Monument - The Visual Liberation Army Blog

Since giving is so cool we’re thinking of starting up some sort of “contest”. We’ll be giving away a free (yes, nada, zilch, zero, rien, niet) CD packaging done by us. The only conditions would be:

#1 We would have to enjoy the music the band plays. That always makes for better work on our part. We’re not very difficult when it comes to that though, we like all sorts of music.
#2 We’d prefer to get a band that isn’t metal, to vary things a bit. We love metal but we’d like to show different things.
#3 The deadline would have to be not crazy as hell, to give us time to really do something special.

We’re also thinking of tying this up into a charitable cause. For example, we do the packaging and you donate 200 bucks to a charity. Maybe even auction the offer on ebay for charity? It would be great, but we’re not sure we’ll do that as well yet.

Stay tuned for more details :)

I just bought a couple of gifts through WorldVision for people in need. It’s little for us but a lot for them. You can even buy them rabbits, how cool is that? They have stuff for 20 bucks only so there’s no excuses!
http://www.worldvision.org/

We just finished some shirts for The Clash, Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden. We should be able to post them up soon. We also finished a cd for Norwegian metal band Showdown, and a couple of other CDs as well! We rock. It would be nice to get work outside of the metal realm as well. I don’t think our potential there has been tapped enough.

I’m going skiing this weekend at Mt. Tremblant with my sister and my nephew, should be a lot of fun. :)

I’m currently listening to Harkonen.

I skipped updating this thing for most of the winter. I think my fellow monument comrades are irritated at me about it. My new Year’s resolution (amongst about 19 others i’ve broken) was to post more. Who makes resolutions? Does that make me a cynic?

 What I’ve been up to: Making blueprints for bank heists! it’s a weird job, but pending the proper execution of the plans, it pays well.

I  need to add some of the things i’ve been working on. Spencer’s shirts, Bullet for my Valentine, A7X, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Posters, This Is Hell, The Used, Coheed & Cambria, In at the Deep End Records, SpookyPlanet.com (redesign in-progress), Ultra-Pop’s website (an awesome vinyl toy store in town that needs a site), branding for a Louisville-based project aimed at marketing how hip the city is, and a whole ton of other junk i’ve been way too forgetful to post.

My video card went out on the Dell XPS laptop i use. Somehow, i had another 43 days left of warranty service, so i was only down for a few days instead of figuring out how to finance a ton of money to get a new boomin’ system. I’m really rambling here, aren’t i? Why stop now?

Common has been a constant standby on my iTunes.

for xmas, i painted this bisque doll head for my lady.

Since i’m interested in what other people’s workspaces look like, i can only assume that other people are as well.  i’ll have to post a few shots of my personal cave when away from Monument Studio World Headquarters. I just framed a few more prints the other day. It’s a mess in here!

Someone gaffled (you heard me) about half of my propaganda books to work on Iron Maiden artwork. Tsk! tsk!

Besides working on quite some new stuff, I’m also redesigning my personal website which makes me pull out my non-existent hair, but it seems I’m finally getting closer to finishing it. The goal is to have all the work organized much better but I’m not the typical code monkey so the increase in clarity of the site causes a decrease in the clarity of the code (at least for me).

We recently finished the artwork for Molotov Solution’s new selftitled album (see cover below), you can hear some of their new stuff at their myspace page and get a good pre-order package deal here

I discovered muscles I didn’t know I (still) had this weekend. I hadn’t skied in a long time so it was a very painful experience the day after. It was amplified by the insomnia bout I had on friday night. I’ve never really had problems sleeping, but this time for some odd reason I only slept 90 mins out of 10 hours of tossing around. I thought our trip was ruined but thanks to energy drinks and chocolate, I made it through.

The 2nd day I went alone in the morning because Elaine was in no shape to go again. The snow was awful that day so I came back early. Had to walk 5-6KM back to the inn because the shuttle was only coming back 3 hrs later and I had no money on me to pay for a cab (there’s also just one cab in the whole village and he needs to be booked in advance).

Right now every single muscle in my body is aching, walking is a painful thing I’ll tell you. I guess not doing sports for a while can catch up when you get a bit older. Someone get my walking chair please.

On a more musical note, I am listening to the 2nd CD of In Rainbows, and it’s great. “Last Flowers” is one of Radiohead’s best songs ever. It’s very powerful. I want to meet Thom Yorke. The guy seems “creatively deranged”. He’s nuts, in the right kind of way. I like that.

Hopefully 2008 will even be a more successful year for Monument and I’ll also try to post more on this blog (I’m fearing the wrath of Pascal). The new year is starting in a good way, with new releases with our artwork on it and I’ll be interviewed for the dutch magazine “Advanced Photoshop”.

And last but not least: here’s a sneak peek at the cover of the new Draconian album “Turning Season Within”.

Saw a couple of movies on christmas day after spending the night at my parents’. Sweeney Todd is great, go see it if you can. Very beautifully made and as always Burton/Depp deliver. No Country For Old Men was great as well, should be in the finalists for best picture this year for sure. Javier Bardem gives one of the best performances I have ever seen. He’s worth the price of the ticket alone.

I can’t wait to see There Will Be Blood, directed by P.T. Anderson (Boogie Nights/Magnolia). It should be a great one too.

On a totally unrelated note, the kind folks of Monument will be featured in the upcoming artbook LOOKdeBOOK . Huzzah!

Happy Holidays guys and girls! Have fun eating gingerbread men and praising Jesus and all that stuff. 2007 has been a great year for us, and hopefully 2008 will be even better. Have a great holiday season. :)

p.s.: I know, we don’t post enough on our blog. We suck.

Zoli from Hungary is a die hard Job for a Cowboy fan, he proved this fact by having the artwork of their Genesis album (for which we made the artwork) inked on his leg.