BROAD STREET BRAWLER

Just wrapped this one up and wanted to share my first attempt at an all brush canvas, absolutely no markers were used. I must say, outlining and putting a shell with a brush is a bit tricky. I have to paint so much more careful since I cant just put a thicker black marker outline to hide my mistakes. Also, I'm using all brands of acrylic and some are more opaque than others. This makes it very difficult to make sure the colors don't bleed through where their not suppose to and also cover what needs to be covered. Basically, alot of trial and error. I love the way it looks and the no flash burns because of the no glossy deco marker is great. Click here to see them side by side.

Also, don't forget that prints, buttons and more are available at the BODEGA.

Green Sunday

The weather finally cleared up here in Philly today. After raining for what seems like 24+ hours straight, the sun finally came out. I decided to take a walk down to Abakus in chinatown and grab some new laces for my sneakers. They got them SB laces, super fresh colors. I copped a neon electric green and this baby blue with a touch of grey pairs. Stayed and hung out with Ky and a few shop heads to watch the game. 3 pizzas and 3 sides of buffalo wings later, we were all stuffed and cheering the Eagles on to victory over the Broncos today. Also lined up a loose date for our next collaborative endeavor and we were thinking sometime in July. We want to bring the heat with some new shit that hasn't been done on a collaborative tip.

Got home and finally finished one of the vinyls that I started a week or so back. I'm finally getting that urge back to paint a "collection", even though they are not particularly tied in with a theme. The way I paint is that I end up stock piling loose and finished sketches of poses for EL TORO and figure out what canvas it should go on. Then after mapping out a few sketches and what canvases I want them on, I get to work. I work on about 4-6 canvases at a time. I like to hop around and get a few done all at the same time. For some reason I just cant sit down start to finish. I gotta be able to put it down, walk away from it and come back to it feeling satisfied. I usually find something wrong with my initial attempt and try to correct any mistakes I need to fill in. Oh yeh, been watching Brotherhood on Instant Netflix lately. It's like the 2nd cousin of a bastard step child of The Sopranos and The Wire set it Rhode Island. Who knew Rhode Island got gangsters?

BODEGA

BODEGA, originally uploaded by ELTORO215.

Now live! Click on the button on the right of the page to visit. Very limited quantities available on all items and its a first come first serve rule. Don't wait and miss out on what you want. Get it while you still can.

Punk Rock Flea Market merch preview

My gf and I have been crafting all this week and finally paying off with amazing products for the punk rock flea market tomorrow. I managed to make new prints, new buttons and now introducing jewelry. Also printed new stickers that will be available for the first time at the punk rock flea market.

The button pack consists of 5 unique buttons, hand made stickers and a vinyl sticker.

The prints are packaged with a vinyl sticker and hand made stickers.

The jewelry comes packaged with a vinyl sticker and some hand made stickers too.

Sticky ricks came through just in time to get me my new vinyl stickers! Which I formed into a lil X-Mas sticker tree. It's been a while since i got stickers printed and man i am not running out for a while. They were having a ridiculous special when you order 1000 stickers you get 500 for free! These will be generously given out since i have so many right now.

These items will soon be available for purchase at my online store early next week depending on how they do at the Punk Rock Flea market tomorrow. Hope to see you all there, even though Philly just got dumped a butt load of snow. There is a huge snow bank outside my window right now.

Motha F*ckin' Puppets YO!

This is my 200th post on my blog and what better way to celebrate than motha' f*ckin puppets yo! Here are a few of my favorite Muppets® / Puppet videos that caught my attention. The first 2 are recent Muppets® music videos and they are bad ass.

The first one is a cover of Queens "Bohemian Rhapsody". If you are Queen and a Muppets fan this is truly for you. Their are so many muppets featured on this video from both past and present. Even the Monamana guy made it in.

The second one is The Muppets singing Ringing of the bells. Beaker and Swedish chef getting much love and attention.

The third installment is from Craig Ferguson late night with guest Jason Segel performing as the Vampire from his movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Rumors has it that from doing this part in the movie he has gotten a chance to write the next muppets movie. (You see what i did there? Tied everything together, thats a nice!) Another fun fact is that he was already writing this Vampire musical as a side project and when they couldn't find a way to end Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Jason proposed this and him and the director immediately thought it was a genious idea. Unfortunately that last performance in the movie is not available on youtube, but found this fan made video of the Count performing "Dracula's Lament"

This last puppet posting is not a singing puppet, but a gangsta' ass puppet thats straight out of Montreal named Jay. My favorite design/graffiti group 123klan just designed his new blog and graphics. I currently have him as my desktop. You can find him at his site here. My gf said it reminded him of Franklin from Arrested Development. Remember him right? If not I posted that too!

Thanks for all my followers and readers. For those who have been waiting, new items will be making an appearance at the store soon and teaser pictures will be posted later. So keep checking the blog for more updates.

BUTTON PACKS

Almost done making my button packs. I am waiting on 1 key item to include and i think their coming tomorrow which means alot of finalizing these coming days prior to Sundays show. It's all going to be worth it though. New items are in the works, this is the first to wet your beaks.

More items coming soon. I'll leave you with this awesome ness, cuz i totally did this as a kid in the Philippines. Also gets to my point of where are all the good fireworks here in U.S.A? They all just make different colors, but can't blow anything up!

Punk Rock Flea Market 2009 Winter Edition

More buttons..., originally uploaded by ELTORO215.

