NEW WEBSITE

Hello Everyone!

MattDyeComics.Blogspot.com has officially moved to a new website. All future updates will be posted over at www.MattDyeDraws.com.

Please check out the new site by clicking the link above, or scroll down to see older posts archived on this site.

Thanks for your continued support!

-Matt

Budweiser Guitar Painting Pics

 

 

  Here are some pics of the guitar I painted at the Budweiser Made in Michigan party recently. All the work in progress shots were taken by Brenda Shea (thank you!). Unfortunately the only finished pictures I have of the guitar were taken with my cell phone (no thank you!) so they aren't as nice.

This whole thing was done in a four hour span from 8pm-Midnight during a concert at the Fillmore. It was a ton of fun and all the staff and crew from the Budweiser tour and the Fillmore were very accommodating. I got to meet / talk to lots of new people (even though I had a hard time hearing anything). It was a blast and I'm happy with the results. This guitar, along with 30 others from different artists in different cities, is headed to Philadelphia for the final show of the tour at the end of August.

Thanks to everyone who came out and supported me at this event!

Budweiser Made in Detroit Painting

I just found out that I will be doing a live painting on an acoustic guitar at the Budweiser Made In Michigan Party this Thursday night. Its a free event happening at the Fillmore in Detroit, with performances from Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr, RAC, and Youngblood Hawke. More info can be found online here.

The painting will be my take on what it means to be Made in Detroit. I'm gonna have a ton of fun with it - so stop by, say hi and enjoy the party! I'll be painting from 8pm-12am. Must be 21 or older to attend.

Hope to see you there!

Sketch & KRC 2013

I visited my brother in NYC this past weekend and I drew this crazy, semi-bionic, snake during the lengthy taxiing process before take off.  The drawing is done entirely with a black Bic ball point pen - which is my go-to drawing method for car & plane rides. Mostly because I can keep building sketchy layers to create a finished product without worrying too much about the bumps.

I also wanted to mention that I will be attending Kids Read Comics again for 2013! The event is this weekend (6/22 & 6/23) at the Ann Arbor District Library. The Artist Alley is Noon - 6pm Saturday and Sunday, and I will participating in a Quick Draw event from 3:30pm-4:00pm on Saturday with Jono Balliett. Check out the KRC website for more info. Hope to see you there!

SPACE 2013 Recap

Last weekend I returned to the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo in Columbus, OH for my second time (with a couple year hiatus in between!). I had such a blast and met tons of awesome people. Huge thanks to anyone who stopped by my table to chat or buy a book! Here are some pics of my table to check out for anyone who missed it:

I also got to spend some time hanging out with my friend and former professor Ryan Claytor (Elephant Eater Comics) and former classmate Leslie Anderson. Ryan (who is a fan/collector of pinball machines) knew of a local pinball collector who happened to be having a party at his house while we were in town. We swung by to check it out and ended up sticking around and playing pinball until the middle of the night. Needless to say, it was an amazing collection and we had tons of fun. I took a few pictures of his collection, but this collage doesn't even do a great job of showing exactly how many machines there were. Awesome!

I definitely plan on attending SPACE again in 2014. Planning on having new comics & hopefully more other goodies by then as well!

DINO BOOKS - SPACE 2013

This weekend I will be attending the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo (SPACE) again and I can't wait! I'll be there all day Saturday and Sunday hanging out, selling comics and other cool stuff. Check out the SPACE website for more details on the show.

One of the new products I'll be selling at SPACE this year are these little pocket-sized dinosaur notebooks. There are 4 different designs that I will be selling individually and in packs of 3. These guys are each at least a 5 color screen print (the raptors are a 6 color!) and they're the perfect size for a back pocket for on-the-go sketching or note taking. These weird little dino notebooks have been in the making for a long time so I'm excited to get them out into the world. (sorry for the poor image quality!)

Gates Floating Mountain Shirt

Here are some pics of the latest shirt design I created for gates. I had a lot of fun making this one and learned some new illustration techniques through trial and error.

The mountain on here started as a pen drawing that I decided I didn't like anymore. So I went in and blocked in areas of the drawing according to value and converted it to halftone dots. The finished piece is actually an overlay of those halftoned values on top of a version of the drawing where I attempted to recreate those same values by distressing selected pieces of the illustration.

After I typed that paragraph I realized it was extremely difficult to follow. So I went into my working files and made a little visual aid to help describe the process.

This gif shows the original pen drawing, then the version of it where I blocked in the major values. Then it shows how I tried to recreate some of that value using distress instead of halftones. Lastly, I faded in the halftoned value blocks. I felt like that last step (which was kind of a happy accident) really gave it the final boost of contrast it needed to take the mountain to a certain level of realism or drama. The final piece underwent even more work than the last step of this gif, but this covers the gist of it.

Hopefully you found that little glimpse into my process interesting! If you're really digging the shirt or the band you can pick one up for yourself in their webstore here

Chewski in MSU Comic Anthology

I just found out that two comics I created at MSU are going to be featured in the upcoming MSU Student Comic Art Anthology! Both comics happen to be about my old hamster Chewski. One is titled "Chewski Goes Fishin'" - which you may remember from an earlier post where it was featured in a couple volumes of the Red Cedar Review. The other, lesser known, story is titled "Chewski Goes Sledding". A panel from the latter of those two comics will be featured on the back cover of the anthology.

The anthology is going to feature tons of amazing comic artwork that was all created by current or former MSU students. If you're interested in checking it out, it will be available at the upcoming MSU Comics Forum on March 1-2. For those of you who can't attend the Forum, it will also be made available online at shop.msu.edu and on Amazon (price yet to be determined).

