my husband and I have about 26,000…). I eventually settled on using two that reflected the retro sci-fi feel I was going for and started building my elements and configuring them into something that starts to resemble my initial poster sketch. (This is a good article on combining fonts.) I tend to build my posters in Photoshop rather than entirely in Illustrator, which people like my husband find mind boggling, but it's what I'm most comfortable in and I feel it's more organic. Plus I'm more familiar with making things look how I want to in Photoshop versus Illustrator. I still however import the elements and type I built from Illustrator- I NEVER use the type tool in Photoshop. It's bush league. You can't scale, kern or properly space your type without it looking like ass. So you shouldn't either, so please do yourself a favor and learn how to use Illustrator if you're going to be dealing with type.



After a couple of days of arranging, then staring, then rearranging, then staring some more I finally got my poster to look like the design I had in my brain and was super pleased with the result. These two last pics are of the early draft before I got all of the proper info- which you can see at the top of this entry. I hope that if you're in the NYC area you'll come by for what is going to be a super fun and amazing show. I went to the first one and was thoroughly impressed (hence why I wanted to be part of the next one!)

Visionary Tattoo Fest is THIS WEEKEND YOU GUYS!

Meanwhile, on a billboard in New Jersey...

Visionary Tattoo Art Festival is THIS WEEKEND, July 26th-28th in Asbury Park, New Jersey!

I'm a GUEST! And I'm selling stuff! 

I designed the flyer for this year!

I hope I see you there!!

There's also a pinup contest, ladies!!

The Visionary Tattoo Arts Festival!

Check it out, all! I did the flyer for the Visionary Tattoo Art Festival going on in July at Asbury Park, NJ and will also be a guest artist all weekend and will be vending my wares as well as Little Asian Sweatshop's. I hope to see you there!

I completed this flyer in about a week and a half, the deadline was pretty tight with the shop that runs the show getting approval for it to go on later than normal because of damage to the beach from Hurricane Sandy. So this is the 'unfortunate' result of me being bad at time management and artwork negotiations/consultations with friends who are fans whose enthusiasm for my work is contagious. Especially when they're feeling my ideas and give me lots of creative control. Before I've put pen to paper I've promised them (and myself) the moon and stars because you know, I'm THE Paige Pumphrey! I can do MAGIC! AND it involves impressing a subculture from which I at one point in my life felt excluded from? Oh MAN, ALL THE BUTTONS.

We wanted to make the branding of the Festival more light and beachy and family-friendly as opposed to previous years where it had a more 'come out and get some nails in your dick/metallll wooooooo!' vibe. After being shown examples of the beautiful facade of the Convention Hall, with it's Victorian sea monsters and copper plating, I was inspired to make the design an early 20th century/Victorian themed beach poster. Looking at the works of JC Leyendecker, an all-time favorite artist of mine, as well as the art and feel of the Battleship Bay area of Bioshock: Infinite (which my husband has just arrived at in the game) I knew I had quite an undertaking. My clients also really liked the layout of my Saints and Sinners flyer for my artshow a couple years back- of having two characters framed by very detailed typography. We chose a sword-swallowing mermaid and the Asbury Park mascot Tillie (who is similar to the Coney Island funny face) in old-timey swimwear to be the 'hosts' of the flyer.

Rough sketches of the mermaid and Tillie.

Tight pencils.

Inks. (Scanned in Photoshop.)

Flat colors.

Slowly starting to lay out the flyer. Originally I was going to use Victorian clipart to save time, my husband however looking over my shoulder suggested it would look soooo much better if I drew all the filigree and framework out. Begrudgingly I agreed with him.

Printing out what I had at 40% opacity, I drew out all the elements by hand- the banners, the gold railing, the sun-shaped caption for the date. I even added a sea monster as a call back to the building facade.

Scanning the sketches for the elements, I traced and built them out of vector shapes in Illustrator, then ported them over to Photoshop for placement on the actual flyer. You can notice some of the changes elements went through during the process.

Coloring in all the elements individually, adding shading, texture and slowly figuring out my palette. In the end the only clipart I ended up using was the background filigree and the seashells on the the gold railing. 

GOLDMINE shopping party! 5/19/13

The Gemini & Scorpio loft!

Heads up New York people! I'll be vending at Gemini & Scorpio's GOLDMINE shopping party in Brooklyn this Sunday, May 19th from 1-8pm! I'll have a bunch of fresh merch and some Little Asian Sweatshop hairflowers available for purchase!

