This was my second Crit piece of the year. I took another go at my poster pad but went big this time. If my first crit piece was an abuse of high quality printing, this time I abused Kinkos. The piece consisted of 100 30" x 40" B&W posters, drilled into the wall and perforated. The pad consisted of 8 different designs in various increments. Here are some pictures and details:

Although there were no instructions one way or the other, in the middle of crit the group decided it was alright to tear some down.

For reviews, I created this video illustration going through each of the designs. To be played on repeat:

And more to come...

-kiel m.

For my second year reviews, I expanded my first Crit piece into a four more panels, all measuring 33" x 55.325" and playing off the same style and obnoxious vector overload. This time I applied it to points of art history.

Here's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp:

And my take on Albrecht Altdorfer's Battle of Issus:

Early Blackletter in 3D:

And finally, myself drawing a portrait of myself, like Diego Velazquez's Las Meninas:

I hope this post didn't crash your browser...More updates coming!

kiel m.

Here is my first crit piece of my second year at Cranbrook. It was going to be a farewell letter to using Illustrator, but it ended up turning into something else. I printed it out 36" x 55.325" on a nice, shiny, pearl finish paper.

Here are some detail shots:

And finally, an artist statement to answer everything:

Yet more updates of brand new older work coming up.

kiel m.

Wo-ah. I almost forgot about ol' kielm.com. But, no apologies! We'll start where I left off. In August, I took part in a show at Studio Couture in Detroit. Along with fellow Crannies Satoru Nihei and Wes Taylor, we created Detroit Typos: Rebranding the Branded City. The description is as follows:

A typographic celebration honoring the city of Detroit through design, performance and manufacturing. Artists/designers Satoru Nihei, Kiel Mutschelknaus and Wesley Taylor along with the youth of Detroit Summer will transform the gallery into a pop-up shop. Opening features live screen printing and music.

On opening night, the studio turned into a pop-up store where visitors could create their own apparel by mixing and matching the screen-printed designs each of us contributed.

Here is some concepting work for my contribution. Detroit as something prestine:

Detroit as something in static flux:

And here is what I settled on. Abstraced typography of "Detroit" in the form of engine blocks.

And the final touch was from Satoru Nihei, who gave it the "Greetings from" addition, creating a pretty great postcard.

Here is a look at the opening night, complete with live screen printing.

More updates in the days to come.

-kiel m.

Brian Bieber of the subliminal hit Ghosts and Horses recently asked me to create an illustration for his equally subliminal TV concept, The New Adventures of Buffalo Bear. Bieber wrote up a great analysis of the Bear in his article, Anatomy of Buffalo Bill. It is mos def worth a read.

Ghosts & Horses just dropped its fourth full length podcast and you can check that out at his site. Calving Season!

Here's a few smaller details about the album that I'm afraid would go unnoticed without a zoom. South Dakota flavored tattoos! My favorite! Did you know SC was secretly pro-East River?

And I'll finish off with the t-shirt art for the album. Both of them are available at the Soulcrate website.

This is the artwork for the first of three (three!) albums I'm doing this summer. So stay tuned.

And now, the making of the new Soulcrate cover.

Wes had approached me about enjoying the Conflict pieces I had done earlier this year and wanted something along those lines. Here are some initial sketches for the pitch. (The title at this point was You Can't Win).

We decided something along the lines of the second concept but Wes wasn't digging having their faces so prominent on the cover. We ended up further covering the faces and this was the final sketch:

And here is a gif of cleaning the lines and coloring.

More KR collection bits coming...

 

I finally got my hands on Soulcrate's newest album, The Kick Rocks Collection. I was honored that they asked me to do the art and I'm stoked how it turned out. Hopefully the artwork lives up to their newest tracks. Love the album!

Here's a closer look at the spreads.

In the coming days I'll post on the making of the artwork and some fun tidbits.

Enjoy.

Here is the final piece in all its technicolor glory:

Here's a couple detail shots.

The piece is big, coming in at 36" x 48".

If you're in the greater Sioux Falls area, you can check it out with the other 11 pieces at the Ipso Gallery at Fresh Produce in Downtown SxFs.

Next I'll share some album artwork I'm finishing up. I've got two albums dropping at the beginning of the summer and possible one late summer. Yee-haw.