edible forest creatures

Long Time No See

2011-08-22T22:08:00.001-07:00

Okay so I've been a bad Blogger and haven't posted in ages... But I'm done a book I spent 4 years on and it's Super Cool! Follow me @Penume or watch for updates of it getting published @EntiretyPress cross fingers to get a copy this fall.
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DINOTOWN!

2010-08-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

Hi friends! As many of you are aware, for the past year or so I’ve taken inspiration from dinosaursfuckingrobots.com to create my own ongoing series of illustrations.

Cute, charming, hilarious, disturbing; these pieces are many things that everyone can enjoy. And despite possible future repercussions to my plans for creating a series of children’s books, I have a long way to go before I tire of this theme. Expect to see several new additions later this Fall.

The purpose of this post is actually to bring attention to a related side project.

Several months ago while my good friend Kristof was visiting from the exotic nation of Europe, he had the idea to visit DinoTown (North America’s only cartoon themed dinosaur park) dressed in robot costumes and go to town (DinoTown) on those unsuspecting dinosaur statues while photographing the whole shameful spectacle.

Unfortunately, Kristof’s trip was cut short and we never made it to DinoTown before he had to return home for prestigious hereditary duties.

Shortly after Kristof left Vancouver, I learned that coming September, DinoTown will be closing its doors forever! Shock and alarm over the economic crisis this will mean for the Fraser Valley being my first reaction. My second thought was; we couldn’t wait for Kristof’s next visit to Vancouver, we would have to go defile a children’s amusement park in his honor.

This all brings us to last Sunday. Jordan came over around noon and we constructed some amazing/ half-assed robot costumes. Then Jordan, Aman and I drove out to DinoTown to put the plan into action. After a long but luxurious drive out to Chilliwack in Aman’s Cadillac, all our hopes and dreams seemed crushed as we pulled into the DinoTown parking lot to see a “closed due to power outage” sign.

Few people can relate to the sense of crushing hopelessness that comes from driving for 90 minutes in a luxury sedan, only to turn around empty-handed.

We decided to take a walk around the outer grounds to clear our heads and figure out our next move. The park looked abandoned. We couldn’t find any staff or sign of guard dog, despite many warning signs. Through a chain link fence we spied a clearing of dinosaur statues. It was infuriating to have come so far for our objective and be denied. This situation was made particularly dire since Jordan’s moving to Arizona in less than 2 weeks.

With the park closing in a couple of weeks and little opportunity to make a return trip we debated the options of leaving in defeat or scaling a perimeter wall.

By an act of providence, just as we were mulling over our dilemma, we saw a truck drive up a side path and park at the caretaker’s home.

Over walks Gérard, the property caretaker, who explains the situation with the power outage. Gérard couldn’t have been a nicer guy. We told him about how we just wanted to get some photos with the dinosaur statues in our robot costumes before Jordan moved away and the park closed forever, and he let us into the park, explained how to follow the trail to more statues, and told us to take as much time as we needed. Everything really worked out as well as it possibly could have: The rain held off; we got into the park for free without any ethical compromise; we didn’t need to conceal what we were doing for fear of scarring children or offending parents; and we took all the time we needed to explore the park.

Yup, it was a great day. I know we made Kristof proud. It’s only a shame he couldn’t be there to live out his dream with us. But don’t worry Kristof, there’s plenty more dinosaur statues around the world that could use a little robot love. God willing, we’ll get to them.

Aman, Jordan and I would like to personally thank Gérard for letting us go ahead with our ridiculous plan.

Goodbye DinoTown! You’ll be missed. But thankfully we were able to defile one more childhood memory before saying goodbye forever.

Updates and 'Spectral Cities'

2010-07-25T11:50:00.000-07:00

Hello all! For those of you who are coming here from my site, I'd just like to let you know that updates are in the works, but several delays have kept me from making tangible website progress. Travel and working on lots of new paintings have kept me quite busy, but I'm moving the website up on the list of priorities.

Most of what I've been working on recently has been for my first solo show, 'Spectral Cities'! The opening was on Thursday, July 22nd and the art will be on display till August 31st at Lüt Boutique.

