red alert all strange friends: new vibe pack, new supply drop, new style, is en route to your feed and potentially your life (if you want) right now. its a topic we havent covered in a minute. had this one cooking in the lab for a while now.
had the idea to periodically release some smaller fine art style prints from the studio in small packs with some stickers ive been printing along the way. did the first one sometime last year, made 40, they sold out, it was a good time. time for chapter 2
now its time for the [second] vibe pack. "second inkjection" - american cryptids print with the suite of theo-aesthetica stickers. some new. some classic. let me show you all about it in this thread. u can look for fun even if u dont want to pick it up
so, first up, the print. i wanted to make an image with some of my favorite, and some of the most essential, some rare, some well known, american cryptids. ive been working on getting this just right for a while now. i think i first started this last year in colorado.
so i have this really awesome printer here where the ink is almost more like paint. ill post a video of the print in a second. when ive done stuff like this, ive usually tried to base the feel and flavor of the image on a traditional printmaking technique, so it carries that vibe
last time i tried to land in kind of an etching or northern euro woodcut space. this time, i based the feel and flavor of this print on some japanese woodblock prints, specifically this image of white foxes carrying ceremonial flames at night by hiroshige, one of my favorites.
not that they look the same, obviously, but i can "go for" any flavor and feel i want so, i have found its useful to base the general timbre off something traditional so, thats what i used. the way the woodblock print utilizes fades and dark tones was perfect for this.
you can see how the print actually looks here and get a feel for the size. its printed on watercolor paper so it has a nice texture, its kind of thick, not to sound pretentious but i would call this a more fine art style print. im really happy with how it turned out.
theres a few older euro altarpieces and things like that from northern europe that have decorative writing around the outside, and its done so that when youre looking at the image the writing functions as a "pure border", but u can read it. the border says what cryptids are in it
we got:
- mothman
- dogman
- loveland frog man
- flatwoods monster
- bigfoot
- jersey devil
- pope lick monster
- skunk ape
- wampus cat
- various aquatic entities
and more. i tried to get the best selection possible
so yeah. could go on about that but really tried to capture a certain vibe and feel here. if ur on patreon you saw me working on this on and off for a while, started sometime last year, even collected visual descriptions and notes of things that should be reflected. good times.
anyway, moving on, the stickers. some people have seen some of these designs before, got some classics around, this first one is new though. theyre all vinyl stickers.
theyre all around three inches, which i have found is the largest i can print them without the effect being "woah, thats really large, what am i going to do with that". with pencil you can see how large:
also includes the holographic st odilo of cluny sticker, which you can see in the tweet below and in different lighting in the tweet above that. shiny. hes the patron saint of souls in purgatory
ive found its almost impossible to get these printed without some slight imperfections like a line or a bump or something so, just saying, but thats kind of the cool part of working with actual materials instead of pixels, imo. they look cool irl.
thats it. the set is $40 flat. that includes shipping unless ur in another country. comes in a small hard envelope to your house. i made 40, if it sells out super quickly ill make some more. thats the tale. thanks for looking at my stuff and hanging out on the internet with me
oh yeah i forgot the best part, i know this is going to push it over the edge for you, theyre signed on the back. hello big museum department. hello art world. hello sothebys ten million dollar opening bids. ten trillion dollar bids minimum by end of year (not financial advice)
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"therapy" is one of the most engaging topics. it clearly has a polarizing worldview surrounding it - we may look back and see "therapy culture" as the hallmark of this time.
but, something about it is obscure. what is this cloud around "therapy", exactly?
i have one idea.
...
one distinction that characterizes many fields over the last century, but has failed to trickle down to normal everyday people, is the difference between modernism and postmodernism.
although this sounds like the lead in to some academia, this distinction is essential.
to oversimplify: modernism is, basically, the first half of the 1900s. modernism as a project can be likened to building a big tower. we just got rid of all the "old worldview" stuff holding us back, and with our new tools, all our fields and knowledge are going to come together
american halloween theology: the philosophical mythology of insane clown posse
folk religion generally defies strict boundaries. it is, by definition, often fully enmeshed with aspects of a cultural landscape.
it is in this spirit that we briefly look at the insane clown posse.
the insane clown posse was originally known as the inner city posse, and made music far more aligned with the typical themes of rap and hip hop. based in detriot, they realized that pursuing this path would just lump them in with east and west coast artists, hindering them.
it is worth noting that detroit is, obviously, not a neutral place. in the american mind, detroit stands as a former manufacturing el dorado, which died, succumbing to various forces, and leaving a shell of itself behind. this may or may not be true, but thats part of its mythos.
as i've paused comics to finish my next book, and am working on getting holiday stuff going, it's been cool to revisit some projects. in this thread i'll repost one from 2021: the inverted propaganda series
propaganda has always been an interesting concept to me as someone who makes images, and in the "propaganda" folder, it's hard to get more heavy hitting than soviet.
fittingly for my general interests, a lot of it is about religion. here are some examples:
i was looking at these one day and was thinking that the visual devices in them were very strong - look at this one below. in fact, the communication is so strong that you could easily flip the pieces around and invert their message. so, i decided to do that.
saw this when i was 12 or 13 for some reason and it affected a huge portion of my life. a trojan horse: it appeals to people who have a crappy job and feel like they’re better than the customers, and then asks: if you’re so smart, why are you the one working there? brutal.
i had a ton of “lame jobs”. its something i enjoy, in a sense, for a time. if it was 1994 i probably could have been content just working the exact position documented in the film - a clerk. sadly they broke the social contract and put cameras into every workplace like this.
this ended the ability to do anything other than work, which was the whole point of having such a job.
thats really the point of the movie. both main characters feel like theyre better than the public, but only one uses his low station to his advantage: by freedom-maxxing.
each halloween season, my mind turns to a lesser known saint: st. odilo of cluny. the idea of a relatively unknown saint is interesting in and of itself: you see the lists of names, it's easy to forget they were all real people who contributed to our spiritual history.
...
the long lists of saint names sometimes remind me of a war memorial. i suppose they do call the terrestrial church "the church militant" for a reason.
st. odilo was an abbot at the benedictine monastery in cluny, france - right at 1000 AD, crossing over the two millennia.
the tale is: there was a pilgrim who was stuck on an island during a storm. there, he had a vision of all the souls suffering in purgatory. later he went to odilo and asked if there was a day to pray for all the dead. odilo established one. it took off, and became all soul's day
oh yes. it is time for… our second annual children’s book recommendation thread.
the last one changed amazon’s suggested products list forever. such power we wield.
we take childhood reading very seriously here. allow me to send you some book ideas from the cyclops family hut.
the last recommendations thread was done around our first kid’s book release. that thread is below.
we have another kid’s book dropping before the holidays - presently, the main thing we are pumping is that i have all my books together as a package now. scope-able on my profile:
last intro note: premise. a normal person might describe my wife as a “crunchy mom”. her vibe is in the mix here. books clearly affect a kid’s spirit and psyche so we tend towards things we feel will nurture the brain-spirit in some way. basically, we are the bottom of this meme: