'Visual Feast', the tantalizing artwork of Justin Hampton

This Week's Art Drop! 2003 Queens of the Stone Age Atlanta Original Art & Poster
almost 4 years ago – Tue, Jun 07, 2022 at 04:44:30 PM

This week, I'm offering the hand-drawn and inked original art for my 2005 Queens of the Stone Age in Atlanta poster. The original art was created in pencil, India ink with a brush, and technical pens on illustration board that measures 20"x 28".  It also comes with a copy of the original screen-printed poster.  This is a three-color screen print with two split fountain blends, one from dark metallic silver to lighter metallic silver and another from black to red. The poster measures 25"x 33.5".  The band wanted a dark fairy tale vibe for this tour of the album ‘Lullabies To Paralyze’.  This design is an amalgam of Grimm's tales meets Eastern European lore with a twist of Blair Witch. Baba Yaga has Hansel and Gretel under her power and in a trance.

This pack will be going live this Friday at 12 pm PDT for $2,750 and will include a copy of Visual Feast. Serious look aside, I was really happy with this one. For my fellow QOTSA fans, what was your favorite song from this one? Let's get a jam session going down in the comments. 

KISS poster handdrawn original art, print, and more!
almost 4 years ago – Thu, Jun 02, 2022 at 04:47:31 PM

For this Friday's original art drop we have something very special.  My official commemorative poster for KISS!!  The original art is a one-of-a-kind item and the purchase will come with a copy of my very own variant print on silver metallic flaked paper and a copy of Visual Feast for $2500!

For those of you who aren't looking to break the bank just yet, there will also be a reward level add-on for just the poster itself.  I'm offering it for less than the original sale price as an incentive to buy one along with the book or add one to your already existing book order at just $100 per poster. Both of these drops will be happening at 12 pm PDT tomorrow, Friday, June 3rd.

Right, now that we've covered the details, it's time for a story!

When I was approached to create this official commemorative poster for KISS I knew exactly what I would create. To me, the penultimate song that encapsulates the band is undeniably 'Detroit Rock City' from the 1976 album; 'Destroyer'.  The hot rod racing toward you in perspective was inspired by the lyrics of the song. I depicted the band in their full regalia of that tour down to the last detail. In the background, you can see the stage lights overlapping the Detroit skyline. The text is incorporated into the design to create a sense of depth and urgency. The poster has metallic silver ink to reflect the band's iconic color scheme. After completing this poster and turning in the final art I was informed that Gene Simmons' review of the poster was simply "Badass".  I'm not gonna lie, I have to admit that was very gratifying to hear.   

Creating a cover? It's a family affair!
almost 4 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
almost 4 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!
almost 4 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