Detroit - Las Vegas - Maquoketa, or bust!

I'm packing up now to head from Detroit to Las Vegas for Viva Las Vegas. No, sadly I'm not vending this time around. I'll be helping the massive undertaking that is putting on the Car Show at the event with the rest of my Road Devil brothers! I'm thinking of it as a working vacation so to speak. I'm happy I could help out. RDFL! If you see a Road Devils jacket with Detroit on the back, that's me. Say Hi.

Straight on from Viva, I'll be heading to Maquoketa, Iowa. What's in Iowa you ask? We'll Torque fest you silly bastards! Already 350 Customs and Hot Rods registered and one of the few shows in the USA that you can take your ride out on the dirt track for a few laps and put it to it! I'll be vending there with a few brand new items for sale and some of the old classics! Bring some cash 'cause that ATM is gonna empty out quick!

Enough typing. Time to get my ears lowered and on to the other 150 things I need to do! See ya soon?!

A Massive catch up!

2011 has been a crazy year already just 4 month in tomorrow! I know I'm usually better about updates on here, but I haven't found a minute to catch my breath from working and being a dad to make the time. Allow me a chance to play catch up in review since the beginning of the year.

Helping out my fellow Club brother Frank, I put together a design for his old 1959 Ford Pick-up doors. Designing was easy, but the application of painting two exact matching doors was a different feat.

The mock up:

The lettering was transferred to some over head projecter clear transfers then projected on the truck doors:

The end results after a quick scrub to age the one shot paintjob which took a few weekends to do it up:

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Also for Autorama, the "artist alley" many of us put together a piece with the single topic of a model A FED called "Little Honker"

This is a quick shot of the finished product taken with the cell phone on a test print. There were 100 pieces made of this 12"x18" two color silkscreened poster. #1 was framed and custom painted by Little Mark of Sled Alley.

This is a quick shot of #1, matted and framed, ready for auction. It pulled in $185 for the leader dogs for the blind. I'm happy to help out.

There are some left over from the show so don't feel like you missed out by not hitting Autorama!

GRAB YOURS HERE

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Quickly there after I put together Half Fast Chicago commissioned me to do an event poster for Burning Love #4, their anti valentines party.

It's single silver color ink on black french paper. It's currently on French's website in the sample room which to me is a honor to be listed there!

Also, you've got a chance to GRAB YOURS HERE

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Motor Age Clothing Co. hit me up early in the year as well for some new shirt designs.

and #2

You can grab yours up at the MOTOR AGE website

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Finishing up in 2011 for Vintage Torque Fest, I did this three poster collection for this years show:

This series is online and all signed. The original print series is only 50 pieces! You can grab yours up before the show

Also now online is last years 4 poster set. VERY LIMITED NUMBERS HERE!!!

GRAB UP HERE

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Back in 2008 I worked on this little indy film called Deadheads which is finally blowing up. The trailer alone has 70,000 hits! It recently got into the Newport Beach film fest where I wish it much luck! I worked a lot with the promotions people on photography for this poster:

Much of my set photography has ended up around the net for the film as well including Fangoria's website article on Deadheads

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In the midst of this time period of work, I also had a major set back in later January. If you are on my facebook fan page you probably caught me bitch'n about my Apple Monitor fail. Let me tell you it was the worst thing to happen to me in some time. But when the smoke cleared and all was said/done/installed/replaced/updated I got quite a nice replacement.

Right over my shoulder… it made me and my dog bomber here happy!

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Lovepedal custom effects commissioned me to do some handcrafted box art for their product line up for retail.

the fun part about this has been all the positive feedback on facebook from the lovepedal fans. Some even just wanted to buy the boxes alone!

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Rod & Custom Fabrication loved the Torquefest posters so much they wanted me to do a cross over / old timey logo brand for themselves.

This was the proof work and there are also business cards and a t-shirt design to boot.

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Pit Bull Racing contacted me about putting together some long sleeve designs. We kicked around a few ideas and came up with these race inspired versions of their sponsored riders leathers:

They don't seem to be up online just yet, but I'm sure they will be soon!

Also work for Pit Bull I've done includes

Pit Bull Metal Sign - Vintage

T-shirt, 3-color, bike on front

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Newlands Brewing Systems contacted me just before Autorama to put together an ad for a magazine on their brewing systems being made right here in Detroit! I was pumped to be part of their team and being able to bring my own art to their company look. I was also able to create some custom graphic for their display at the Craft Brewers Conference this last weekend in San Francisco

Ad:

Banners:

Coaster:

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At Autorama I got a chance to meet a bunch of good folks both exhibiting and attending! I was happy to unveil some exclusive products to them which should follow up on the website in April:

flexfit ball cap with pinstripe devil

Devil pinstripe patches:

black

Car-N-Art spark plug patches:

and stealth:

As well over the weekend I had John Jackson from Not Stock Photography keeping my dogs and couch company. He shot this of me sunday morning. Man, everything looks really yellow

under those COBO lights!