Here's a sneak peek of some of the goodies I'll have!

New prints!

Bracelets!

SO MANY MAGNETS!

And a fresh new banner!

Here's the info from the Facebook invite! The address is not public so you HAVE TO RSVP on the Gemini & Scorpio event page. Click here to do so!

Sun May 19, 1pm-8pm, FREE / VIP preview 12-1pm, $10Kickstarter backers get in FREE to VIP preview: http://bit.ly/GS_loftAt the G&S loft in Gowanus, BKAddress with RSVP: http://www.geminiandscorpio.com/events.htmlFB: https://www.facebook.com/events/447177058690897
Have you ever wanted to shop (or at least rifle through) Miss Scorpio's closet? This is your chance. She's teaming up with burlesque bombshell Veronica Varlow, a fellow dress-up addict, for some spring cleaning and fundraising for their respective homes. You already know about the Gemini & Scorpio Loft, our art space project. Veronica's upstate home burned down, and she's rebuilding from scratch.
In addition, some of the most fabulous ladies of the burlesque, cabaret, and design world will be opening their closets and displaying their magnificent contents for your purchase -- and sharing their fierce handmade items with you. Think one-of-a-kind vintage, corsets and crinolines, feathers and fascinators, elbow-length fingerless leather gloves, and lots and lots of sparkles. Of course even divas have days off, so there will be plenty of casual wear alongside costume and vintage pieces. Mimosas and music, too; plus lounging on our giant roof. All G&S Loft Kickstarter backers get access to the VIP preview.
Featuring the handmade designs of:6362 Metaforce - hip utility belts for festivals and beyond -http://6362metaforce.com/Anne Arden McDonald - lace, sea creatures and natural elements in hand-cast silver - http://www.etsy.com/shop/ardent1Electric Candy - laser-cut blacklight-reactive fierce acrylic party wear -http://www.electriccandycouture.com/Kita St. Cyr - evening gowns, jewelry and rhinestone encrusted shoesLamia Gloves - the fingerless leather gloves of choice for NYC party people - http://www.lamiadesign.com/Liberace Nation - drapey slinky luxe handmade unisex clothing -http://www.etsy.com/shop/LiberaceNationMake Fun Studio - when you need the perfect circus leotard or stilt pants -http://www.makefunstudio.com/Paigey Pumphrey - delightful pinup illustrations enjoyed by ladies and gents alike - http://www.theartofpaigey.com/Pinkitrix - whimsical costumery and colorful headpieces -http://www.facebook.com/PartywearByPinkitrixSarah Sparkles - hand-crafted stone & crystal jewelry - http://www.sarahsparkles.com/Wheylan Dean Ford - Gothic-Victorian gogo couture and leather accessories - http://www.etsy.com/shop/WheylanDesignsPlus Ali Luminescent - representing a handful of international designers whose work you can only get through her directly -http://aliluminescent.com/
===================To get event invites from us on FB, join the group:https://www.facebook.com/groups/41331183538To get invites directly, get on our mailing list: http://bit.ly/GS_list===================Support the arts in Brooklyn! We're running a Kickstarter fundraising campaign until 5/30 to support major renovations to our events loft:http://bit.ly/GS_loft===================

Hope to see you there!!! 

Tura! Tura! Tura! (Also: Inking)

So I had the honor of being personally invited to take part in Tura! Tura! Tura! 2, an upcoming tribute show to the great, late Tura Satana, of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! fame out in Palm Springs, California. I will be showing alongside several artists I have looked up to for several years and get to have my work in front of fans from the mysterious west coast. I'm hoping this is the beginning of a prolific phase in my career and other galleries take notice and invite me to take part in more shows.

::cough:: Gallery 1988... ::cough::

The secret I found to getting Tura's likeness as Varla right?
Flared nostrils.
Really!

***Editor's note: For the next few paragraphs I go on and on and on entirely too long about inking and my art process. If you're into it, awesome. If not, the above info with accompanying links and pictures below are all you really need to know.***

Flyer for the show by one of my artistic heroes,
the great Mitch O'Connell.

