BUICKS

So, I have been a bit negligent to this blog lately. BUT i have been working on some art work lately, and alot of that art work has been my exploration into working on vintage ads for cars! I dont have much of an interest in cars other than the style of advertisements used on them in the previous years, so drawing them sounded "ok" to me but nothing i really wanted to pursue. It seemed like something would just be hard and frustrating... so I figured I would just do it. Well, I liked it alot. I had started on a 1938 Buick a while back and finally, after finishing it I did a 1928 buick and 1952 buick road master. Here are some pictures of those pieces.

Second Entry

Gameel "Ted" Ayoub. My great grandpa

First journal Entry

I did the first journal entry for the traveling journal. here it is. im almost done with the rest.

This is from an picture of my great grandma and her husband and my biological great grandpa Fred. He died long before i was born but he served in World War 2 and I have always been exposed to what he was like. He a strong, good, honest man. He was in the war and then came home and began to work as a crane operator. He died of a heart attack while cutting wood.

The next entry i will post will be over her next husband, Gameel also known to ever one as Ted. He was my grandpa since i was born, and one of the nicest guys i have ever met, and almost anyone that knew him would say the same thing. He served in World War 2 in the motorcade.

Traveling Journal

We have decided to begin a Traveling Journal Entitled "War." Through it we will be recording the stories, images, and emotions of the ways that 5 very different people have been exposed to war.

The artists involved will be:

Joshua Jaehnig
Dominic Fredianelli
Yueh Mei Cheng
and 2 others to be announced.

check out the main blog page and we will keep you posted on the 2 new artists and the work that will be presented within the pages of "War."

http://travellingjournalproject.blogspot.com/

Louis Armstrong

Here is an 13x19 inch portrait I did of Louis Armstrong.

Bosch Beer

My newest project has been to work on a 2 page spread about a brief history of the Bosch Beer Corporation, the Copper Countries 2nd largest and most productive corporation 2nd only to the Copper Industry. It is a particular interest to me and i enjoy collecting things left behind from what it once was. i created this simple cover using the later logo of Bosch Beer that i took from a cardboard case that i have.

The wooden back ground with silk screen looking image logo i used to give a look of a warm cozy bar that sat on the edge of the highways, like so many bars that i remember as a child but only a few now are left such as Jakes Bar outside of Twin Lakes, Mi. i remember at least 2 or 3 on the way there and only that one remains now.

The quote on the bottom of the cover is from a former employee of the Bosch Brewery.

Field & Stream

For an exercise in my publications we made special edition magazine covers. we could either make our own or do an existing title. here is my Field & Stream fathers day edition. i decided to mix the new and old styles of the Field & Stream covers to make it seem more like a new magazine you could pick up off the stand but at the same time something you might find in your grandpas attic.

hi, this is going to be probably the final entry of me giving away the stories and endings and stuff about my book (the title is yet to be determined). here is my introduction to the book and an acknowledgment to those who inspired me. thank you.


This book is from and for the men I have known and heard about for my whole life. They are my heroes.

Graham Jaehnig- U.S. Navy
Gameel “Ted” Ayoub- U.S. Army
Leonard Colombe- U.S. Army
Fred Morrisette- U.S. Army
Arno Jaehnig- Union U.S. Army
Alvin A. Bourbannais- U.S. Army



I would hate to come off as pretentious, naïve or uneducated altogether, nor cliché, or lastly, a liar. I always have wanted to create something having to do with the soldier. Any soldier. My father loved history and I too, because of him, see things and find out about things and instantly a question comes to my mind: what is its history? But in the case of soldiers, my thoughts have always continued. To the human being who is a war soldier, there is something else deeper that we can’t see. A mystery. To kill brings the average mind much trouble. Ending a life that could easily be your own, or family members, or a friend is the horror of war. It, at least, now means, there is someone you will never have the chance to meet or see or touch or listen to or spend time with or fall in love with. It is the greatest tragedy. Appropriately for this book, it is book burning. Imagine if there was only one copy of The Bible or The Iliad, The Works of Aristotle or Plato or Dante. Throw them into a fire and imagine yourself.
If you want to get historical with me, don’t bother. If you want to tell me certain details are off, don’t bother. Don’t bother tracking the historical accuracy of my character. Don’t try and pin him to a specific unit, because you can’t. He is a number of veterans that I have known in my life. He is a hundred I have read about in books and have seen on TV, and movies and in parades and walking on the streets with out ever knowing them. He is thousands of men who met their fate, or escaped it, only to meet it again, inescapable, years later. He is a million men. He is Odysseus. He is Hercules. He is Alexander the Great. He is Napoleon. He is your dad. He is your Grandpa. You might see him in the mirror. He is haunted.