Here's images of the main 8 pieces:

Seattle Erotic Art Fesitval

2010-04-29T22:09:00.000-07:00

This weekend, April 30 - May 2 the Seattle Centre Exhibition Hall will be saturated with erotic goodness. Not only will there be an abundance of artwork on display, but also all sorts of exciting entertainment, including live art painting, dancing, Naked Girls Reading, etc.
If you make it down, don't miss the festival store where you can find prints, cards and other erotic goods. I'll have some tantalizing greeting cards for sale. Yup, Dinosaurs Fucking Robots are now available as affordable cards! Perfect for mother's day, congratulating a recent graduate, or any occasion you can think of. If you don't make it down to the festival, but need to tell that special someone how you feel, but don't know how, send me a message, I have more cards in stock at home.

Freaks and Geeks

2010-04-08T21:15:00.000-07:00

Upcoming Art Openings!

2010-04-08T11:43:00.000-07:00

EPIC ART OPENING FOR VANCOUVER'S FREAKIEST AND GEEKIEST
Opening reception @ The FALL Tattooing
644 Seymour st
Doors at 8:30pm.
Cool tunes from Earth and beyond, random culinary offerings, carefully chilled adult beverages, plus a slew of artists collaborating on a giant live painting - and filming the whole thing in time-lapse.

CARDED! is back!
Opening Party & Card Trading Action
Saturday April 10, 8-11pm
Ayden Gallery (@Tinseltown)

But that's not all...the CARDED! 2010 Group Show features some of the original art from the trading cards as well as other paintings, illustrations, photos and more from the 50 artists in CARDED! 2010.
Runs daily at Ayden Gallery from April 10-20

Come one and all. There will be more Robot vs. Unicorn action, a little bit of Dinosaur Robot love, and all the card trading fun you can shake a stick at!

Plus, here's a link to interviews from the last CARDED! opening at Jacana Gallery.

Dinosaurs Tenderly Caressing Robots

2010-03-05T17:32:00.000-08:00

Here’s the long anticipated posting of my most recent Dinosaur Fucking Robot illustrations. I’m actually only posting 2 of 3 new pieces I’ve made since I decided to rework a couple small things. I’m sure to post it… soon. Maybe with an additional new illustration to the series! There are tonnes of dinosaurs just begging to be drawn in compromising positions.

Part of the delay on posting these was my waiting to hear if they’ve been accepted to this year’s Seattle Erotic Art Festival. Unfortunately, they have not. This of course is shocking and disappointing news for everyone, especially me. After the initial disappointment, mixed with rage, I’m only left with a sense of bewilderment. Has the show already reached erotic dinosaur saturation? Was the material itself not appropriate to the theme of the festival? Was the intent or quality of the work not of suitable quality? Obviously those last points are ridiculous! These are the finest illustrations of their kind!

But one can hardly expect to be accepted into every show, or sell every piece, and so on; rejection is anything but the exception when it comes to creative pursuits. If anything, I’m more determined than ever to find a fitting venue to exhibit these fine specimens, and some promising leads have appeared.

The SEAF is April 30^th - May 2^nd, I’ll still be attending; it’s bound to be a thrilling show.

CARDED!

2010-03-04T23:55:00.000-08:00

So here's a design I had in the Carded! show last week at the Jacana Gallery. The show was amazing! The gallery was packed with people eagerly trading for their favorite cards. The energy of the event was wonderful; everyone was very talkative and complimentary. I was lucky enough to meet and talk with several of the artists and finally put a face to some art I've admired for a while.

Predating Carded! and in the same spirit is Hot One Inch Action, a button trading show that's been happening for some years now. Both shows create a great atmosphere for people to talk with each other and the artists. I haven't been to many other shows where everyone's that approachable. Hopefully both will continue to happen annually for many more years.

Happy New... March...

2010-03-04T23:48:00.000-08:00

So here's a little illustration I did to print off on X-mas cards and send out to friends and family. Thing is, I don't think I actually drew this up till December 20-something, and then getting caught up with one thing or another my X-mas turned New Year's cards, are now just general greeting cards with a cozy winter-ish seasonal feel. I've sent out most now, just have 4 left to write and drop in the mail. If you haven't gotten one... it's probably in the mail... if you never get one... well, here it is! Write me, letters are fun!

