She-Man

"By the power of GaySkull, ...I have the power!!"

Fun times with this one, it's been something I wanted to paint for a few months and finally cranked it out. I just thought it would be cool to see two icons from opposite sides of the little kid toy world spectrum come together. Masters of the Universe meets My Little Pony. Why not?

It was a real trip to really study the He-Man figure features for this painting. I pretty much had the entire collection of MOTU as a kid, total flashback for me. It was crazy how something you haven't seen for 25 years could be so familiar, every detail. I forgot how squished up his ugly face was. As for the Pony, I didn't really follow that show/toys as a kid in the 80's. I wasn't sure if there was a main Character that I should use, but it doesn't matter. I know the young ladies LOVED them for some reason, I think I found a good Pony for our Hero.

If you played with Masters of the Universe as a kid like I did, take a look at this website I found. It totally calls out the makers of reusing molds for the other figures. Pretty funny.

http://www.retrojunk.com/details_articles/2689/

M I C, see ya real soon! K E Y, why so serious?

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Here we have the leader of the club, Mickey Mouse, an agent of chaos. Toontown needs a better class of criminal and he's gonna give it to them. His operation is small, but there's a lot of potential for Disneyland "aggressive" expansion.

ok, ok, I'll stop. I can go on, but I will spare you. This one pretty much is what it is. Taking a world famous corporate icon and mixing it with a instant modern classic of pop culture, and here you go. The idea to paint this came to me completely by accident this weekend while painting a mural in a kids room for a friend. I smeared some red on Mickey's face and thought, "HEY, that looks kinda like the joker." Two days later hear you go.

I've been asked already if I'm going to make this into a T-shirt. Well, no, but I am looking into making reproductions of this for sure. Hit me up if you would be interested, any of these paintings actually. But this will also most likely be on the invite for the upcoming gallery.

Hopefully we will see that soon. Stay tuned.

The Sausage Queen of Chicago

Needless to say, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" is one of my favorite movies, I am pretty religious about this flick. When I started this series of Nerd/Cult movie babes, Sloane Peterson was one of the must haves on the top of this list. The basic idea for these paintings is to pick my favorite ladies from my favorite movies and to do a stylized pin up, slutty version of their character. Just like Jennifer from BTTF, I try to capture their character more than doing a portrait of the actress playing her. Once I get that I cram the painting with as many references from the movie I can fit in. And there are plenty of things from this movie. If you catch them, great. If not, that's ok, just enjoy the sluttiness I guess. But I think most of the items in this are pretty basic to anyone who has seen it. It is no doubt a classic.

I had some fun with this one, doing some homework and constantly pausing scenes from the movie on my mac. For example I wanted to know what was the Parade in the middle of the City when they filmed this. Turns out it is a real Parade they do in Chicago called the "Von Steuben Day Parade". Kind of like an Oktoberfest, hence all the German stuff in the scene. I wanted to get some accuracy in there for that one. But in the middle of doing this "research" I found a cool website that answers questions I didn't even think to ask.

If you're into Ferris, you should check this out...
http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/09/51/ferris-buellers-day-off.html

It brought up the question "If Ferris took the name Abe Fromen and his party of 3, why didn't the sausage king of Chicago show up?" and "how the hell was he allowed to get on the float and do two rehearsed performances?" The writer reminds us that in the very beginning of the movie we see Ferris in the shower rehearsing for his Danke Shane number. Anyway, if your into that stuff, check out that site.

And if you're in to these paintings stay tuned for "Andy" from the Goonies. She's askin' for it.

Ed Rooney, "Cheese in the Wind"

Right after watching Ferris Bueller this week to get some inspiration for this (and the painting of Sloane) I heard the sad news of the passing of John Hughes. His movies definitely had a real vibe to each of them. You could tell a John Hughes right away when you saw it, they all had a lot of heart. They all just made sense and felt good. Quite the legacy left behind by that guy.

One of those legacies was the character of Ed Rooney. What I think to be one of cinema's greatest villains. Now I know he didn't actually carry a slice of Swiss Cheese in the movie, but it's based off one of his greatest lines. This may not be one of those paintings where you get it right away. But if you do, your mind is random like mine. If you don't get it, here is what I found on Urban Dictionary's website....

"Cheese in the wind' was first uttered by Ed Rooney from Ferris Bueller's day off.

Someone is 'leaving your cheese in the wind' when they do any of the following:

A. Ruin your fun; be a wet blanket/buzz-kill
B. Flout your dignity/authority
C. Dismiss you/hang you out to dry
D. Deny you sexual satisfaction (whether intentional or not)

"I did not achieve this position in life by having some snot-nosed punk leave my cheese out in the wind!"

Cereal Killers

I did this one a few years back when I was living in Huntington Beach. It's a play on words that has been spoofed a few times lately, but here is my shady little take on it. This made it into the OC Fair Visual Arts Gallery in 2006. I thought I would get a little more guff from the Irish folk for having some fun with stereotypes and the Lucky Charms guy. But I suspect this would be the gang that hangs out in the back alleys of the Kelloggs plant in the wee hours of the night, up to no good and looking for trouble. And when you think about it, isn't anyone who is THAT coo coo for anything a little cracked out? Except those who are coo coo for cartarsauce, that's ok.

1.21 jigaHOTs

"Oh La La, OH LA LA??"

What we have here is more than a crotch shot in purple Calvin Kleins. It's the start of what I hope to be a series of babes from nerd movies. Starting with Jennifer from Back to the Future, this one also features a handful of visuals from the movie. I modeled it after the actress Claudia Wells from the first movie. Nothing against Elizabeth Shoe, she's great and all but I think all nerds know that the girlfriend from the first movie is way hotter. I wasn't really going for a photo realistic painting of her though, it's not my thing to do portraits of people. But I did want a bit of her likeness. Just enough for when you see it, then notice what's around it, you get it. My goal was to make a modern pin up stylized painting of that character, and surround her in the nerdy world of BTTF. I made sure to put things from all 3 movies in here. This would be my idea of Marty McFly's room, as if Marty just left. It is 10:04pm after all, he has a Clock Tower to race to.

Part of what got me thinking of this series was some inspiration from this year's Comic Con. Ideally it would be great to get twelve different paintings like this and offer a Calender to sell there. Or even just reproductions of each. I think that if there was ever a market for this type of art, that would be the place. So anyway, stay tuned for more of this type of work. My next one like this will most likely be Mia Sara from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". Ferris definitely has the iconic room to pull it off.

Here are some other characters I'd like to give this treatment. Can anyone think of any others? ( Leia is too obvious, I left her off )
Phebe Cates from Fast Times
Elizabeth Swan from Pirates
Casandra from Wayne's World
Jessica Alba from Sin City
Veronica Corningstone from Anchorman
Christie Brinkley from Vacation
Elizabeth Berkly from Showgirls or/and Saved by the Bell

Fun Stuff.