I am not writing this as if I have any real clue about what they know or feel, or as if I am any closer to them than you are, BUT, maybe people will read this, and look through some new eyes, as I have done while writing every word and drawing every mark, and will finally see that what some people did, at some time, whether they wanted to or not, changed something and they will never know us. They put themselves into history books. War soldiers aren’t movie actors who win battles and then disappear. They had to come home and try, the best they could, to blend back into normal life. They changed OUR lives by putting themselves into our lives. And most of us don’t even see it. We don’t even look. We live our lives, everyday, thinking things are set. Never wondering or searching. Never seeing beyond what is right in our faces. We are who we are and that’s it. That’s what we tell ourselves. That’s all we see. Everyday. Every single day.

here are the last of my practice images, unless i find a bunch time in betwen classes, homework, work, writing, and story boarding but i'm not sure i see that happening too much. from doing these images though, i have found what style i will be using, which will a complete mix of styles i have toyed with to ultimately try and achieve my goal of making this story emotional, accurate (according to family stories), and i want the overall feeling and imagery of the book to be beautiful, dreamy, and frightening in ways only the character has seen. i am editing and proof reading and cutting and pasting my introduction to the book right now and i will post it in the next few hours so that hopefully the people that take the time to read this can grasp the feeling and over all idea of the book if they havent read any of the blog yet. thanks.

The Siller Motor Company

Recently i started (but have yet to finish) some mock advertisements for my great grandpas Buick Pontiac GMC dealership. It was the Siller Motor Company in Hancock Mi. He owned it from the 1930's to the 60's but to this day Buick is still our family vehicle.

I originally had the idea of doing some classic cars for a long time but it never occured to me to do Buicks for my grandpas no-longer existing dealership until my aunt said i should do them. So i started doing some research on advertisements for his dealership and realized they are nearly non existent. i did find a few but they were very minimal. At first if bummed me out, but then it just got me going on finally doing some really cool advertising pieces for his dealership, even if i was 70ish years too late. Here is the 1938 Buick i have begun to draw along with the actual 1938 ads I found and will incorporate into the pictures. I will be doing a series of 4 or 5 and will give them to my aunts, grandpa and mom.

I've been driving around alot lately and checking out antique shops and doing light research on historical things from around the UP and have become pretty interested in the Bosch Brewing Co. I bought an old bottle from the brewery that originated in Houghton Mi., and was later bought up by Linenkuegel Beer in Wi. But here are some cool old pictures of the Bosch Brewery.

New page!

this is the 3rd practice image i have completed. i have been put these together to help me decide the format of the whole book, whether i want it to be vertical or horizonal, rectangular or square. so far i enjoy the horizontal or landscape format the best.

my work area!!

practice

this is newest character image. i just finished it a few minutes ago.

sumi-e ink on illustration board

I have been working on the idea and story for another book for a long time. It basically follows the life of a WWII veteran after his years in the war, showing how his life changed, and how normal, everyday things bring the war back to him everyday and how he copes with life, eventually accepting that it is something he must live with along with trying to make his wife understand that she can never understand. the final chapter of the book follows the final days of his life, as he realizes that the loss of his wife, is truly the downfall of him, physically and emotionally, and that although in his earlier years life had bad things in it, he realizes that there would be, no longer, anything good for him. As he takes his own outlook and life into his hands he takes the final bus ride of his life to grow backwards to a young man and meet his wife all over again to live their lives the way they should have been.

i am now story boarding, slowly but surely, and doing practice images and organizing multiple family war story and PTSD instances that will make up my book (images and story line.)

above is a practice image i created trying to find a good style and inspiration to make the images.

hey! here are some sketches and doodles from earlier in the year i thought that i might put up. check it sucka!

cool stuff worth remembering.

finished products

i haven't been on this in a while. schools been out for a while and blah blah blah but i looked on here yesterday and remembered i was supposed to put pictures of the finished adventure mine project up and i never did. so... here are the final 2.

this is the first poster for the Adventure Mine that i have finished. i am 7/8th of the way done with number two, and the last one i spilled ink all over so im trying to figure out what else to do with it.

The Adveture Mine Project

i am, also at this time, putting together some post card designs for the Adventure Mining Company. working with matt and vicki is an awesome experience with all of the research i get do for the artistic aspect (vintage poster design, printing, etc.) and the historical parts (1800s copper mining, UP industry) and i just find a hobby in looking at old photos. here is my progress so far on the project. hopefully ill be wrapping it all up at the end of the month. ill be adding more info and image as the month and project continues. one love, gansta.

hey. i have some new stuff going on right now. i am hustling my ass to try to get things done for school. my final project in my illustration advanced studio 2 class is to illustrate images for a classic book and i have chosen Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, a novel for middle school aged kids about every boys dream of being stranded in the wilderness and tested against the odds to survive! im excited about it. here is my computerized ideation for the front cover design. ill post up the 4 images i illustrate soon.

nostalgia

ive been working on some new poster designs of nostalgic pugilism events surrounding Jack dempsey and rocky marciano. theres 3 for dempsey and just one for marciano but these are 2 of the 4 i have going right now.

congratulations! Its a book.

hey. my book is up on exhibition to the public at portage campus (the juttila center) of Finlandia University. the show is only up for another week. so go check it.

This is NEW

The title is called this is new... because it is. I've never done a blog and, in fact ,have hardly read any others. So I'll make this one and post my art work and photos and what ever other goofy shit I want to share with all the people that probably won't ever look at this. So brace yourselves, bitches. It's comin' yo way!