OKE the CROKE

the mascot for the OKEEFENOKEE DJ TEAM LEIPZIG! a little red crocodile, hanging around in my garden and fishing with my original 45s.... i tried to doodle it on a very tiny cardboard while fishing...

THE KANALOAS play quasimoto stomp!!!

a cool retro surf band from la coruna (galicia) knocked on my door someday to engage me with the coverartwork and design for their first 7" EP with 4 smashing surf songs. "quasimoto" is surf-slang for the typical surfer position on the surfboard. on the front you see hunchie the hunchback doing the quasimoto on his board, while he pulls two surfing birds... wohoooo - get the EP the soonest hodaddy-ooooo

"SWITCHBLADE" - the other guys

another cover i made a few years ago - released on butterfly records, barcelona. well, "switchblade" is exactly the right title for me, so it was obvious to paint an evil rocker looking for trouble at the corner of a street, while a tiny little girl dressed in a pink gown runs away in fear. the backside of the sleeve the songlist, sleeve notes and both characters again - this time the rocker spoiled it... the record is a superb vintage 60s beat and rocknroll performance by this french band "the other guys" that sadly doesn't exist anymore as far as i'm concerned. BUY it, if it still is in stock at butterfly records - it is more than worth it!!!!
check: www.butterfly-records.com

OKEEFENOKEE & MONTESAS

may everyone have a great new year!!!!! - here what i got so far: the poster for leipzigs top notch DJ-team (spinning only 45rpm singles - mostly originals) called OKEEFENOKEE and their first gathering at this great club in leipzig... if you're near, be there or be square... same club, different time: MONTESAS, finally once again in LEIPZIG!!!! we can't wait. this time on a bill with an instrumental band and the terrible black knights from romania. check the poster....

advertisement for BEAR FAMILY records

yes, sir - for BEAR FAMILY RECORDS - the no. 1 label for vintage music of all kinds. i grew up with it - always checking there mailorder catalogue and buying this and trying that, and when i started doing serious design i just thought - "boy, would be great to work with them someday." and here we are, finally (and 10 years later) - a marcel bontempi ad for bear family. no masterwork - but at least more sexy than lots of other record company advertisements. and besides that: sexy music needs sexy ads...(AND sexy covers - did i mention that before?) i wish everybody a merry x-mas and a happy new year!

postcard & pre flyer for DESPERATE ROCKnROLL

miguel corchon from malaga (benelmadena) is pretty busy in keeping the scene alive - and he's doing a fine job. he's not only organizing the "blues at moonlight" - now he's also putting up a new festival with a great name: (wonder why nobody used this for a festival before) DESPERATE ROCKNROLL!!! here#s the preflyer, wich appeared as postal card... dig the rocker with switchblade...;-)

silvester party at LOLITA BAR!

uh - once again: the coolest bar in my hometown is doing a "silvester gala" and i did the poster....yes, i know - the words "silvester" are in the wrong place, they should be a little more downward - grrr...anyway - what matters is the monkey!!!!! (as always)

STRESSTEST - my first official book-cover!

i once went to the worlds biggest book fair in frankfurt to show the editors of random publishing houses my artworks - like thousand other illustrators i saw there - carrying there maps around. i really felt totally uncomfortable going from editor to editor (sometimes waiting in a row) to show my stuff - and i guess the editors didn't feel much better - they were really bored and apathetic and were not really into checking the art-stuff of maybe 1.000 illustrators per day. and man - i can tell you - there were any kind of illutrator you can imagine: the misjudged genius, some real graphic whizzkids, a legion of average and indifferent "i draw anything"-illustrators and some wannabe-illustrators - wich was very hard, cause by chatting with them i found out, that most of em come evry year, trying hard to get an editor. at the end of the day i was totally depressed - some editors showed a little interest, most of em showed nothing or told me that my style is absolutely inappropriate for their publishing house. back home i swore, i'll never do this again - it was disgusting - not because of the fact that my endorse failed totally, but because of the whole setting - i felt my artwork was better at home in a drawer than gawked at by random editors... i concentrated at what i knew i can do: crazy and not so common design of posters, LP-covers etc...
well, and then, in the middle of 2011 it happened: a guy send me a mail, telling me that he was thrilled by what he'd seen on my facebook and if i could imagine to do some book-illustraions. well, i guess everybody knows what i answered - and so the story went on and now i find myself designing a whole book series at LAPPAN VERLAG here in germany. it's title is STRESSTEST and there will be a "stresstest" for men and one for women. text and idea is by a team of writers - all illus by myself... inside the book there will be a small drawing for each chapter.

MURAL PAINTING at the ALTES THEATER Bar-Restaurant in dessau

achtung: here we have some heavy art stuff - the mural i've done for the ALTES THEATER in dessau, saxonia, germany. since the location is connected to the local theater, the task was to incorporate scenes and themes from famous plays in the wall painting. the painting is in fact a mixed media mash up done on computer and then printed on canvases. what sounds pretty ugly at first isn't that bad, cause there was no intention to mimic a "real painting". every character and scene is painted and drawn with different pencils, colors, brushes or styles and some are even cut-outs, copies from old advertisements or or woodcut prints. the big wall in the restaurant was only divided by a small bar in the middle, a rectangular hole on the far right side and a partition element fixed on the wall. i really had my fun doing the scenes on the upper part and the "audience" on the part below the bar...
dig the photos of the restaurant (courtesy of benny uebe - i haven't been there yet) and scans of the sketches i made right before starting the whole action...

FRANTIC WEEKEND 2011 in LLEIDA!

here the poster for the frantic weekend 2011. a frantic ape jumping over a "bombo"...
yep, there is some serious "jim flora" style in it - who cares? he is simply UGGA UGGA!!! ah, can't wait to play with the montesas in my "fatherland"... - and to see the excellos for the first time.

"HÄNDE HOCH!"

...means "hands up!" in german - and is written on the turtleneckjersey of this weird robber - i dunno what he aims for and i don't wanna know - but he is drawn in three planes superimposed upon each other. just an experiment, but i like it and gonna draw more stuff in this style soon...

la GAZETTE du ROCK no.1

"la maison du rock" - a belgian club who organizes concerts and exhibitions - also brings out this fine magazin. they asked me to do the no. 1 issue front cover, and here it is... first i thought about illustrating a whole band - later i focused on only two musicians: a hillbilly pluckin the doghouse bass and beatnik with a drug overdose hammering the bongos.

Mr. DEATH PLAYS THE BLUES

everything worked out fine, more or less: the acrylic background on wood, the collage of the cutted paper parts, the color treatment with pencils of the charakter - and then i spoiled it all with the finish (you can see the brush strokes) buhuuuu...:-(

GUITAR PLAYER in the HOT CLUB

well, this is made with ink and transparent paper on cell. background is an ordinary acrylic painting. looks a bit like a vintage cartoon...

SKINNY JIM/MONKEY SUITE poster

yep, a poster with an ugly skinny rocker and some pretty little birds all around him - it took me hours to do the typos and still i'm not really happy with them. but what the heck...

Cover for MADHOUSE JUMP fanzine

A free of any charge old school fanzine with just B/W copied pages stapled together and with tons of interesting and smooth to read reviews and the dates and venues of the hottest RnR/rockabilly/Beat/retro concerts to come - in whole europe! an amazing fanzine. get it at cool shops, record stores etc. all around europe. and yep, i made the cover...

MOSH ATTACK OVER CASSEL

well, the guys from "moshpit crew cassel" asked me to do it - and what the heck: why all these death metal posters always have to be so ugly? I'm the right man to fix it, folks...:-) a revolution is going on, daddy-oooo...

SILVESTER GALA 2009 & 2010

poster and postcard for the great LOLITA BAR in kassel, hassia superior, germany.the silvester gala of the große empire soundsystem!!! (part 1 and 2)

UKULELE INFERNO No.3

this time with guests from holland. the makers of the annual ukulele inferno in göttingen are a two piece band called L'UKE...

LIVE & JIVE flyer ready!!

Finally the flyer for the mighty LIVE & JIVE festival in sweden is ready...