#artguards

I'm very often asked at shows about the writing process of Art Guards and usually don't give satisfactory answers, so I shot a video of myself flipping through the notebook that I used for about two years while creating the album. The short answer to any future questions: there was a lot of brainstorming, a lot of drafts, and a lot of unfinished ideas and side projects. I have a tendency to look at my favorite works of art and see perfectly polished final pieces, forgetting that there are likely just as many piles of sloppiness in the creation. Maybe this will help inspire you to grab some paper and start your own thing. Send it to me when you do. -Eric

Artguards and their thoughts

Art Guard 342 is an actor wearing a costume designed by 341 for a movie directed by 340 adapted from a novel by 339 inspired by a found letter written on a kite by 338. He portrays one of the citizens of a kingdom in the clouds who are obsessed with baseball. One day a boy and his balloon (originally a kite in the novel) are sucked into the cloud world and eventually help the citizenry win the Cloud World Series. 342 plays the umpire and first friend made by the boy.

Art Guard 332 has a "chug channel" on YouTube in which he speed drinks as many different bottles of liquid that he can get his hands on. Two liters of Tab cola in 15 seconds seemed impressive, one liter of butter milk in 10 was worth a share, but his crowning achievement (he was literally mailed a crown by a fan) was five cans of cream of mushroom soup in 45 seconds. Long live King Chug.

Art Guard 314 recently learned how to properly trim and groom a shenandoah beard. Her new mentor, Art Guard 311, went in for a haircut and convincingly passed along the "sacred knowledge." Now she encourages all of her bearded customers to loose the upper lip litter and go full chin strap.

(A late) 300 ART GUARDS CHECK IN!  Busy life is getting busier. We are in full baby chase mode as our girl learns to speed crawl around the house chasing the rabbit and finding undiscovered areas. This usually gives me 1-2 work hours a night to make stuff before I crash. The past two weeks I’ve been mostly maintaining/packing up orders and writing painting stories in those short windows. It’s a little frustrating when I can’t get more done, so I’ve started painting my last batch of Art Guards and plan to cut the project off at 365 around the end of October/Inktober and then move on to comic drawing, song writing and prepping for our shows with AJJ in November. I posted all of the paintings up to 299 for sale on our bandcamp and will have everything at those shows too. Routines can be great for staying productive, but the repetition can make it easily feel like nothing is getting pushed forward. That feeling is probably a good sign to wrap things up and move on! alright, talk to you soon! -Eric

Art Guard 313 can blow a puff of smoke into any shape he can imagine, but all he can think about right now are clouds. Come back later to be impressed!>>>authors note: written with a head cold while medicated.

Art Guard 303 wallpapered her bedroom walls, floor to ceiling, with shiny green Andes Mint wrappers which she set aside and saved for several years. Each single chocolate was taken after a separate meal at her favorite Italian restaurant where she ate a half order of spaghetti with a single meatball. Thousands of meals, meatballs, mints and micro-wrappers were amassed before the papering began. Some call her obsessive, others thrifty, but if the mint chocolate walls could talk, they'd call her an artist