NEW RELEASE! MINI PRINTS AND STICKERS!! IN STORE NOW!!!!

“SLICE” 12″x 16″ four color screen print, edition of 100.

“Fruit Of The Womb” 12″x 12″ four color screen print, edition of 100.

PLUS I HAVE THESE NEW 4″ VINYL STICKERS GOING IN ALL ORDERS!!!

AND I’M THROWING IN MINI PRINTS!!!

“BIRDS!” edition of 70.

“BIRDS!” variant edition of 30.

“BUNNIES!” edition of 70.

“BUNNIES!” variant edition of 30.

Last summer I was asked by HarperCollins to create a cover for the young adult novel The End Games. I managed to not screw it up and this week the End Games officially hit bookshelves nationwide in hardback form.

The story is about two brothers who have to make it through a post zombie apocalyptic wasteland, so they wanted a movie poster feel for the book cover. Funny thing is I assumed they found me because of posters I’ve made like It’s Alive…

BUT in fact they had no idea about a lot of the pop culture and or movie posters I’ve done. They contacted me because they wanted the design built around the typography as they sited in my concert poster work.

So I made an epic movie style design that incorporated the book title into the illustration. It was a fun process and the HarperCollins folks were great to work with. Here’s a couple hi-res super zoomed in images of the cover, trees taking the shape of zombies and the brothers.

So that’s it. If you’re among the few Americans left who can read, check out The End Games. Oh and here’s a a trailer for the book:

Greetins from Austin, Texas(more on that later). Here we have two brand new, 4 color screen prints. Other than that they have next to nothing in common..other than being weird as fuck. First up we have a poster for the sold out Phoenix show at the Paramount Theatre last week. Available now, signed and numbered edition of 200, 18″x24″.

The direction I went with the Phoenix design is obviously somewhat Japanese, which I thought would fit with the new single, “Entertainment“.  One of my favorite designers, and from what I know(not much) the greatest Japanese designer ever, Tadanori Yokoo. I never really know how much I actually got out of design school but Tad’s(that’s what his friends cal him…Tad) work is one of the few things that jumped out of the history of graphic design book and stabbed me in the eyes, so parts of this design are a tip of the cap to a master. If you’re hip maybe you can tell already but if you’re not here’s a couple examples of elements and themes I used, went for or almost used for the Phoenix poster…

Recurring theme: man standing in or in front of water…

Almost did the type like this..but would have changed everything.

Moving right along we have my print for “Mint Condition 2″ at Ltd Gallery in Seattle, a group show paying homage to comic books and comic book culture. I’ve recently dipped back into the world of comic books after I dunno, an 8 year hiatus? I dunno it’s been a while since I read comics regualarly. In junior high and high school all I did was draw full size, pencilled comic pages. It was all I wanted to do.. then there were posters. Long story short I heard about Brian Posehn writing the new Deadpool and magically I found myself back in a comic book shop and in addition to Deadpool(which is awesome, recommend) I ended up buying a handful of graphic novels and collected reprints. The crown jewel of these finds was a Fantagraphics collection of old public domain comic strips by this dude I’d never heard of, Fletcher Hanks…

“Super Wizard Of The Jungle”

Some of the coolest, weirdest, yet somehow fun and strangely endearing stuff I’ve ever seen. I can’t really explain it, you have to buy the book(there are two actually) and have your mind blown on your own. This print is a mash up, re-draw of two of the best of Hanks characters, Fantomah “Mystery Woman Of The Jungle” and “Super Wizard” Stardust. Thus the name of the print is “Super Wizard Of the Jungle”.

The reason I credited myself in the print as “Juan Smithe” is because Fletcher would sign a lot of his strips with pseudonym’s, so I made up a quick dumb name for myself.

BUY THESE BOOKS!!!!

The prints are up in the store, have at them. There is a regular edition of 80 and a variant on 20 on french speckletone paper for a more pulpy feel..and I can’t recommend the collected Fantagraphics reprints enough. Get that shit!

Three posters for three shows happening within a day or two of each other(ALL AVAILABLE IN THE STORE NOW). Hadn’t did me a gig poster in a dogs age and I had to crank these things out in a little over a week, it’s like running wind sprints without stretching first. I don’t recommend it.

I’m experimenting, compiling screen grabs while I work to capture the progress of a design or at least illustrate my ridiculous mad cave man approach to photoshop and illustrator. This is quick and rough, if I do this again it’ll be better but it’s enough to get a glipse at how the sausage is made:

The Sonics and Mudhoney concept started from a place of wanting to do something that embraces the northwest and if possible represent multiple generations. One thing leads to another and I end up with a concept of an homage to the local rag The Rocket which became The Stranger like fifteen years ago? Something like that. Art Chantry was the head honcho art director at The Rocket, at some point Jeff Kleinsmith enters the picture as Art’s assistant and the rest is history. The Joe Montana and Steve Young of rock/punk/indie music design, it’s been all downhill since in Seattle..I mean if they’re letting me make posters, the scene is dead mannnnn.

I figure I had Chantry stuck in my head because he’s done some work on Sonics posters and or reissues at Estrus or Sub Pop I can’t remember. I got cute and hid the cover of Art’s book in the blood in the skull’s nose. The imagery is pretty much random, I tweaked an old VHS cover, I liked it cuz it had a slight spooky vibe  and it’s weird. If I had more time I would have made it weirder.

The Ben Folds Five design came from two things. The cover of the new album and a picture of Liberace and his pool.

I came across this picture in an old book and joked on instagram that I had found the key to my Ben Folds Five design, but the idea of a pool stuck in my head for some reason. The design evolved into an extrapolation* of the robot from the album cover floating in a swimming pool full of nostalgic toys of the 70′s and 80′s plus a few visual song references:  a fanny pack, Rockford Files, a Playboy from “September ’75″ and a “badass mother g.i joe”.

On the Ellie Goulding poster I just wanted to do something that fit without overthinking it, something with girly elements(metallic gold and pink ink) but hopefully mysterious enough to make it somewhat original…have you ever made a pink zebra/pony? That’s what I thought, numbnuts.

On all three of these I didn’t have time to screw around too much which was mostly advantageous. Think hard, go with whatever seems like the best idea and make the most of it, there’s no time to scrap it and start over or cook up some idea that’s too detailed and convoluted to do in 1-3 days.

All done, going to bed. XOXO

*I may not know the definition of the word extrapolate

Shake some ass internet!

Here’s the deal. Moving from Seattle to Austin, soon, packing, found a lot of cool old shit while sorting things out. Having a crazy ass tube sale to sprinkle these goodies out to all the good little boys and girls of posterland and lighten my load as I head south. SIX PRINTS FOR $50!! New and old prints alike, completely random.

I’ve got a handful of sold out posters from over the years, Ghostland, Roger Waters, paper test prints of my “Don’t Let Me Down” Obama print amongst others PLUS a bunch of test prints and uncut sheets, all inserted into tubes at random so there’s a good shot you’ll end up with an extremely rare/unavailable print or a one of a kind test print, ALONG WITH 5 OTHER RANDOM PRINTS FROM THE JON SMITH CATALOGUE FOR PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR!!

Here’s a smattering of pics(mostly from my 3G iphone as my digital camera bit the dust last week) to illustrate what I’m talking about…

That’s it! GET YOU A TUBE AND GET ME DOWN THE ROAD XOXOXO

Now available in the store, my piece for the Judd Apatow tribute show at Gallery 1988 Melrose, entitled “The Wrong Kid Died“.

The concept is a Dewey Cox album cover, a 12″x12″ screen print PLUS hand colored details. I hand painted the pink/red, green and the details and blood splatter on the kid, Dewey’s brother, “the wrong kid”…that Dewey accidentally chopped in half. A signed and numbered edition of 100.

In other news I’m moving to Austin soon so I’m going through a lot of old stuff and adding what few remaining copies of old and or previously sold out posters to the store!

What better time for a hangover than when I have to punch up a blog post for my new print release DRINKING BUDDIES! Available now at Nakatomi!!! Just in time for Christmas!

I made these things to celebrate famous and or infamous drinkers in popular culture, live, dead, real, fictional. The idea is at a 9″x12″ size they can purty up your bar, man cave, bathroom or cubicle(above where you hide your flask) quite easily.

Here’s a compilation of bits and pieces I may or may not have used in the process of completing the Drinking Buddies.

I didn’t need to do too much research for these illustrations as pop culture and drinking come (far too)natural to me BUT I did need to brush up on my Bukowski, which lead to the discovery of The Bukowski Tapes.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAANNND in an effort to splash the pot I will randomly throw into one lucky order the line art for a future drinking buddies print(below)!!!

Alright that’s about all the brain cells I have for this. I was going to go into some of my blackout stories but they don’t translate as well in text and I don’t have the time or metal faculties to convey…see, I can’t even finish this sentence. Just trust there’s a good story behind this! Happy Christmas everybody.

It is at long last, time to release my personal copies of my screen prints from Mucho Machismo. The art show that remembers and fucks with the mindless violent entertainment that made growing up in the 80′s and 90′s the best!! I’m wicked tired, if you wanna hear me blather on about the show in detail check out this interview.

It was my first time curating and I thank Spoke Art and all the awesome artists who participated in the show. There are still copies of other pieces from the show available in the Spoke Art store, check that shit out!

As for these three screen prints I’m adding to my store today:

“Beverly Hills Cobra” is a mash up of Beverly Hills Cop and Cobra. Sylvester Stallone was originally cast as the lead in Beverly Hills Cop, obviously he left the project. Stallone wanted to make a heavy dark action movie, not an upbeat comedic action romp. Thus Sly made the Cannon classic, Cobra.

The concept here is what if he kept/forced that dark action vibe into Beverly Hills Cop.

3 color screen print, 18″x24. Signed and numbered edition of 80.

“You Vil Lose” is a mash up of Mike Tyson’s Punch Out and Rocky IV….specifically from the point of view of Apollo Creed.

5 color screen print, 12″x18″. Signed and numbered edition of 200.

“Sexual Tyrannosaurus” is a visual interpretation of Jesse Ventura’s line from Predator….with a few other little hints and tidbits from the film.

6 color screen print, 12″x18″. Signed and numbered edition of 100.

As the curator I had to write some shit up for the press release.

MUCHO MACHISMO MISSION STATEMENT:

Violence is cool. So are guns and explosions. When it’s fake. It’s okay to be tough and flex your muscles as
long as you’re a good guy and you say your prayers and take your vitamins like a real American. Pain don’t
hurt.

These are just some of the truths prescribed from the hyper violent media that saturated the late 70’s, 80’s
and 90’s. The golden age of the action movie, professional wrestling and the dawn of arcade fighting games
and the first person shooter provided endless yet completely ridiculous entertainment to generations.

Mucho Machismo embraces the spirit of this era as modern action movies are now PG-13 and video games
are hyper realistic and less cartoony in their violence.

I know it’s silly but it’s still real to me damn it!

The shown opens in Oakland tomorrow night! September 7th in Oakland:

lOAKal – art gallery and boutique
curated by Spoke Art and 57-33
550 2nd St
Oakland, CA 94607

Above are my two prints in the show, one’s a screen print and one’s a giclée. Guess which is which! More info later, hit me up on instagram, I’m dropping sneak peaks of the other prints in the show leading up to the opening: @j0nsmith

that’s a zero not an “o”.