Consider the weirdness of the internet, circa 2005.
It was the Wild West of society, and the bedrock of what it would become a few short years later is mindblowing, especially when considered from a vantage point of 2005. We’d go from a fresh and exciting digital domain of self-promotion and seemingly positive vibes to the Facebook/Reddit/Twitter flame wars (which saw an infancy in forums – remember those? Essentially the Instagrams and Tumblrs of pre-“social media,” but with easier access to shit you actually WANTED to see, versus some shit sounded to you by a manipulated algorithm… side note: Research FM radio payola, and then work to tell the two apart. A gold star if your thesis maintains that there IS a difference and that you can defend it logically) in just a handful of years.
In that time, there was a weird evolution: Sharing creative work (art, writing, music, etc) for the sake of just putting it out there morphed into a “self-branding” ritual. A manufacture of name-recognition and self-fueled “fame” became the norm. Sure, real talent brought “followers” and numbers, but if you were loud enough and willing to put money into AdWords and spend eight hours per day on your social presence, you could push marginal skill and parlor tricks into a career.
In the pre-social media era, you could pit talent against success or failure. Today, you could get a book deal based on social following; Simply manufacture fame to manifest more, all based on a social media vs operating budget. It’s literally “buy a million likes/follows, drop another 40 hours into staring at a screen and parlay that into a publishing deal” versus “put that time into perfecting a craft and risk being the next Kafka.” The business has changed. Drastically. Dopamine is king.
I ask you, then: Where does it lead? And better: Would your pre-2005 taste include much of what the 2026 algorithm pushes your way? And how different would that look without the volume of people screaming“ LOOK AT ME!!” bolstered by paid placement?
#drawingcars #social #discourse #thinking #fame
Going back in time some 16-plus years here… just a slightly random smattering of stuff from an old hard drive, and a taste of a song that pulled me through a really weird time in my life… hard to believe that this song would be old enough to drink today.
It was a very strange week full of weirdly good, with a lot of hard work starting to pay off. If you know me, then you understand how I tend to get very anxious when things are going well, especially considering the goings-on of tomorrow, I’m keeping myself occupied enough to not give it much of a foot-hold.
Speaking of hard work, look for an absolutely huge announcement for me in the next week or so regarding a project I have poured years of my life (and probably a good few shovels-worth of lean tissue) into. I’m proud of this project and almost as proud of another one that I can’t talk about publicly due to an NDA quite yet. Both are huge, and at least one of them holds a lot of value, especially concerning the way the creative market looks these days.
So there you have it: A coulple of cryptic things and a bunch of stuff that all ties delicately together… even more-so if you know the timeline of the pieces, one of the places… and are willing to put in the math regarding the hyphen count in this post. Cryptography is a fun hobby.
#drawingcars #illustration #cryptography #everythingisfine #throwbackthursday
Here’s a little trip back about 21 years (the Mustang, anyway)… it’s always an interesting experience to look back on how my style has evolved. It’s something I do with regularity just as a system of checks and balances. I had started to do that splatter thing way back in the early 2000s on MySpace, and for a long time that was kind of my signature move. Weird to look at it now!
I managed to resurrect a very old hard drive with a ton of the MySpace work on it. I made it a point back then to send every follower a personalized “thank you,” and there are literally tens of thousands of those JPG’s and GIF’s stored on there… many of which will find their way into the final cut of one of the books and as a part of a bonus online content deal. We can all relive the early 2000s together!
Hope you’re having a great Sunday… and let me know in the comments: What surprises you most when you look back on your older work?
#drawingcars #archives #vector #illustration #rendering
As I gear up for a pretty big announcement this week, I thought it would be fun to look at some in progress pieces from the past that really tie in to what’s coming your way…
Yeah, that sounds really ominous as I reread it, but it’s very fitting considering the years of work that have gone into it… or should I say “the many parts of it?” That’s probably closer to a much more direct description of what the whole thing is.
Anyway, here’s some older project roughs and kind of a look behind the scenes at the gateway to how I develop a project… it’s a complex road sometimes, and all of that can be smooth with some careful planning.
#hotroddesign #rendering #drawingcars #cardesignsketch
How about another Throwback Thursday?
Some more of those cars that shaped my youth… some in far different ways than other others.
That Laguna was a ratty turd, but for the price and how well it ran…
It’s funny how of all of these cars, I would love to rebuild that burgundy 1979 Olds parked in the street behind the ‘57 210 more than most. They are such an underappreciated body style, and I have more memories with that car than almost all of my other cars put together. And man, let me tell you I have got some plans for one of those!
You may also notice that those Keystone mags found their way onto a number of vehicles in my past, and I still hold them as one of my all-time favorite designs. That photo of the Chevelle wearing the Keystones was from my high school senior year…
While all of these cars are shaped my life… one of them saved it. And there’s a fun segue into the forthcoming book. Boom.
What is an underrated car with a ton of potential that you would like to build? Let’s start that conversation in the comments.
#cars #oldschool #throwback #musclecar #kustom
Got a few fun things in the works, but I figured I’d bring you up to speed on some other stuff, too. Yeah I do a lot of T-shirts… it’s the stuff that pays the bills, kids.
So many people think that they’re going to become an artist and just do whatever they want right out of the gate. And if you have managed to do that without selling your soul, well, good on you.
I like having some regularity in both income and repetition to keep the skill set alive and consistent. This is especially important considering the bullshit that my body pulls on me every day. With zero feeling in my forearms and hands, it’s often exhausting just to put down the initial sketch, as I’m having to concentrate and tell my hands exactly what to do every second that I’m doing it.
And it’s even harder once I’m working in Illustrator.
Looking over my journals, I know that it takes me approximately 2 to 2 1/2 times the amount of hours to finish something today than it did a year ago. This is another reason why I’m so picky on the jobs I take: very few of them are lucrative or even worth the time… and it’s why I work so hard to make every project as detailed and unique as possible. It’s that idea of putting as much value into each piece for both myself and my client as possible.
But this is a whole subject I get into much deeper in a future video. For now, just look at the pretty cars and stuff. Never mind the man struggling to tie his shoes behind the curtain… have a great day and make it a point to push yourself as hard as you can in the direction that is best for you.
#illustration #drawingcars #apparelgraphics #vector #sketch
For the life of me, I can’t figure out this awful trend of people holding lavalier microphones (or BETTER: a USB or XLR mic, like a Blue Yeti) in videos. Invest in a decent mic, or stop pretending that your’re a reporter filling in on the weekend. Perhaps it’s so that viewers understand that you are speaking. I decided to hold a pencil for this video because I needed you to know that I draw things.
Anyway, this was going to be part of a much longer thing but now I’m waaaayyy off-topic. Next time I’m going to hold my chair so that you understand that I’m sitting. Unless of course the algorithm decides that I need to show you my underwear.
If this thing hits 10,000 likes, we’re doing it. At 25,000 likes, i’ll try to find a way to scrub that image from your brain.
#trendsarestupid #holdingamicrophone
Haven’t done a Throwback Thursday in a long time… so here’s a bouillabaisse of almost-curated stuff, many of which have some pretty clever tricks thrown at them. From the ‘58 a-pillars on the ‘57 to the hidden little gems in others, some really hold up, despite their being twenty (or more!) years old.
Speaking of looking back, what is a trend in the hotrod world that you wish would have caught on stronger or lasted a bit longer? For me, it’s always been the “street customs” look… not quite a show car, not really a radical custom, and not really a Street machine, either… just a hearty soup of all of the best parts of those ingredients.
Enjoy.
Got a really fun piece of news to share soon. Hope that your day is going great.
#drawingcars #illustrstion #streetcustoms #rendering
It’s not the only thing I do, but it’s probably the thing I’m most known for… OK, aside from hiding p*nises in my work OCCASIONALLY).
Was poking around a bit in storage and found a bunch of prints that I’m going to put on the website, as well as some fresh new stuff in the coming weeks.
…I’m excited about it. And that’s about all I have for right now. More soon. Have a great day.
#illustration #drawingcars #sketching
Just a few more decks and a peek at one through the process… figured I’d finish out the week by keeping the theme sort of consistent.
I hadn’t drawn a piece of fan art since my childhood, so this one-off piece in here was really fun. I hid a ton of little Easter eggs in there and just had a ball putting my own spin on a piece that inspired the hell out of me as a kid.
Much more next week when I’m not sitting in meetings with my editor, whom I’m convinced thinks I’m either functionally illiterate or lives in a perpetual state of amazement that someone apparently so unfamiliar with the English language can string words and paragraphs together.
Wait’ll she reads the next one, which is told entirely in limericks, translated to Esperanto from Klingon, and uses grammatical symbols like cuneiform cyphers.
Anyway, some more board designs. Lots more new shit on the way.
#skateboard #illustration #vector #art
Some fourteen years ago (that’s almost hard to comprehend! FOURTEEN fucking years!!), I threw a bunch of skate decks into the universe… what you see here is probably a third of the entire design collection.
This was a fun experiment and an absolute blast to create a bunch of these. I stumble the cross a folder this morning with a bunch of as yet unreleased versions dating from 2012 to about 2020, and I’m very tempted to do a few limited runs, just for kicks. Maybe even as part of a support-level bonus tie-in with the books? Who knows.
In any event, here’s a peak back at what a slightly younger me was doing nearly two decades ago…
#art #skate #skateboard #illustration