Business Cards

2009-12-27T16:08:00.000-08:00

Like I said before about themes popping up intermittently through my work after years of absence, here's some bright colourful buildings that I've created recently.

These designs actually came out of the background for my recent Steampunk stencil. And fun fact, they're also business cards! Back in November for the Steampunk show I wanted to have business cards on hand. But between scrambling on getting the stencil itself done and the frustration of trying to get a website up I didn't make a deadline to get a design done and professionally printed. So I figured I'd do something a bit different that the printer wouldn't have been able to provide me with anyway. I like the idea of how the cards can be displayed all together to create their own cityscape. The only problem is that when I wasn't handing them out personally and they were just on display, people didn't realize they were business cards. I'll have to think of a solution to this display problem. Aside from blue and green the cards themselves actually fit within standard business card dimensions. Amusingly, the blue and green were the most popular and I ran out of them first. The sad thing is that since I just printed these off my home PC on card stock, the fine tips get bent up pretty quickly and smudging and water damage claimed a handful. But good news! I think I've found an affordable way to have this concept professionally printed and I should have them in January. I decided I wanted to create a few new designs and scrap some of the originals to create a full spectrum rainbow of buildings.

I originally tried to tie in each building design with an emotional drive that corresponds to the colour, but that theme kinda falls apart. Bonus points if you know where the inspiration for this comes from and can spot design elements hidden in a few buildings that reference it.

Robotic Tea Party!

2009-12-15T01:24:00.001-08:00

This is a piece I just created for a Secret Santa dinner party with some other art school grads. It combines some of my favorite things: robots, tea, mustache, bow ties, and general airs of sophistication. I'm thinking a series of charming robotic socialite vignettes would really add to the decor of some opulent tea house. It's a possible series I'll come back to soon.

What is old is new again! Water Colours! pt. 2

2009-12-14T01:51:00.000-08:00

Again, here's a playful water colour I did some years ago.

Looking at this I notice how I've learned a few things about water colours and painting these past few years. Strangely, or maybe not, I'm not sure what other art schools are like. But at the one I attended, it didn't seem like it even occurred to most of the teachers that some sort of variations of painting techniques should be taught, or explained in some way. So up to this day I'm really learning something new with every new painting I do and supplementing that with library books on techniques and looking at other artist's work. This doesn't actually sound too unusual or bad when I type it. But those art teachers could have said, "oh by the way, there's such a thing as masking fluid, you might want to look into it, it's pretty awesome."
What I really find interesting about this particular piece is how I made it so many years ago in relative isolation from other work during that time, and how it ties into current themes I'm interested in.

What is old is new again! Water Colours! pt. 1

2009-12-14T01:19:00.000-08:00

So here's an illustration that I did quite a while ago, and unlike most older work which fills me with a deep shame and embarrassment, this I still find charming in its own way.

This was actually one of my first experiments with overlapping ink drawing on a textured wash of watercolour. It's a good thing it turned out well for me or I could have neglected this sexy mingling of mediums. This specific piece came out of a combination of overlapping events. First, was a highpoint of fascination with anatomical prints, such as Gray's Anatomy. Second, a drawing assignment where we had to pick an object to draw 40 times over in different ways and viewpoints etcetera. Thirdly, I'd recently had my wisdom teeth removed and they were sitting around on my desk in a little plastic box. I'm pretty certain I almost copied this tooth composition exactly from a print I came across, just changing the shape/ type of tooth. But I still think it's great, and maybe I'll get back to doing more of these someday. If you know any dental offices looking for art I think something like this would be amazing. It'd definitely beat lame ass prints of Orcas jumping and coastal sunsets.

Steampunk

2009-11-21T13:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a digital sample of a piece I made for the Steampunk Symposium which is up at The Fall Tattoo and Artist's Gallery till December 5th.
The show had a great opening full to the brim of people dressed in exquisite steampunk finery.
This is the most elaborate stencil I've made in a while. It's nothing too complicated, but there are areas of fine detail and thin bridging that were disconcerting. I'm super happy with how it turned out and I'm excited about new ideas for other work that creating this has inspired.
Oh! I have a website now! www.benworth.ca Well, it's just a front page, but in January once I have a few projects out of the way I'll start to build it up.

