'Visual Feast', the tantalizing artwork of Justin Hampton

Creating a cover? It's a family affair!
over 2 years ago – Sun, May 29, 2022 at 09:18:15 PM

The history of the cover for Visual Feast began with a Ween poster that I designed for their performance at the Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco in 2009. The fact that the band was playing in San Francisco inspired me to create my own take on Jefferson Airplane’s song ‘White Rabbit’ with this twisted Alice In Wonderland image with hidden references to a multitude of Ween album and song titles. 

It was a huge hit and sold out at the show, as did my personal copies on my website. I put a ton of work into the original poster but always wanted to create an art print of this image without the band name on it as I had a vision to take this one even further. In place of the band's name, I would add a giant Alice herself looming over the rest of the tea party revelers. 

As with a lot of posters I’ve designed for bands over the years, there’s only so much you can add and nuance on a hard deadline for a gig poster. There’s a limit to the time you can spend as quite often gigs are assigned with a month or less to complete the design, get it to the printer on time, and deliver it to the concert via courier. 

It was finally brought to fruition when I decided to write my retrospective book and to use the updated Ween artwork for the cover. Visual Feast was an easy title as I had already used that name for an art show that I had in Portland at a friend's wine shop in 2009 not long after creating the original Ween poster. We used that image on the promotional postcards! 

The time had finally come to create this newly realized version of the artwork. It was 2019 and the timing couldn’t have been better as my daughter had just turned 10 years old at that point and was the perfect age to pose for me as Alice. She’s quite the little artist herself and has a flair for the dramatic (future actress?). Maya is a typical kid who loves all things fun and artsy but she also has a penchant for all things twisted like her dad. I wonder where she got that from? Hmmm. 

In fact, one year we went trick or treating as Gomez and Wednesday from the Addams Family and she absolutely slayed it! She was in character all night and people ate it up! Needless to say when I asked her to pose for the art print and cover of my book as a twisted Alice she was giddy with glee! Not only did she rise to the occasion, but she also posed with the passion and embrace of the character like a professional actor/ model. The photo reference of her holding the fork and knife still cracks me up whenever I look at it. Here’s a look at the pic, the sketch, and the final art. She’s very proud of her dad and she couldn’t be more excited to be on the cover of my big retrospective book!

FUNDED! Thank Yous & Sneak Previews
over 2 years ago – Thu, May 26, 2022 at 08:26:13 PM

Hey, everyone!

It looks like Ween was the winner…today’s print drop brought us to our funding goal! I wanted to thank each and every one of you for your support so far. Because of you, I will be able to publish my career retrospective, Visual Feast. I can’t wait to get this book in your hands, and I hope you enjoy the 400+ pages of rock art, behind-the-scenes content, and stories I’ve compiled from my three decades in the industry.

I thought we could take a moment today to get to know each other. It’s a celebration, after all! I’d love it if everyone could leave a comment down below on how you first discovered my work. If you have any personal favorite pieces, let me know! I’ll dig into the book-in-progress and see what fun related content I can find to share with you over the next few weeks.

In the meantime, I wanted to share a quick update on a few of the Limited Edition items. As of this posting:

The Nirvana Collaboration Poster Variant is completely sold out!

There are only 9 Visual Feast Swirl Foil Variant Prints left

There are only 4 Ween Reunion 2016 Night Three Prints left

And…

There are only ten upgrades left to make your copy of Visual Feast the Custom Sketch Edition! Only 50 copies of this one will be made, and they get their very own exclusive slipcase design.

Alright, now that we’ve covered all of that, what’s up next? Tomorrow at 12 pm PDT, I’ll be adding a one-of-a-kind pledge tier.

But you already knew about that! I promised a sneak peek, and a sneak peek you shall have. Where are my KISS fans at? Stay tuned next week for the full reveal of my next original art drop!

That’s all for today! Thank you for celebrating this milestone with me! I’m excited to see where the next three weeks take us.

Best,

Justin

The campaign is 96% funded and we have TWO big drops this week!
over 2 years ago – Wed, May 25, 2022 at 11:05:39 AM

Hey all!

We’re just one week into the campaign and we’re already 96% funded. Thank you for all of your support so far!  

As you may have noticed, I upgraded the One-Of-A-Kind 3-D TOOL Inspired Sacred Lachrymology (try saying that five times fast) print in a shadow box to a pledge tier. I received several messages from community members who weren’t able to access the add-on, so this seemed like the easiest fix! If you have any questions about how to manage your pledge, just let me know.

So, what’s next for the campaign? Well, I’ve got two drops in mind for this week.

In 2016 I got a call from management letting me know that after having been broken up for four years WEEN was reuniting!!   And... they wanted me to design the posters for a three-night event celebrating their triumphant return!  The concerts were held in Broomfield, Colorado over the Presidents Day weekend but the last day of the event also landed on another holiday- Valentine's Day!  All three posters had a Presidents Day theme but the last day also had a Valentine's Day theme.  

I wanted to create something truly special for the event so I asked my long-time friend and occasional collaborator Jermaine Rogers to join forces with me to create the third poster together.  I illustrated the mascot of the band called The Boognish on every poster showing him influencing Presidents from the past in pivotal historic moments of their terms in office.   The first was The Boognish whispering in the ear of George Washington as a boy cutting down the cherry tree, the second was Abraham Lincoln on the battlefield meeing with General Boognish in the Civil War. 