 I'm super excited about this show, as this is my first time testing out my new technique of toning my original inks on vellum with grey scale markers and graphic white on the gallery scene. Anyone who's given me time to flap my jaw about it would know I've *really* wanted to get into the low brow gallery scene for years now, but for the longest time being a primarily digital artist all I felt I could really offer was prints. Which while nice, unless you want to cough up the dough to get nice ones made, it's hard to break in to the kind of price points that original pieces go for. I never thought anyone would want my original inks for my pieces, as I though they were 'ugly' and on various pieces of scrap paper and had a zillion corrections on them.

Digital version!

Up until about 4 months ago my process of creating art was to lightbox my rough pencils onto bristol board and then tighten them up from there, then ink directly on top of raw pencils. While this worked for me for several years, I had noticed that when I transferred my images via lightbox, I lost a lot of the detail and energy from the original roughs. Eyes wouldn't line up, subtle hints of smiles would be lost, kinetic lines that came together perfectly looked stale and forced the second time around. Plus a lightbox can be a bit of a pain in the ass if you don't have a set area for it already, with a nice dark room to use it in and plenty of extra bulbs for when the lights start to dim (which will make tracing an aggravating process). Add to this headache by using a super thick, rough piece of bristol to draw on to, with a very hard pencil (I tend to use a 2H) which will put grooves in the surface of the paper if you dig with a death grip like I do and you're setting yourself up for a potential nightmare scenario. Once I would get to the inking stage, which is going directly onto my finished pencils (that are now all marred from my pencil-diggings), I need to be extra-careful as I only get one real chance. Unless I *really* screw up and have to black out an entire portion, re-draw it on another piece of paper and paste it in in Photoshop. And that leaves the re-sale value of the original pretty much nonexistent. But if I screw it up minimally with the inks I'll have to go over with white-out. Which leaves additional snags as inking on top of pencils means I eventually have to erase the pencils, which if I ink over white-out causes them to smear. Along with the fading that ink tends to suffer from with heavy erasing as I swear by using Microns and other disposable fine-line pens. I've tried brushes and nibs and much like how I feel about painting, it's just not for me. And yes, I've tried Rapidiographs as well, but they are far too expensive and a nightmare to clean. I digress. Anyhow, all of these 'ugly inks' as I refer to them, resulted in piles upon piles of discarded inks around my desk. At my old day job, when we had to move our offices after I had been there for 2 years I realized I had accumulated at least a 1.5" thick stack of inks that I had completely forgotten about, much to the horror of my coworkers who were all familiar with my work. So yeah, I eventually started to realize that I'm kinda sitting on some potential money here and have been trying to find ways to polish up my original inks to the point where my OCD'd ass would feel comfortable selling them.

Vellum is basically a heavy grade tracing paper some comic artists choose to ink on.
A lot of tattoo artists and draftsmen also use it, which are two other types of artists I
have been heavily influenced by.

 I remembered an inking method we were taught back in the heydays of my time at Kubert School, being a vellum overlay taped to your pencils that you can ink on without worry of damaging the pencils underneath. I had messed with it a little at Kubert School, but admittedly my inking has been under arrested development due to a rather possessive former friend who insisted on inking my work all through Kuberts and the years following, so it wasn't my strong suit for a long time. Anytime I did ink my own work, the emotional blackmail thrown at me would put even the most passive-aggressive Catholic mother to shame. Fortunately I kicked this so-called friend to the curb a few years ago and have been trying to play catch-up now that I'm free to pursue my art without worrying about those latched onto my coat-tails. So I gave vellum a shot earlier this year and have fallen madly in love with it, but now I had all of these curled up inks on pieces of vellum sitting around my studio. It was also around this time I was prepping for HeroesCon in NC back in June, and wanted to start drawing commissions at my table and needed a method that would allow me to keep a high standard of work without the need for a computer or digital assistance. If you've already read my HeroesCon recap, you'll know that drawing at my table didn't work out for me so well. I was able to do pretty well with post-convention commissions instead. And plan to do more commissions this way before/after shows in the future. Anyways, so I wanted to have my vellum inks available for purchase as original pieces in themselves outside of my digital color versions I save for the internet and prints. I had noticed there's a cool trend with a lot of convention sketches in recent years where artists will use a set of cool and warm grey markers to fake out colors, to really awesome effects. Adam Hughes is one that comes to mind who does this. And then also there's the sketches of the LA Chapter of Drink and Draw Social Club, which features artists drawing on tinted boards, allowing for white highlights from white-out and gel pens to really pop. These two influences, along with my obsession with the aesthetics of old school animation gave me the bright idea to tone my vellum inks on the opposite side with markers and white-out (though I started moving to paint), resulting in an original one of a kind piece of artwork that matches the digital version.

