Recent trip to L.A. & the LBC

I just spent the weekend cruising around southern California for a little bit of work and a little bit of fun. Of course whatever the reason I do anything I am always on the look for visual stimulation and creative outlet. While driving Melrose Ave to pick up part of my Halloween costume I noticed the huge amount of graffiti, some by amateurs, some by the pros. I snapped a couple pics of artists you should have seen somewhere by now.

Banksy2

Seeing BANKSY is the reason I decided to whip out the camera.

Banksy3

“I’m out of bed and dressed, what more do you want?”

EINE_BJ

EINE was all over. I don’t know how he does it.

EINE_J

He was usually painting the first letter of the shop’s name.

ShepFairey

And of course Shepard Fairey was around, but I didn’t feel like stopping.
You can probably just but this on a shirt at Zumies.

I don’t know much about graffiti but these were the artists I immediately noticed. There is a lot of good stuff out there, but I was trying to stay on schedule and couldn’t stop for all of it.

The night before I was kickin’ it with my old roommate and we carved out a jack-o-lantern in honor of Where the Wild Things Are.

Carol-O-Lantern

Tutorial: Jack-O-Lantern

It is the weekend before Halloween and I felt a little festive so I decided to carve a jack-o-lantern. Here is how it went:

Went the local pumpkin patch.
Picked out an ugly little bugger with a lot of character.
Pulled out my woodcut tools and some inspiration.
Sketched it out with a marker. I like to use the contours to shape the features
(Toxic Avenger was on TV).
Cleaned out the guts.
Start carving I used a fillet knife that I could make smaller details with and took my time with it.
The green pumpkins are a bit thicker than the orange ones, so I didn’t bother using the wood cut tools to much, but I gave the mouth a little dimension.
Than I lit it and hope that it doesn’t catch on fire later.