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Quickly coming out of Detroit Autorama I had a bunch of work to get back to! There is still elements of my display floating around in my truck.

Trophy Queen contacted me about doing an Americana/Evel Knievel design for a t-shirt:

I love her bags probably as much as the ladies do. I think I could pull off the diaper bag before getting suspect! :)

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Not too long after I found myself helping out my pal Lauren from Street Rod Visions with a sticker /t-shirt design for a show (I think this weekend)

She asked me something stock and I just don't have any "stock" designs. I really only can do one off's for people. She wanted a 32 3-window and that's what she got!

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Half Fast came back with their Spring/Summer/Fall bike night posters at the Orbit Room

A tiki inspired poster to polynesian perfection!

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Finding myself now at the end of March and taxes creeping up my back, I also had to get back to Torque fest art for the registration card.

This is a great little 11x7 inch mini poster give away to all who are registering a bike or car for the show. Something to hang in the garage to remind you what a kick ass time you will have in 2012!

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Lastly, on to my own stuff. Car-N-Art will have some new products shortly with a brand new poster series that will be highly collectable called "Arsenal of Design" 6 Poster series all sold as one (like the old Drive Wrench Repeat)

I can't show you all of it just yet, but it's brewing and you should see something for sale in Iowa at torque fest!

I can show you the shirt though:

Stay tuned to the FACEBOOK fan page for faster updates!

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Well crap! that's about it for now. Hopefully I can update more than once a quarter with work on here!!! Really sad overall. New stuff in the works for future shows, a new website within the year, and hopefully some national ink on the art. Thanks for reading if you made it this far!

~keven

Latest crop of goodies

Latest and Greatest from Car-N-Art is local right here in the 313 area code. My good buddy and club brother Junebug has been painting up a storm in the last few months since the beginning of 2010 and finally hit me up to do his business identity. 'BugSpray' came from his old man who told him that would make a great name and we all agreed that it seemed to work perfect even in the sense that old hot rodders would paint cars with bug spray plunger cans.

For the ID we talked about something flashy like custom paint from the 60-70's and that was the direction to go with the lettering as well. Jason's business cards will actually be glitter vinyl stickers the same size and shape of a typical card, but can be put on anything. I did a mock up here with some different color schemes.

This project was relatively quick, though we began some time back with this simple variation which isn't far off from the end result.

And of course I didn't feel that I did enough illustration without doing up an actual June Bug for the card, but this didn't end up working out:

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Also, this weekend is Torque Fest in Iowa. I'll be there with Junebug selling posters, framed photos, matted photos, patches and t-shirts so if you are planning on coming out, this is a great way to save on shipping items, plus all of the photos are only available at the shows, so here is your chance to own a one of a kind piece suitable to hang in the house, office or the garage. I will also have a limited print set of all 4 Vintage Toque Fest posters signed and numbered 1-100 that will be for sale exclusively at the show, so here is your chance to grab them up. I know John already mentioned many pre-orders have been pulled aside. Look for the Car-N-Art booth and drop by and say hello and help me put some gas in the truck for the way home!

peace.

Torque Fest patches!

Working together with Ed Evans and John Wells to com up with some Torque Fest exclusives. These patches are for the elite who will be running on the dirt track. But the trick is you gott be there on the first of May. Torque Fest

Motor Psycho | poster #3 for Torque Fest

Just completed: This is the third poster in the series for Vintage Torque Fest. This one was dedicated to all the Custom Bikes of the Chopper and Bobber flavor. The Bike round up will be all indoors at Torque Fest and sponsored by DicE Magazine. Be looking for the ad coming up in a future issue (#31?) of DicE too. Time to sleep some now. More work to do.

Torque Fest Poster #2 (Customs)

All brand new today. Torque Fest poster #2 from Car-N-Art. This one focuses on Customs both old and new (well, kinda all new in the sense that The Hirohata Merc and The Blue Danube are clones) The poster design is inspired by old car magazines like Hot Rod, Rod & Custom, Hop Up, etc. It's 11" x 17" and will be exclusive to Vintage Torque Fest for sales (I don't even know how many will get pressed) There is a TON of detail in this and impossible to see it all online so I did a few blow ups to show some.

ABOVE: this is 1/4 the detail level. You can start to see the dot matrix halftones of the design if you look very carefully.
Here is a 1 to 1 detail level of the same parts as above and it really starts to show all the details that I got into on this poster. I can't wait to see the printed version!

vintagetorquefest.com

Vintage Torque Fest poster art

Mark your calendars now for May 1st, 2010 for Torque Fest! I just finished up the posters and postcard art last night:

Poster: 11x17 inch

Postcards: 4x6 inch

If you are planning on coming out the Hunnert Car Pile-up, you can grab one for yourself!

For more information, head to www.vintagetorquefest.com