Original inks, toned with markers and white-out on vellum.
This will be the actual piece in the show.

So yeah, whew! Hopefully with this newly-discovered method of doing things I can *finally* start breaking into more gallery scenes and getting substantially more buck for my bang, as it were. Since all original inks cost me to produce is time, which I feel justifies a higher price tag than just sending stuff off to a print shop. Which helps me financially justify working freelance and keeps me out of yet another soul-sucking day job. So keep an eye out for my next commission deal, I plan on doing more pieces along these lines as well as more art shows in the near future!  

Post-Heroescon commissions.
Keep an eye out on my social media feeds for my next commission offering!

Commissions and Marketing!

This past week I finished two big commissions and I'm sketching out a third and I did a whole bunch of marketing/promo for Little Asian Sweatshop! So yeah! Keeping busy!!

Portrait commission for tattoo artist Cyn Rudzis,
in trade for my Wonder Woman tattoo

Roller derby portrait commission for
Kansas City Banked Beauties member Ms Kara Whiplash 

I'm pretty proud of these two new commission pieces. I think it really shows what I can do when I don't have the customer meddling so much in my creative process and actually trusting me to deliver them a top-notch illustration. My commissions are still for the most part closed, with a few exceptions if the money's good or it's a project that sounds particularly fun and non-stressful. I'm trying to figure out a new price point for them since I'm now freelance and can actually focus more with a quicker turnaround in between lettering books. I've also got a lot of other drawing projects I'd like to do as well though once my plate is clear, including various fanart, fabric designs for dresses and I'm actually kicking around the idea of a semi-autobiographical webcomic way way further down the road. I know, freaky. Like, try and take all the random little anecdotes and stories from my life and make them into 1-2 page vignettes that are basically all the stories and tangents I go off on while drunk/stoned but in illustrated form. Part of the appeal for me doing this is that there's no continuity to worry about writing wise, and it's the sort of format I can do as a webcomic. And I can voice my opinions and philosophy on life, and share some of my silly stories about things and eventually do enough of them to collect into a book. Plus the CATHARSIS. My God... This is def something I want to put on the backburner for AWHILE. But once it gets going it could be really cool. We'll see.

In other news I've been submitting tips and singing praises of my best friend Fenny's company Little Asian Sweatshop to various nerdy/geeky fashion websites and gotten some nice returns!! So far we've gotten press from So Geek Chic, Boing Boing, and Fashionably Geek! 

We're also going to have this ad in the program
for the upcoming games for Chesapeake Roller Derby.

Things are getting done!

Happy Valentine's Day!

As a present I finished TWO freelance projects! YAYZ!
1 more to finish and 2 more to start before my self imposed commission blackout takes effect and I can focus on some selfish art FOR ME!! Muahahaha! ::wrings hands menacingly::
Which mostly just means I'll have more time to work on cooler, more experimental stuff and really take my art to the next level. So it's really all for you lovely people, in the end.


Enz's postcard to be given out at the Magic Trade Show in Las Vegas:



Enz's is a really cool store in the East Village of NYC that sells LOTS of super cute dresses, purses and jewelry!

Also did a portrait of NYC burlesque troupe The Rhinestone Follies:



The Rhinestone Follies are a classical burlesque troupe based in NYC featuring (L to R) Hazel Honeysuckle, Beelzebabe Agogo and Kita St. Cyr! They perform regularly at the R Bar on Bowery- I highly suggest checking out one of their shows!

It's Cramp-us!!!

Live in NYC? Like The Cramps? Down with Krampus? Dig the ta-ta's? Come out to Cramp-Us on Dec 5th!



Facebook event page here!!

Did up a quick flyer for my sword-swallowing friend The Lady Aye for a burlesque show she's producing called Cramp-Us, which is a glorious marrage of The Cramps, Krampus and burlesque. This is the 3rd installment of this show, I saw the first one last December at the old Slipper Room, then missed the 2nd one that also featured my art on the flyer due to it being all the way down in Coney on Thursday. But THIS time it's in Manhattan on a Sunday and I am SO not gonna miss it!! So excited to get to do another flyer, I really do love doing promo for shows I can really get behind.