This is probably my favourite out of all in the Totally Awesome Joker Collection. Reminiscent of Tim Bradstreet’s work on John Constantine.
Heath Ledger and Nolan have created one of the most seminal portrayals of a supervillain in cinema, and one wonders when we might see the likes of Ledger’s performance once again.
Amazing art by Russ Mills — intense, graceful, almost wondrous.
On his technique: “For my Graphic work I compile as much source material as possible in the form of textures, random marks and scribbles etc and scan it all, the primary image is drawn and also scanned. I then manipulate the constituent parts on the computer, I keep the amount of layers to a bare minimum so the results are as spontaneous as possible. I dont use any filters at all to keep the ‘digital’ nature of the image to a minimum.”
Captain Swing and the Electrical Pirates of Cindery Island, with art by Raulo Caseres.
Cherri Wood’s work is intriguing. Bittersweet, delicate, surreal and sometimes painful.
The minimalist art, the raw spatters of ink or paint.. makes me wonder if they’d look great on a t-shirt.
Filed under art
Nissan GT-R
Ah, all this vexel art by Dangeruss brings back fond memories of watching Initial D (please excuse the live-action version) and imagining we were drift kings while playing the arcade simulators.
And what is a ‘vexel’? As Dangeruss writes:
“Vexel” is a term that’s been coined to describe the fusion of Vector and Pixel forms of illustration. Vexels are not Vector – scalable – mathematically derived images based on paths and fills as one would produce in Illustrator or CorelDRAW or perhaps Flash. Nor are they pure painted images as one might create in Photoshop or Painter.
My Vexels include elements from 4 disciplines: Digital photography, Vector path definition, Digital Painting and 3D modeling.
A typical Vexel starts with a high resolution digital photo. Most often, in my case, of a car. I’ll analyze the photo and determine what elements I want to add, modify or enhance. I typically begin by defining Photoshop vector paths that provide the basis for the line art that I use to add a stylized “toon” look to the finished piece. These paths are stroked with Photoshop paintbrushes of various widths.
Body paint, headlights and other details are systematically added using vector based paths that I use as selection sets for painting those elements. Doing the body color highlights, shadows and reflections plus the various details like intercoolers, lights, grills interior details typically requires 120 layers or so – and not a few hours of patient work.”
I remember sitting in the driver’s seat of a souped-up Subaru STI once. It was a terrifying kind of exhiliration, with the engine’s low-growling like a beast waiting to be unleashed. Sheer power that could be let loose with a mere tap of your foot.
I hit 100km/h while only in second gear. And in that moment where the acceleration-force pins you back in your seat, I finally understood why boys love cars.
in my mind i still need a place to go
I realise updates here have been pretty slow. But it’s not like I have enough of a readership yet for my posting-lethargy to be noticed, so.. I’ll just imagine that anything in shoot or die is read more than one person other than the occasional google-searcher that trips over a rock and finds himself here.
I’ve looking at a lot of stuff on the internets (which is all we ever do, anyway) and moleskine sketches have been an obsession of mine of late. Like musical talent, artists fascinate me with their ability to create, well, art. I suspect I’ll never be able to understand the way their minds work in such a way to be able to wring out such glorious images on paper or canvas. I’d love to see what they see in their heads when they string a harmony of lines into something beautiful.
Andrea Joseph, a tea-drinking Brit, is one of my favourites.
Filed under art
Gez Fry is a half-British, half-Japanese illustrator and art director currently based in Japan.
Lovely cinematic-inspired pieces with inevitable anime/manga influences, but with a softness and an intricate sense of detail.
via that evil bastard/genius Ellis, by Gianluca Pagliarani
“And I’m watching DEADWOOD, the American cable tv series that eviscerates the Western genre, mixing history with fiction in its imagining of the last days of the Wild West. And it suddenly occurs to me. Where did the space heroes go when they weren’t in space anymore? I found myself looking at the clapboard and pine of the Deadwood camp and seeing it made out of bits of abandoned 1930s sci-fi rocketship, and a fifty-year-old Flash Gordon calling people ‘c*cks*cker’.” Read the rest here.
Hellblazer#97, written by Paul Jenkins, cover by Sean Phillips.
Great story, great cover. John Constantine – the original.
KIOSK is a shop in SoHo filled with lovely little things carefully curated from all around the world. Just think: a place constantly reinventing itself, that embraces change and reimagination, an aesthetic that amalgamates shifting cultures, different flavours, inviting you to try and peg it into neat and finely divided groups and categories and know that it will not be easy.
KIOSK has garden tools, kitchenware, stationery from Germany, notebooks from Japan, American lottery tickets and reindeer hide from Sweden, 信箱 from Hong Kong; a continually changing catalogue that stands by a simple credo that says, “Hey, even the simple, everyday stuff can be beautiful, too”.
I think KIOSK would delight wanderlusting travellers or those who yearn after the simple design aesthetic. A personal favourite of mine has to be the deceivingly simple-looking yet intricately-crafted Black Cross Skateboard.
by Andy Beach of REFERENCE LIBRARY
shop display: boxing styrofoam
shop display: postcards and photographs
lj peretti’s ebony tobacco: custom
arizona’s finest sweet & spicy cactus candy! (that’s a mouthful)
custom tape
by 
shoot or die 