Foobooz East Passyunk Tote

Tote bag for Philly food blog Foobooz. They wanted a street scene of one of Philly's new "restaurant rows" and I went with East Passyunk since it's not only 4 blocks from my house but also an awesome mix of old south philly stuff and new hipster yuppie stuff (and people).

When I was shooting photos the guy in the butcher shop came out in his bloody apron and started screaming at me about insurance and lawyers or something. Awesome. Won't stop me from going there for some cheap chicken parts though.

It was tough to simplify it enough so that it would work for a screenprint, there's about 100 more places I wanted to jam in there - especially the amazing Patrick Nagel-esque King Of Jeans sign.


Head on over to Foobooz.com and pick one up or check out their new line of T-shirts. They're also now available at Green Aisle Grocery (1618 Passyunk Ave), 15 bucks a pop.

inside the hot dog studio

Another massive hot dog project, in progress.

Am I sick of them? Sometimes. But just as often happily surprised by new and exciting hot dogs, and just as important - new and exciting places to eat them.

My Dad is even in on the mission now, coming back from weekend trips to tiny Pennsylvania coal towns with photos of hot dog joints I've never heard of.

Cheesesteaks and Frank Reynolds

2 New non-hot dog prints in the store! Philly Cheesesteaks and Frank Reynolds! 11 x 14 Giclees printed by Silicon Gallery Fine Arts so they look great and brighter than the originals.

29 bucks a pop or add a few and make a set for 100 bucks.
available here: hawkkrall.net/prints

Richie Records T-Shirts

Here's a way to pick up a non - bootleg Hawk Krall shirt. I did this design for Richie Records years ago and they finally printed up some sweet shirts.

Richie Records is one of Philadelphia's last remaining stongholds of actual punk rock, related projects being Clockcleaner, Kurt Vile, the Homostupids, Violent Students, and Music For Your Methlab, Philly's best radio show that has sadly come to an end.


These guys have given me some terrific work over the years including this infamous cover of the Violent Students LP which is still one of my favorites.

Buy a shirt here-
testostertunes.blogspot.com

Read an interview here-
terminal-boredom.com

Bootleg Hawk Krall Hot Dog Shirts!

Honestly, if I saw my hot dog paintings on some all-over-print oversized ghetto t-shirt in chinatown I would be sort of pissed but also kind of psyched, and probably even buy one. What I find perplexing is a seemingly legit Detroit clothing company doing it.. I mean.. come on, you're too lazy to just do your own lettering?

Don't Buy These.
Down With Detroit Apparel

Looks like they took them down from the site. But I wonder if there's still a warehouse full of these somewhere???

Cheap Eats

Illustration for Philadelphia Magazine cheap eats issue. About Lawyers and Hockey players who are opening up delis and hot dog stands.

A Connecticut Hot Dog Tour

Recently finished this DVD cover for a fantastic new documentary about Connecticut hot dogs. The main artwork is actually pretty large for me, somewhere around 3 feet wide.


Connecticut hot dog joints are chock full of amazing old lettering which helped make the art a blast to do. Mark (the filmmaker) provided me with some awesome reference photos.


In some crazy cross promotion madness, we also featured a few of the places from the documentary in my weekly hot dog column on Serious Eats, which might have been sketchy if they weren't some of the most legendary hot dog joints in the country. Also helps that the film is basically a labor of love that Mark has funded all by himself, so I was happy to help out.




The history of Super Duper Weenie actually goes back to a John Baeder, a fantastic superrealist / pop art painter and one of my favorites.Current Super Duper owner Gary Zimola saw the original truck in a book of Baeder paintings, and with the artist's help tracked down the truck, bought it, and turned it into an operating hot dog truck, and eventually a brick and mortar restaurant.


Baeder is known mostly for his diner paintings of the late 70's but is still going strong documenting hot dog stands and taco trucks all over the country. Check them out at Johnbaeder.com.

Read the full posts on Serious Eats-

A Connecticut Hot Dog Tour: Blackie's Hot Dogs
A Connecticut Hot Dog Tour: Capitol Lunch
A Connecticut Hot Dog Tour: Super Duper Weenie
A Connecticut Hot Dog Tour: Rawley's and Top Dog

There are prints available of the DVD artwork that you can buy directly from the filmmaker at CToriginals.com. For $29 you get an 11x14 giclee print (printed by Silicon Gallery fine arts, same folks that do all my prints) and a copy of the DVD.

Burger Heaven

Check out this crazy exploded burger illustration for Cincinnati Magazine's "40 Best Burgers" Issue. The original painting is so big it hung off the sides of my drawing table. Seriously one of the coolest freelance jobs I've done.


Also- Cincinnati's best Veggie Burger. Honestly I had no idea Cincinnati had such an awesome food scene outside of 4-way chili. Places like Senate that do wild burgers along with korean kimchi & shortrib hot dogs and even a croque madame with ham and hot dog on brioche drowned in bechamel sauce and a fried egg. Wow.

New Dirty Dish

New 2-page Dirty Dish comic. More crazy kitchen antics! I think it's going to be published in Grimalkin Press's HIVE #5 and Pat Aulisio's PACC Anthology, debuting at the 2nd Annual Philadelphia Alternative Comic Con. I won't be there this year but you should go and check out all the awesome Philly comics people that will!

VendrTV Wallet

VendrTV Wallets are finally available! VendrTV is a terrific site all about street food with short videos profiling carts and trucks all over the country. Dan Delaney who runs the site asked me to illustrate their first promotional item and they turned out awesome.

Made by Tinymeat in Portland, these wallets are 25 bucks each and get you discounts at food trucks all over the country. I think they are only making a few hundred and they seem to be going fast. More information at VendrTV.

Nutter and Rocky

Here's a nugget from a job about Philadelphia local & seasonal food that was never published. Rocky shopping for organic produce and Mayor Nutter chowing down on a grass-fed burger from South Philadelphia Tap Room.

It's always a bummer when stuff gets the axe and maybe they thought the portrait of Mayor Nutter was too "cartoony" or "caricature-ish" but I think Nutter is great and would love to see him chowing down on some hamburgers.

GRNY Post-it V

Rustled up some last minute submissions for Giant Robot's 5th Post-It show at the NY gallery. Had less than 24 hours to get them done and in the mail and thought I was going to blow it. But they turned out pretty fun and I'm happy to have my work up with such a stellar group of artists.


Post-It V was curated by Mark Todd and Ester Pearl Watson, and will be up until July 7th.

Giant Robot Gallery
437 East 9th Street
New York, New York 10009
(212) 674-GRNY (4769)



Check out some shots from the opening here-
GRNY POST-IT V on flickr

Serious Eats shopping bags

Crazy sandwich design for a Serious Eats promotional re-usable Baggu shopping bag. A whole fried fish, sausages, random deli meats, lettuce and tomato. Hot dogs are great to draw but it's nice to branch out into some other food groups every so often.

Right now they're only available as contest giveaways but I'm pretty sure they will be for sale in the near future.

Skatin' For Jesus

Latest "Said What?" strip for Baltimore Sun. Christian skateboarders rethinking their beliefs?

Each week Baltimore Sun runs these short comics of conversations overheard around Baltimore. The project is curated by Benn Ray of Atomic Books. This one was overheard by Rachel Whang - also of Atomic books - outside the store.

Got some inspiration listening to early 80's christian thrash-punk band The Crucified, who are actually pretty good (at least the early stuff).

food food food

Pretty much everything I'm working on right now is food related, which is amazing, but I'm hungry all the time. I'm pretty sure the part of the brain that's used to mix colors and cook is the same. I almost want to lick the brush to make sure it tastes right.




But it's really disappointing to paint slow braised carnitas and juicy burgers all day, then open the fridge to find off-brand english muffins, 2 week old chinese take-out, and a solitary chicken drumstick in the freezer.

SPJ Award

Whoa! Apparently I won an award from the Northwest chapter of the Society For Professional Journalists, for this Willamette Week cover I did last year. Had no idea it was in the running for anything.

Much thanks to Ben & Tom at Willamette Week who have given me some awesome assignments, and I'm sure were up until 4 in the morning trying to figure out where the hell to fit the logo and headlines into this crazy illustration.

Here's a link to the full list of Award Winners, congrats to all!

2009 Northwest Excellence in Journalism Contest winners

Sketches

Behind every finished piece of art is a trail of sketches, scribbles, mountains of crumpled tracing paper and unused concepts. Sometimes I look back and wish I could incorporate some of the looser compositions into finished pieces.





I'm absolutely in awe of artists who go right from a blank page to finished product - including people that do super realistic, tight work, I can't even fathom how this is possible.



This drawing of Philly mayor Michael Nutter I thought turned out awesome and was of bummed that the job it was for was never printed.

Anyway seriously if anyone cares about these things I will send you hundreds of sketches for a few bucks, otherwise most of them go right in the trash.

Cincinnati in NYC

Illustration for Cincinnati Magazine, about a bar in NYC that serves Skyline Chili & Graeters ice cream during Bengals games for displaced Cincinnatians.

Every time I draw Cincinnati Chili or Coneys people go wild and I get emails from strangers and friends who I didn't even know were from Ohio. You people have some serious pride for your chili.. and for good reason, it's great stuff.


As far as the process goes the concept was pretty straightforward. Bengals fans in a NYC bar with piles of Cincy chili and Graeter's. Lucky for me, one of the bars that does this - Phebe's - has an awesome "olde time NYC" feeling so the background is based on what the bar actually looks like.



So the next step is always to decide whether to do an actual painting (pretty time consuming for this much detail) or just do pen & ink and pop the colors in with Photoshop. Or this hybrid technique that I've used a few times, I think most successfully for a Willamette Week food guide cover.

I do the line work first, scan it and print a copy out, then transfer an outline onto printmaking paper. Then I paint a few important elements and anything that I want to have texture, and also establish a general color scheme, which comes a lot easier to me with paint than a blank screen.

Next comes the photoshop nightmare of lining up the painting with the black line, cleaning up the edges (or not) and filling in all the remaining details. Usually at this point it looks like hell and I scream at my computer, but eventually it looks sort of awesome.