UPDATE:

Here is a link to a nice little article from MSU Today about the Anthology that features a panel from "Chewski Goes Sledding" and has some more details. Price has now been set at $12

METAL SHARK

I had a great time at the Monster Drawing Rally last weekend. Unfortunately my phone died and I was unable to take any pictures of my drawing. So I made this new version of it to share with everyone! The real drawing looked a lot like this one, except it was done in only 1 hour and it was all pen and marker. This drawing was colored digitally. The Drawing Rally version didn't have the space backdrop either. I just thought it was the most fitting background for a metal shark with Gundam-esque laser wings.

The color turned out a little different than I expected but I'm pretty happy with it. I've had some eye problems this week and ended up coloring this while looking through some sunglasses because my eyes were dilated. When I took the glasses off and my blurry vision started to fade, the color completely changed! Still pretty cool though. Hope you enjoy! Quite different from the last metal shark drawing I posted in 2010.

Monster Drawing Rally!

This Friday I will be participating in the first ever Monster Drawing Rally at MOCAD in Detroit! The event starts at 8pm and it will feature over 90 artists creating live drawings. When drawings are completed they will be hung and sold for $40 each. Proceeds will support MOCAD programs. I'll be participating in the 3rd Shift of artists, which will run from 10:30-11:30 PM. Peep the rest of the details on the event's facebook page here.

Warpaint Portfolio

 

For those of you who don't know, I'm part of a design group called Warpaint Studio. My portfolio of work on the Warpaint site has recently been updated too! Check it out here to see a handful of the projects I've made as a part of Warpaint Studio, including some projects that haven't been posted here before.

I'm always open to new projects, so don't hesitate to send me an email (matt@warpaintstudio.com) if you're interested in working together!

Type In Stereo

I just got to do this logo design for a really awesome music website called Type In Stereo. The site is run by a bunch of really awesome guys and, wouldn't you know it, they had some really cool ideas to work with. I had a ton of fun on this one and they were a pleasure to work with.

Type In Stereo is frequently updated with well written articles about really solid music. These guys care about what they're doing and it shows. Plus the whole website just got a killer makeover! Check it out here: http://typeinstereo.com

Snakes!

I drew a line drawing of this seven headed snake beast a while back and thought it would be good practice to give it some color. Here's how it turned out! This was done with a brush pen, various fixed width pens, markers, and a bit of watercolor paint.

Wolf Painting

Just did this drawing for a cool dude in a cool band (<-plug!) and I went about it in a peculiar way. Mostly because I intended to stop with a line drawing and decided to finish it as a painting/marker drawing. This resulted in a series of scans from various stages in the process. So I thought I'd put together a little gif to watch how it evolved. Hope you find it interesting!

Hit The Weights!

Here's a fun one I did a while back. Little bit of mustache, little bit of muscle, some hand drawn type. Definitely the recipe for a fun shirt design. Enjoy!

KRC 2012

Just a quick post to thank everyone who came out to Kids Read Comics 2012 this past weekend at the Ann Arbor District Library and helped make it an amazing event. KRC gets better every time I attend and I'm super thankful that I got to be a part of it again. Huge thanks to anyone who visited my table, bought a book, or just said hi!

Field Day!

I designed these shirts for Childs Elementary's Field Day this year and thought I would share them. Got some good practice with drawing Cheetahs on this one. They are harder to draw than you'd think!

These were printed with white ink on a whole rainbow of colors. I snapped a pic of the Cardinal colored shirt.

New Gates Album

As you may or may not know, I have been working with the band gates quite a bit since they formed. The latest project was an illustration for the cover of their new EP "You Are All You Have Left To Fear". The illustration was done using a hodge podge of techniques including marker, charcoal, paint, and a bic pen that I cut in half so I could draw using the broken ink tube. Then I scanned it in and did some color separation to create the image that could be used for letterpress. Mike and Dan from the band did all the type layout and the jackets were printed by Letters From Earth out in NJ. I'm super happy with the finished result.

I'm honored to be a small part in the release of this new EP because it is definitely one of the best albums I've heard in a long time. And I'm not just saying that. I highly recommend heading over to www.youareallyouhavelefttofear.com and downloading the album. Especially considering that its free! If you like what you hear and you want to support the band you can buy the limited edition letter pressed CD (which also includes a booklet featuring all of the lyrics and some stellar photography by Mike and Dan). You can order those online here. They are limited to 300 copies so buy one quick if you want one!

-Matt

*the photos I am using here are courtesy of gates

From Fragile Seeds

Yo! I got to design these shirts for a band called From Fragile Seeds, out of Virginia. They're great guys and they're making some awesome music. You can download their music and name your own price at their bandcamp page, and you can order these shirts and support the band by going to their online merch store. Check them out on facebook too!

NOLA Doodles

Hey!

I just took a trip to New Orleans and had a chance to do some full color doodles in my sketchbook. I thought these two were worth sharing.

I've been really inspired by the artwork of Dave Tevenal lately. His flash art and tattoos have got me wanting to get better at coloring and creating finished works of art without the use of a computer.  I think my small collection of markers is holding me back a bit, but that can be fixed! My real challenge is getting used to leaving myself some blank highlights. I've gotten lazy and usually add white space on the computer after I scan in my work.

Hopefully I'll make some progression and post more sketches. I'm also sitting on a bunch of other new stuff that I will post soon. This will have to do for now!