Currently on the grind on designing new button packs for the Punk Rock Flea Market show coming up this December 20th. Actually the show is at December 19th & 20th and it costs 3 bucks to get in, but that lets you in for BOTH days. Awesome right? It's going to be at the Starlight Ballroom this time, previous time they held it at the Electric Factory. This is a great way to pick up some affordable items right before the holidays! Any body who is a fan or knows of any can pick up some choice EL TORO items. I will be sharing a table with my gf and she will also be selling her very cute designs on buttons and jewelry too. Be sure to check the link out for details and more production shots of what will be sold will be posted soon.

Here's the write up about it.
*NEXT* Saturday December 19th and Sunday December 20th 10:00am to 5:00pm
At The Starlight Ballroom (460 N 9th Street - 9th & Spring Garden-ish)
All Ages / 21+ To Drink / $3 Entry Donation /

THE PUNK ROCK FLEA MARKET – TWO DAY HOLIDAY EDITION !

It's that time again for the bi-annual (twice a year) PUNK ROCK FLEA MARKET. R5's most popular reoccurring event/show/whatever (by far). They had over 4000 visitors and 100+ tables of old records, clothes, art, music, food, junk, bicycles, stereo equipment, instruments, automobiles, tools, posters, furniture, computers, skateboards and lots of other stuff this past July. It's all going down at The Starlight Ballroom (right below 9th & Spring Garden Sts)

To meet the increasing demand of people wanting to sell their stuff at this – they have spread it out over two days. Each day will have entirely different sellers . Your admission donation is good for both days (so you can come in and out as many times as you would like over the weekend - In addition There will be much more room to shop compared to flea markets in the past
All proceeds raised will goto the purchase of necessary equipment and supplies to ensure that all ages shows continue to remain a reality at The First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia - mainly an annual payment for their liability insurance policy. Do not let the "name of the event" lead you to believe that it's just punk records, clothes etc. - it's a full on flea market with everything from furniture, to laptops / computers , to stereo equipment, to handmade apparel, to vegan treats, information from various non profit groups, book stores, artists selling their work, bicycles & skateboards and whatever else they can fit onto the ballroom floor at The Starlight Ballroom

In addition to the normal flea market stuff there will also be a full bar and food service kitchen to make the day go by a little faster as well as a rotating shift of WKDU DJs

TAKE A LOOK AT THE SELLERS LIST

Blackroc on Jimmy Fallon

I was up late making some buttons last night watching Jimmy Fallon and was very pleased to see this go down. The Black Keys has teamed up with Hip hop artists to produce a new album called Blackroc. They got Rza, ODB (RIP), Mos Def, Raekwon and bunch of other great artists. Check out the site for more details. Also on a great note, that during this great performance Dave Gee from Methods NYC was in the crowd rocking the Methods Logo tee. Methods NYC getting out there to the masses! Enjoy the show

blackroc jim fal live
by yardie4lifever2

My 90's child hood

I was rummaging through my old stuff in the basement tonight to gather a few items for the Punk Rock flea market this December 20th. I found some awesome items I forgot that was down there like a Pocket Simon game that requires 2 AA batteries and 1 9volt battery; my Wizard magazine collection still in their original plastic packaging because I really thought these were going to be worth more than the cover price one day; random stuffed animals that I won going down the Jersey shore at a claw machine gamel; 2 Cat in the Hat hats. One black and red and the other one was white and red, oh yeah i know your jealous; my awesome pog collection (pictured) and lastly my random card collection of Marvel, DC, Baseball, Basketball and bootleg Dragon Ball Z cards that I also thought were going to pay for my kids college 1 day. The marvel cards are a major influence on my drawing style growing up. The piles of cards are organized via make and year of each series. I had alot of Marvel Masterpieces cards and also alot of Skybox series 4. I have some from the very 1st series, but those are kept with the other complete sets in a binder.

I dont know why pogs ever made sense to me, but I wanted to collect a shit load of them. Each pile of pogs were categorized like an 8 ball pile, skulls pile, yin yangs, animaniacs, original pogs from set and lastly pogs from the pog creator. Oh yes, this was a serious collection sure to impress the ladies. Having all these pogs around I was still afraid to play with any one. They were treasured pieces of cardboard that I couldn't bear let go. Also, I don think I knew another person that collected pogs in school or atleast admitted to it.

Alot of people say the 80's were the best, but you cant forget the charm about the 90's too. Now where did i hide my jean jacket and flannel?

HELLBOY SHOW @ BRAVE NEW WORLDS PART DEUX

Went to the Hellboy show to view the amazing artworks from the Autumn Society at Brave New Worlds this past First Friday. Here's the fliks from the show. Sorry some fliks are blurry cuz my camera was dying so I had to take quick snapshots.

HELLBOY SHOW @ BRAVE NEW WORLDS

Slacked on posting the flyer and making people aware of the show tonight, my bad. Truly a great cast of talented artists paricipating and then theirs me. Got word that Guillermo Del Toro and also Mike Mignola has gotten wind of this show via facebook and will be getting prints from the participants of the show. I wanted to put a sketchy comic book fill with my piece and attempted to recreate an old school feel to it. Its a hybrid of EL TORO and Hellboy. I pushed and pulled the mold of EL TORO to accomodate Hellboy-ish features like the hand of doom, his horns being on top of his head rather than the sides and also his red tail. I worked with a limited palette simply because A. It conveys an old school comic limited ink printing feel to it (maybe? i think so..) B. I had no other tools to color this the way i wanted it. I colored it with just red and black sharpie on a 8x8 canvas. So out of necessity came ingenuity. (write that down)

Underwater connections

Recently me and a bunch of locals gathered to make some beautiful art and drink lots of beers. Here are a few of the collabs Underwater Pirates finished from that night. Hopefully, more sessions like these in the near future. To all the people that did come out, thanks for making it very successful and painless to organize.