Wildlife & Robots

2009-09-21T19:57:00.000-07:00

Here's some moderately recent illustrations of wildlife that's adorned envelopes and cards for friends.

Always an ongoing theme; whether destroying, loving, on their own, enslaving humanity or tenderly embracing a dinosaur, robots are the greatest! They're everything the future should be hopeful for, and fear.

Drawing Theme?

2009-09-19T01:34:00.000-07:00

I came across this while checking out http://drawn.ca/

http://www.terribleyelloweyes.com/

There's a tonne of great illustrations here, and I thought we might as well get on that 'Where The Wild Things Are' bandwagon. At least it's an idea for new random sketching that I think I would actually do. We should just meet up soon for tea with a couple copies of the book and sketch.

Things loving things!

2009-09-19T01:04:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it took me 3 months to post on here... sorry, I'm sure I'll be more consistent what with the random art I've been making while putting the final touches on my book paintings.
Anyway, here's my second Dinosaurs Fucking Robots submission. I'm really pleased with myself over this one. Hopefully it'll go up on the official site soon, if not I'll just have to create my own forum for this ongoing series.

Here's the first one I painted. It's a bit more wholesome.

Coming soon: T-Rex & Pachylcephalosaurus!

Procrastination!!!

2009-09-19T00:38:00.000-07:00

Look at me, actually posting something on here. Sorry for the delay, but I tried to do some sketches that were related to the blog title and failed miserably. But enough of that, I'm just going to post up some of my most recent work that I'm proud of.
The first being a stencil I did of local live pa artist Longwalkshortdock

I'm really happy with how it turned out, before I started cutting I imagined it would be more complicated than it turned out to be, the only sticky area was the NES controller.

Hmm... I'm having trouble uploading another image... blast, I'll make another post.

But here's a super useful site I found recently!

http://lostandtaken.com/

うんこさん　Unko-san!

2009-07-04T00:05:00.000-07:00

Okay to stimulate productivity I must share Unko-san, the lucky poo fairy. My favourite is Baba-kun's father, Jyaiantsu Baba because he has cool mushrooms growing in his gym and he's pretty much awesome for a poo.

Ola! & Ahoy!

2009-06-26T18:12:00.000-07:00

Wow I was really tired and somewhat dehydrated at work today so to stay awake and be good I was drawing these here silly little drawings and in an effort to feel productive after pretty much looking at card/board games online for 2 hours after I got home I decided to colour them up something fierce and see how much of a run-on sentence I could pen.. I mean tablet? Anywhey and crud I thought they were kinda funny.. After that I just started sketching some silly Darth Vader pics and some innapropriate doodles that I might get around to posting once they're more than a few scratches of pen on the sides of a confidential document.

Post Number One

2009-06-23T21:57:00.000-07:00

What a great day to start a blog. It's my very own 1/2 birthday.
Okay Ben since I've popped a few things up and made a quick banner I'll let you post the first art even if it's a logo for the site shall we just load up a bunch of sketches and comment and from there see if we can work over the interwebbulae?
Plus we should probably have some sort of appropriateness guide lines. Shall we regulate content as well? Like, shall I just rant on about the hookers (aka: ladies of pleasure) in my building?

In the begining...

2009-06-23T18:54:00.000-07:00

Hey Ben, what kind of background and such shall we have? I just dropped in the first template due to simplicity for now but we should probably create our own I find standard blog width a little thin. Oh and we should sign our little stuff as I do below. We can totally edit this later and such. Also I think with the name we've chosen we probably have our first few themes bases overflowing. Play around with our lack of fonts all you want. I always prefer things so small 1/2 the peeps won't be able to read it. But do we really need blind followers?.. prolly. Also with progress in mind if one of us thinks of a theme that the other wishes to usurp let that encourage something fun... Say you want Gorilla and I want Robots... = Robot Gorillas & Gorillas vs. Robots + maybe some good ol' fashion steam punk monkey bounty hunters... etc. whatever goes.

Oh you also know we can pre post stuff and schedule it to appear...

After you showed me that "god" image I think you'll enjoy this, as I made a bunch of them for an animated .gif a while back. I think it's basically the most simple way to represent an omnipotent being. Go all seeing triangle! Do you have any pics of any gods?
- Peter