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Mar

The Growlers, San Francisco poster & variants..

The Growlers are rolling through San Francisco (The Warfield) this week and I accepted the task of recording this moment in history via a kickass poster. This is the 3rd poster I have done for their current tour and happy that to do so for a local show. I have enjoyed my run of prints with these guys and have tried to make them trippier and trippier each time.

I went through a slew of ideas & concepts for this poster. Since it was in San Francisco and people can’t have a conversation without “tech” being involved around here my initial exploration of ideas dealt w/ cyborgs and the infiltration technology mashing up w/ people. Things had a very “Shadow Run” feel to it, but I decided against this direction as I didn’t want to add any more to this already beaten-to-death conversation.

The Growlers have always had a sloggy surf-rock sound to them that feels like a soundtrack to a trippy lagoon and what better character to have front and center then something reminiscent of “The Creature from the Black Lagoon“. I always thought he was such a badass cool looking character and had hoped to someday work it in to a poster.

A post shared by Matt Leunig – Scraped Knee (@mattleunig) on Mar 31, 2017 at 10:00pm PDT

A post shared by Matt Leunig – Scraped Knee (@mattleunig) on Apr 1, 2017 at 6:16pm PDT

This print is a 5-color screenprint (18′ x 24′) with a run of 90 for the band, and I will have available a small Artist Edition of 35 prints (signed/numbered) starting April. 3rd @ 11am (PST). There will also be a very small run of 8 super hyper “foil” variants available as well as a couple BW’s for those interested in participating in the COLORING NOOK,… they will be available here.

Feb

The Growlers Texas Tour poster… 2017

Supporting their new album City Club, surf-rock band The Growlers have planned an extensive Spring tour and recently reached out for me to do a print for their 5-city Texas run the end of the month. I worked with them during their previous tour last year for a NYC poster and have made it a point to make all my work for them completely different, … trying out different styles & themes.

I have always loved the imagery and crazy colorfulness of the Pulikali Tiger dancers in Southern India. Every Sept. during the Onam Harvest Festival in Kerala, hundreds of men paint up their bellies and do the “dance of the tigers”. It’s awesome. When I was in India I tried to make it to the Fest but unfortunately was in Kerala a week too early. I have always wanted to try and work this concept into a poster design and thought this run with the Growlers would be a perfect opportunity to make something super tripped out and weird.

The print is a 5-color screenprint (18′ x 24′) with a run of 100 and will be available starting Feb. 22nd on tour w/ the band. I will have a small Artist Edition run available after the last Texas date on Tuesday, Feb. 28th. There will also be a very small run of 7 super trippy “lava foil” variants available. Hot fire baby!!!

“Lava Foil” variant…

A post shared by Matt Leunig – Scraped Knee (@mattleunig) on Feb 25, 2017 at 1:45pm PST

Jan

“Sour Diesel” Califari print

I was recently contacted by Califari to design a poster & packaging for one of their new strains, specifically “Sour Diesel“. This was a part of a poster project featuring a number of artists (Justin Hampton, Ron English, etc..) which debuted at the Emerald Cup in Dec. and Califari will be hosting a gallery event in the Bay Area at some point soon.

The art direction was pretty lax (my favorite kind) other than the fact they were looking for something that was reminiscent of old fruit box labeling which tend to be very bright & classic looking. I wanted to have a more caricature look to it and immediately thought of an old-timey lemon-head type fella riding a tractor. After a couple different iterations of mixing in the right amount of smelly, machinery & lemons we settled on the final design.

This is my first foray into doing work for the world of Cannabis. Since its legalization here in California there has been an influx of new companies looking to capitalize on it, looking for design & packaging art. Unfortunately as comes with the territory, many of them just seemed unprofessional, rather “burnout-ish”… and didn’t give the impression they would last long or frankly that you would get paid. Califari had a good message, seemed like good folk and were interested pushing some cool artistic projects. I look forward to seeing what they do in the future…