Jermaine and I wanted to do something for the spicy for the last night's blow-out show, so we had the Boognish playing matchmaker and introducing JFK to Marilyn Monroe in a party setting.  The text above reading "We had the best time at your party" from the lyrics of the Ween song 'Your Party'.   When this poster was printed I had some extra random specialty variant paper ran to create some very rare and ultra-limited prints as part of the print run.  

I've held onto these for 7 years now tucked away in my archives, but I'm now offering these 6 different variants all signed #1/1.  The posters are all on metallic flaked Stardream paper and each one is different. The colors are Silver, Bluebell, Coral, Crystal, Citrine, and Lagoon.  I've signed and embossed each copy with my JH logo.  The complete matching #1/1 set is $2400, and I've made them available as singles for $400 each.  They'll be going live in the add-ons section this Thursday at 12pm PDT!

Next up, we have my first original art drop.

This art was created for my art print titled 'Given to Fly'.  It's based on the Pearl Jam song of the same title.  The final color poster was created as a benefit for a Pearl Jam fan in a private group on Facebook that was struggling with the financial burden of cancer treatment.   The original art is on Crescent Illustration board created in pencil and India ink and measures 18"x24".

As part of the sale of this original art piece, I'm including the color screen printed poster that it was created for as well as the variants.  This poster is an 8-color with three split fountain blends on 18"x 24" Cougar cover paper stock.  This is an Artist Proof limited edition of only 30 copies.  Signed & Numbered & JH Logo Embossed.  This will also include a matching number variant on Kunzite Stardream paper and the Holographic Swirl Foil Variant.  Note that this tier will include the original art piece, and a matching number set of #5's of the 'Given to fly' art print, the Stardream Variant, the Holographic Swirl Variant and the Visual Feast book.

Thank you for taking a look at the latest offerings and for the support of my campaign!  I couldn't do it without you!  More and different offerings will follow for the duration of the campaign.   Stay tuned for more.  Talk soon!

Best,

Justin

The Visual Feast Kickstarter is 90% funded and a message from Kim Thayil from Soundgarden
over 2 years ago – Sun, May 22, 2022 at 01:48:53 AM

Hey all!  

I'm beyond pleased to report that we're 90% funded at just under a week since my Kickstarter for Visual Feast launched last Tuesday!!  That's truly incredible!  This coming week we'll be offering the very first hand drawn and inked original art of one of my posters along with the final print.  We're going to continue rolling out rare items throughout the campaign every Friday so keep a lookout for those!  

If you missed it we also had a very special word from Kim Thayil from Soundgarden on social media on Friday.  He posted on the NUDEDRAGONS(anagram for Soundgarden) social media and I posted on all of mine as well.   It was so very cool of him to post these incredibly kind words of support for my work over the years for the band!  What a great guy!  

Thank you all so much for the support and interest in the project.  More soon!

Best,

Justin

Today is a BIG day on my Kickstarter campaign!
over 2 years ago – Sat, May 21, 2022 at 08:51:57 AM

As I hinted at earlier today we have a special message from the one and only Kim Thayil of Soundgarden! 

Kim was kind enough to write a very cool and thoughtful quote for the book for me last summer.  It turned out so great and he was so enthusiastic about it that I asked if he would mind creating a short promotional video for the book as well.  He was equally excited to do that for me as well.  What a great guy and a true legend!  I can't begin to tell you how much this means to me.  

Soundgarden has been a part of my DNA since first hearing them in 1988 on Seattle's former college radio station, KCMU(Now KEXP). I saw them for the first time on the eve of my 21st birthday in Oct of 1989 at the Moore Theatre in Seattle with Screaming Trees and Tad.  It was a mind-blowing show and I have been a fan ever since.  It was a thrill to create t-shirt designs for them back in the early 90s and even more amazing to create posters for them in 2011 after they reunited.  This is very full circle for me and truly special.  Thanks to Kim for being an amazing guy, a musical force of nature, and a true Seattle Icon!  

In other news, remember the piece I teased on launch day? It's dropping today at 2 pm Pacific! To add it to your pledge, you'll need to be lightning-fast on the keyboard. Just click "Manage Your Pledge", hit "Continue", and find it in the Available Add-Ons.  The price on this one will be $4,000 due to the absolute surgical skills involved in its creation. Here's a video I filmed to show off just how wild this 3-D Poster really is. 

For those of you who missed the details on day 1: 

Here we have a 3D version of my TOOL inspired art print titled Sacred Lachrymology!  My long time friend, Mike Braack, has the skill of a surgeon and the mind of a madman!  He's taken 4 actual screen-printed posters and cut them apart with an X-acto blade with great precision and reassembled them on foamcore, layering them meticulously one on top of one another creating an original 3D presentation.  The final piece is framed in a BIG shadow box measuring 26"x 38".  It is signed by both of us.  Sound crazy?  It is!  He's created a couple dozen of these for me over the last two decades.  They are one-of-a-kind items that are only created once for any single image of mine, they are all a true #1/1.  These items are in select homes all around the world. One collector in Australia owns three of them! 

A huge thank you to everyone who's joined the campaign so far. With all of your help this week, we're already less than 5k away from funding! Have a great weekend, everyone.