Burlesque Poster Design

I just received my complimentary copy of Korero Book's new Burlesque Poster Design, the Art of Tease, and am really honored to see that my posters for Black Cat Burlesque, Dr. Sketchy's, and the Burlesque Hall of Fame received a whopping FIFTEEN full pages! Wow! This totally made my year. The color reproductions of my work are spot-on, too.




The book chronicles the history of burlesque and burlesque posters, from the 1860s to the present, with TONS of full-page illustrations from heroes of mine like Glenn Barr, Mitch O'Connell, Derek Yaniger, and many more. Written and compiled by Yak El-Droubie and Ian C. Parliament, with a foreward by Chaz Royal, this beautiful book is a must have for fans of burlesque and poster art.
Thank you, Yak, and all at Korero!

2009 Posters

Detail:





New FEED Fundraiser poster
my friends Dottie Lux and Val Killmore are hard at work on a new B-movie called FEED about a voluptuous celebrity chef hiding a secret life as a cannibal. They asked me for help with the poster for a fundraiser to help them meet production costs.
sketches I whipped up overnight for a simple, strong graphic of a woman gnawing on "steak":




final version with text added by Dottie:


and 2nd flyer with all text by Dottie:

2008 Posters

Fantagraphics books sponsored the SUPERTRASH FEST at the Bagdad Theater in Portland, Oregon, a marathon of trashy movies with live burlesque and an art show in February. Artists were invited to come up with their own movie poster renditions for their favorite trashy movies, and the posters were hung in the theater and the best ones will be printed in a collection by Fantagraphics.

This is one of my entries: Fulci's "ZOMBI 2" where a topless scuba diver in a g-string has to fight off a live shark, then fight off a zombie walking across the bottom of the ocean, before the shark and zombie bite pieces off eachother. The first time I saw this sequence my jaw hit the floor.


The signed 12" x 18" digital print without text is for sale in my Etsy shop here

This is my 2nd entry: "NUDE FOR SATAN". I've got to admit I thought the movie was really awful, but the title alone is hilarious and awesome. I wanted to make something really eye-catching and kind of scary and fun and ridiculous at the same time. Like if Slayer put out an album of music for 60s go-go dancers, this would be the cover:

The devil girl has black horizontal slits for pupils, like a goat.
The evil pope skeleton next to the floating Devil is supposed to be the False Prophet. (8 years of Catholic school and they never told us about the Unholy Trinity of the Devil, The Anti-Christ, and the False Prophet. I found out about these guys in junior high watching "the Omen" movies on channel 38's "Movie Loft", where every October they'd show 2 unedited horror movies every night.)

The signed 12" x 18" digital print without text is for sale in Etsy shop here

This was the first poster I did 100% digital. It felt weird, but wasn't a bad experience:

The signed 12" x 18" digital print is for sale in my Etsy shop here

another 100% digital poster:


This was done in Photoshop using the brush and the paintbucket tools for the "Fake the Music" poster show organized by Kipling West at Looks Could Kill Art Boutique in Calgary. Real gigposter artists were invited to come up with fake posters for fake bands at fake venues. I was inspired by the front rows of sweaty emotional guys crowded around the stage at pretty much any/every indie rock/ emo/ screamo concert for my "Wall of Four-Eyes" with "Salty Tsunami of My Emo Tears" poster for their "Sincerely Sulky Tour 2008". (I wear glasses sometimes so I don't feel bad about saying "Four-Eyes")


yet another 100% digital poster. What's happened to me?!


All my previous "Feast of Flesh" poster zombies raising J. Cannibal's zombie flag, Iwo Jima-style:


detail:

The signed 12" x 18" digital print is for sale in my Etsy shop here

New poster for MassArt (unfortunately, the squirrel monkey and Frankensteiny will not be present at the drawing sessions):

2007 Posters

2006 Posters

I included my newly-adopted Hurricane Katrina Boston Terrier, Mr. Giles, on this Katrina benefit poster:


this was my entry for the 2006 Exotic World Burlesque Festival poster competition; Paul Pope's design got picked. I would've added more text info with white paint and brush if mine had been selected, but those details weren't finalized at the time of the poster submission deadline





This one was painted as a favor to my friends, Dottie Lux and Val Killmore:


They added all the text:


This one was done as a trade for illustrator Bill Morton, who moonlights as Doc Wasabassco, producer of Wasabassco Burlesque. I painted the image


and Bill added all text:

2005 Posters

I donated these 2 posters, painting them both in one weekend (inspired by the color theme of "Good & Plenty" candy boxes):




new text by Devilicia, new skeletons by me:


detail from the bottom:

2004 Posters

Promo for a project I'm still way behind on, unfortunately:



top photo by J. Cannibal and Mary Widow; bottom photo by Devilicia; logo and painted backgrounds by me:


The World Famous Pontani Sisters asked me to paint them "all slutty with big hair":


I had 240+ pieces on the wall at this solo show (and Devilicia , Frankenstein, and I showed up dressed like this at the opening)

2003 Posters

I rode my mountain bike from Jamaica Plain through a blizzard to deliver this poster to WBCN:





Jonathan Richman commissioned a tour poster during a week of shows with Through the Keyhole Burlesque. I based it off his "Vampire Girl" song:



2 commemorative posters for the Paradise Rock Club's 25-year anniversary poster show:


poster text and layout by Matt Smith:

2002 Posters

original version:

2001 Posters

Lots of bands I knew were breaking up, which was sad, and I was sad to not be painting posters, too. The Middle East has a weekly bellydancing night, so I whipped this up to see if they wanted to use it to promote the Wednesday shows. I offered it for free simply because I wanted to do a poster, and they still said "no thanks":

2 Pin-ups I did for Varla magazine.
Persephone wrote that she was into cemetery picnics, horror, and corsets:

Mimi is a huge Creature from the Black Lagoon fan:

Tour poster:

2000 Posters

Tom of Standard Design
chose this painting to use as a poster for his band, No-Shadow Kick, and added all text himself:

1999 Posters

Here's one painting I wish I could do over...text, colors, everything. I just found it in my filing cabinet and it looks like the text has been hit with a scouring pad:






Double Negative publisher and Space 1026 co-founder Jeff Wiesner invited me to have a solo show at the amazing gallery/ artist studio Space 1026 in Philadelphia, and put me up in his place while my housemate Dave Forbes and I painted the gallery bright orange. I hung about 150 pieces: Burton Snowboards and the 6' paintings they were made from, framed illustrations, a wall of posters, and a wall of sketchbook drawings and paintings. There were some dogs at the opening so I was happy, and I got hooked up with Little Devil Brand as a result of this show. Thank you, Jeff and Space 1026!

Text was Photoshopped in by my then-housemate Peter Gueth for this benefit poster because the designer said my hand-drawn letters looked "like daggers":

1998 Posters

WFNX hired me to make a poster with the feel of the Shiva Speedway/ Sleater-Kinney poster I'd done the year before:

1997 Posters

Other bands started hiring me to do their posters. I started going out to rock shows in Boston every week, and offered to do posters for bands I really liked






Tour Poster:




my old roommate (and now MassArt teaching buddy) Bob Maloney and I made it into a juried exhibit at our alma mater, Massachusetts College of Art. This was printed in black and white so I didn't bother with color:

Another Tour Poster:

1996 Posters

I started making little paintings based on Chevy Heston songs and lyrics when the bass player gave me a free cd. We were both dishwashers in the same Jamaica Plain restaurant. Actually I think he got hired as my replacement when I got mono and conjunctivitis in both eyes....I'd been burning the candle at both ends, trying to do freelance illustration all night while doing dishes 39 hours a week at the day job. Anyways, once I started working again with fewer hours, we started hanging out and I got inspired by his crazy band's lyrics and music. He asked me to start adding text so they could use the paintings as posters. These characters/ situations are taken write from Chevy lyrics:

1995 Posters

My name got left off the official poster for this event, so at the last minute I Xeroxed this random sketchbook drawing, added type, and hung it up all over MassArt. I wasn't mad about the omission (this isn't supposed to be me punching somebody), I just thought this was a funny and very unpolished poster compared to the slick official poster

1994 Posters

Group show poster I did my junior year at MassArt. I made sure to include a juicebox on the kid's t-shirt. Some jackass stole one of my paintings off the wall at this show:

1993 Posters

My first poster, for an event at Massachusetts College of Art. The Rag was a MassArt publication that printed any and all submissions, and there'd be big parties each time a new issue was published. My friends Pete and Jeremy used to pass these "Olde Tyme English" notes back and forth in class, loaded with archaic insults (they still do, except these days it's through the mail), and the Rag used to print these too. The Rag was pretty great.
I was really into German Expressionism and the Austrian Secession. I spelled "Open Mic" wrong, too: