Finished Ryan Burke

Here is the finished hi-res version of Ryan Burke I did for this month's blog header.

While I liked the idea of portraying Ryan all geared up for war as some sort of rock and roll freedom fighter I wanted to push it just a little bit more. I've recently been reading Frank Herbert's sci-fi masterpiece DUNE for the first time and at every page turn I am reading about the coming jihad of Paul Muad'Dib Atreides. More than once he sees an awful future where his Fedaykin followers wage a terrible holy war under the green and black colors of the Atreides house.

I like the idea of fighting for a cause under a symbol and I thought it might be cool to have Ryan wage his own personal jihad across the wastelands of a futuristic America. So, I painted a symbol on his bandana and used the same symbol as a design in the background behind him.

The symbol, while similar to the one I used on the Ryan Burke t-shirt (taken from the band The Who's RAF style symbol) actually comes from a movie I recently watched on Netflix called "What We Do is Secret." It's a biographical drama set in the late 70's about Darby Crash and his band The Germs (featuring a young Pat Smear, later of Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, on guitar.) One of the things Darby used was symbolism to push his rock and roll message and one of the strongest symbols he believed in was the circle. It's an interesting movie and one I need to watch again sometime soon.

So, I thought a circle banner for Ryan to fight under felt fitting for the design for some reason. I'm sure people have led their own personal jihads under symbols that were just as trivial to others. But, I do like it as a design idea.

And, once I was done with the color I did a grayscale zip-a-tone styled version of the illustration as well. I always love the way these things look when I do this. It really reminds me of a lot of the manga books I read back when I was a teenager that really drew me into comics in the first place. I love the black and white dots making gray patterns across the figure and I really love that it's pure black and white with no gray in between. Something about that idea always spoke to me. It somehow feels very pure. There is no chance of interpretation of color or tone when it's pure black and white. And I love that.

Anyway, I am now figuring out what to do with my next piece. I have a few ideas in my mind and we'll just have to see what comes out in the next few days.

Have a great day!