Just finished a really fun commission for some artwork to go on a wedding. The couple wanted to highlight one of my favorite pairs of places in the world (NYC & SF) so it really was a pleasure making this for them.

Folks ask me a lot about my process for something like this. So here it is:

The clients (Rebecca and Ellery, hence the “RebEl” on the billboard) had given me some basic things they wanted in the image like SF & NYC, their dog, my kinds of drawings of people, food and booze. So I sent them this sketch:

They loved the idea. (Yes! That’s always a great email to get back from folks.) But were afraid some details like SF’s Sutro Tower would be lost on New Yorkers and suggested I just go for the two iconic bridges. I changed up the sketch and inked over it on some 100 lb. Bristol. The inked piece looks like this:

They also had mentioned their wedding colors were coral, blue and green. That was kind of a fun challenge for coloring this piece. The limited palette also added to its graphic look, which I figured would be better on a wedding invite. And to give a sense of how that kind of coloring works, I scanned the inked image and then cut out all of the whites in Photoshop. I then made that one layer (and usually I’ll convert the black of the lines to a dark blue so it’s less oppressive with other colors) and then made another layer of colors. I digitally painted in the color in that layer with a Wacom Tablet. Minus the line art, here’s what that layer looks like:

And that (minus all of the coffee/snack/beer breaks, walks in the parks, email checking, trips to Brookyn Boulders) is basically how it’s done. Questions?

Hello from Morocco! I (Casey) am going to be here for the next few weeks with a documentary film crew, traveling up and down the country. While I don’t have much film experience (ahem, ok no experience at all), I do have experience living and working in Morocco (aka eating couscous, bargaining like hell), so that’s how I’m trying to make myself useful.

We arrived this morning in Casablanca, took a quick rest then got straight to work!

We’re a crew of 7, including sound master and documentary extraordinaire Jessica Orec (above). You can see more pics and updates on her blog here.

Check out mega Park Slope Brooklyn blog FuckedInParkSlope.com every Friday for a brand new cartoon from yours truly. Above is the first one. You can see it on that lewdly-named blog here.

I’m just drawing what I see (it’s raining today in The Slope) but if you see something that looks comic-worthy drop me a line.

-Steven

Beautiful day in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Had to draw a comic.

Some sweet after school math.

Well, maybe not birthday party. But who knows? We just posted this video about the book presentations we do for our book To Timbuktu.

And we’re back!

(Didn’t know we were away? That’s cool. It was pretty quick.)

We just spent about a week and a half in India to go see our friend’s wedding in Mumbai and then also to check out the Hindu holy city of Varanasi. Like most trips I kept a cartoon log of our time travelling around. Here it is below.

Waiting in Newark for the flight to Mumbai:

Once in Varanasi:

And then once we’re in Mumbai:

(CONGRATULATIONS ADITYA AND RIDDHIMA!!!!)

All for now.

And if you liked these, be sure to check out my last run of travel cartoons from Colombia last July here.

Right? We do Shitty Kitty Meet Ups there, we did New Year’s there, we’re often just, ehem, there. It’s a great bar and we’ve had a great two years getting to know the bartenders and owners–plus having a bar named after our old hood in SF really helped us with our move to Brooklyn. So we were really excited when they asked us to make a Shitty Kitty inspired poster to highlight all of their 2012 brewery events. (See below.)

Maybe we had a lot of experience in the bar to work from to nail all of those Shitty Kitty poses? Maybe.

So this also seemed like a good time to review all of the posters we’ve gotten to make in order to promote events at Mission Dolores. They’ve all been a delight to make, and then to do as events.

Here’s the first one we did for a Shitty Kitty Meet Up in July 2010. Doesn’t it look just like Diego Rivera’s “Man at the Crossroads”? There’s even the first ever “Vladimir Lenin Shitty Kitty”!

Next we teamed up Sixpoint Craft Ales to help promote the launch of our book To Timbuktu. Nothing like beer to help get folks buying books right? Yep, worked like a charm. And big thanks to Bergen Street Comics for helping sell all night!

After that one we teamed up with the fine folks at Sixpoint again and helped them launch their beers in can form, or as they refer to them as “nano-kegs”.

More recently we had an “eleven, eleven, eleven” Shitty Kitty Meet Up at Mission Dolores where we harked back to Casey’s early years spent as a figure skater. (She had an ice dance to Sheryl Crow’s “All I Want to Do…”, though she really wanted to do one to Green Day.)

And finally there was this past New Year’s Eve. Such a blast! See photos and such from that here, or just relive the night by trying to pick which face in the matrix best represents you that evening. (“Ashton Kutcher Shitty Kitty” anyone?) (Yes we know all about that as we are semi-proud subscribers to Us Weekly.)

All for now, but we look forward to even more fun times with these crazy folks at Mission Dolores. Happy 2012 everyone!

NYE plans: done.
Just come and hang out with us and the Mission Dolores Bar crew all night long!
And Mission Dolores Bar is here.

We’re crossing the East River on Friday night to have a group show with our friends at Discovering Oz at the La Mama Galleria gallery in the Lower East Side, Manhattan. Well, we actually just crossed the river and hung our work. Here’s a sneak preview:

The show features the work of us, Kanan Shah, Marc Bovino, and Christopher Kalb. We all have done visual work with Discovering Oz for their client, the NYC theatre institution, the La Mama Theatre. At the show we’ll all be showing off the other things we do, plus they’ll be some music and booze. Event goes from 7-10pm. La Mama Galleria is at 6 E 1st between Bowery and 2nd Ave. What’s not to like?

Some of our new work in the show includes new collaborations where we go back to our SF roots: Steven painted some animals and Casey captioned what’s going on. Here’s one of them:

See you on Friday! Here’s the full invite: