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Tag: Phish
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The Dürer Series
Hey folks! It’s been a while since I’ve last posted here, most of my efforts going towards my other page www.phishart.net . However, in the current times we are in I’ve had a lot of free time, so I wanted to share how I spent my last year artwise!
2019 started with my largest block print to date, 12×18. Inspired by the Albrecht Dürer‘s Four Horsemen print, I made it for Phish’s first shows of the year. Between then and that summer I researched a lot of Dürer’s work and saw the potential of making a cohesive series for Phish’s summer tour. Each print is inspired by a Dürer print chosen for fitting in with a song or lyric, as well as “relevance” to where they were playing. I’d redraw the image, but changing it in ways to fit my vision. They were later transferred onto an 11×14 block, hand printed using oil based ink in editions of 30, along with smaller color variant editions. Working continuously from February til December, I ended up doing a total of 15 of these (13 for summer tour, 1 for fall tour, and 1 for the MSG NYE run)
Most prints are still available in my shop: www.joseeen.etsy.com
Click on any image below to see the full post with the story behind the print, variants, and work in progress pics:
2020 has been a strange year artistically. The back and hand pain that comes with hand printing linocuts has forced me to take a printmaking break, and go back to ink, watercolor, and paint. With the impending cancellation of this year’s Summer Tour, most of the images I made may be released as art prints. I had chosen this year to forgo a common theme, so each print I was doing worked on it’s own, most inspired by sketches, stickers, or drawing I’ve drawn in the past but never did anything with. Stay tuned for new work on the way!
I’ve had a busy year so far (although I haven’t posted enough here!) Since the beginning of this year, I have been working on a series of posters for Phish’s summer, and eventually their fall tour. The series is inspired by vintage sci-fi and monster movie posters, inspired by Phish songs, lyrics, as well as where the shows were taking place. Since the tour dates this year were announced early, I had plenty of time to research and find the right theme. I was drawn to the vintage posters, finding many I wanted to recreate. I didn’t realize at the time, but the ones I choose were often illustrated by Reynold Brown as well as Albert Kallis. I recreated the posters as ink and watercolor illustrations, trying to make them as similar to the originals. As I became more comfortable recreating the style, I took more liberties with the images. The posters were created in segments, which were then scanned and digitally put together to create the final poster. I had planned to only to do a summer tour series, but the feedback and requests inspired me to also continue the series for the fall tour. I will create one more for the New Years Eve run at Madison Square Garden, and then the series will come to an end. All prints are available in my shop, www.joseeen.esty.com. They are 13×19 prints on cardstock, signed and limited to an edition of 150.
Summer Tour
Click on the thumbnails for more info/ work in progress pics:
Fall Tour
Click on the thumbnails for more info/ work in progress pics
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Spring Update
So it’s been a while since I’ve posted here! The last couple months have been very busy, work and artwork wise. I recently revamped my shop to include a lot of my recent printmaking I’ve been focusing more on printmaking, including a few new prints and variants.
New prints!
Pizza Time
Taco Time
I created these for my 5th year at the Tattooed Mom’s tent for the South Street Spring Festival in early May. I had fun with these, creating several variations, including a 3D version that comes with cardboard 3D glasses! I have a few of these left, which are available in my shop.
Spring Fest!
It was an honor to be asked to join the TMom’s tent during the South Street Spring Festival for the 5th year in the row! I was able to join a couple other amazing Philly artists to sell artwork and represent the spirit of Tattooed Mom’s. The owner is a a big supporter of Philly Street art ( just go upstairs!), and rather than just sell some swag in their tent, he’d rather have artists sell their art! Thanks, Tmom’s!
New Shop!
I recently update my shop to include all my printmaking work. Since I’ve started doing my Phish inspired art, my main shop has been filled with that. I created another site for my other artwork, www.joseeen215.etsy.com. I must admit it was often neglected, but I’m working to prevent that! I’ve added new work, and may add new as well as some older work.
Phish!
Of course there’ll be plenty of a Phish art for the near future. With summer tour approaching, I’ll be making some posters for some of the concerts, with the Baker’s Dozen Run (13 show at Madison Square Garden during July/August) poster almost done. I will also be vending at 2 of the PhanArt Shows at the Hotel Penn, right across the street from MSG. With so many shows in NYC and no vending allowed outside the venue, this will be the chance to grab some Phish art from myself and a bunch of other awesome Phan artists! I’ll be posting all about my posters for summer tour as well as more in my other site: http://www.phishart.net. I’ll b repost onto this site, but will be sure not to overwhelm the non-phans!
I recently finished up my latest series, 15 show posters for the band Phish’s summer tour. I done posters for past shows, but only a handful (aside from my illustrated setlists for every show). I wanted a bit of a challenge, and wanted every poster to have a common theme. I also wanted to get back to drawing figures, as well as working with micron pens. Using the obvious fishing theme, I used the state fish of each venue (as well as fish found in the area for multiple shows in the same state.) Some of figures used were actual Phish fans who submitted pictures!
All the posters are available at www.phishart.com. I also have a couple “unphished” versions available in my Etsy shop.
The folks I did the Without a Net poster for really liked it, and gave me the opportunity to do another poster for an upcoming show at the Brooklyn Bowl in NYC! This is an all star line up playing the music of Phish, jazz style! It features members of DMB, Snarky Puppy, Sun Ra, Strange Design, and more. Find more info via the Facebook Event page
Apologies all around! I have been neglecting this site this summer. I’ve been busy on my other site, illustrating Phish setlists, and trying to get ready for a wedding in about 2 weeks. So it’s been waking up at 8 and treating this as a job, since it’s what I do all day. Summer started out without a hitch, I was doing Free Art Fridays, as well as The First Friday on July 4th (it was a weird one).
One of my favorite bands, Phish, started touring in July. As anyone who follows this blog knows, Summer= Phish related art. I even created a blog just for it. This year was nonstop phish art, in part because I’ve been illustrated every setlist of every show this summer, in real time, either by attending or listening to audio streams of the show live.
What started out as drawing random songs (which I’ve posted here in the past), and drawing their short setlist when they played on David Letterman as a challenge, kinda blew up. I posted it on my tumblr, which doesn’t seem to be visited much, and shortly after Letterman’s official tumblr account (Who knew he had a tumblr?) reblogged it, although by looking at the notes it seems not a lot of people follow it. I started doing the next few shows, and eventually someone retweeted it, and it went crazy from there. I was contacted by Phish.net about them, who allowed me to use their set notes on my art (which happens to be copywrited) and they even used them in their show recaps! I have the entire tour available for sale, and will soon start taking commissions for specific shows, possible as larger sized and hand drawn/colored. With the sale of these prints, a portion is donated to the Mockingbird Foundation, who provide music education to children.
My new blog is up and running. I’ll be featuring many of these sketches based off songs, exclusively on this site. As I draw more, I’d like to feature prints based off of albums or show setlists. I have actually done a series of stickers based off of Junta, most of which ended up on the streets of Philly. For a bit, you could track the album down by walking around Old City. A few still remain, but most have been taken/ torn off. So if you like nonsensical drawing based off songs written by a nonsensical fan, be sure to follow! phishart.wordpress.com
Josean Rivera 
