facefirst

Just now, Stay.Of.Execution said:

You should ask someone who's attending Denver to get one for you. 

Honestly, I'd rather fans of my work get them.  If I can get one down the road I will but I'm happy that at least someone will get that poster and love it.  If I can make someone happy with my art then that makes me happy.

2 minutes ago, Stay.Of.Execution said:

Baltimore looks incredible. Columbus aswell.

Thanks a lot.  I appreciate the kind words.  It's a bummer that they'll never see the light of day.  I'm still very proud of my work even though it's for a band that I now hate.  It's sad, I grew up LOVING them.  I always thought of them as THE antiestablishment band.  Sadly they're just a money machine.  Nothing more.

3 minutes ago, Stay.Of.Execution said:

Shame. Your work is appreciated by the fans though.

Doesn't surprise me that Fernando is yet again acting like an asshole.

This was my first dealing with him.  I'm happy that it's also my last.  Fuck that dude.

1 minute ago, Coma16 said:

Is Denver going to be used next week? Columbus and Baltimore, are they being redone by another artist? Those old school Topps designs are a great theme!

Denver was already produced so I assume it's still being used.  Columbus and Baltimore will definitely NOT be used.  Hell, Global rescinded payment on those altogether.  Charles Dooher at Global is a grade A asshole.

Like everyone else, I'll probably have to buy my posters for a shitload of money off eBay.  Thanks Global and GNR!!!

2 minutes ago, Mcs953 said:

A shame, you do nice work, they should take care of the artists, all about the money I guess.

Thanks man.  It's ONLY about the money.

This was the concept for Vegas.  1976 Topps football design.  Would have had the inside of Allegiant Field in the background.

On 8/10/2021 at 10:29 PM, Coma16 said:

Apparently there's behind the scenes issues between an artist and Management over something or other. Columbus, Denver, and Baltmore designs all look great, hopefully they are released.

That's me.  Yeah, Global is a horrible company to work with that screws over their artists, in my experience.  GNR is complicit as well.  Their manager gives zero fucks.  It is what it is.  Needless to say, I'm done doing GNR lithos.  If you care to see what the Columbus and Baltimore designs would have been you can see them at www.geoffmay.com.  The GNR stuff on my site was either licensed to them or is still my property.  I also passed on Vegas and Atlantic city after this whole shitshow.

APs with Global was ALWAYS a thing.  They pay absolute GARBAGE up front.  Getting the APs made the job worthwhile and it paid the bills.  I worked for 3 months on nothing but GNR posters and tees.  What did I get for my efforts? About $2500 all in.  When it came time to take delivery of my APs I was told to kick rocks.  GNR's management doesn't care either.  All they care about is that the band is making money.  Fuck the artists.  If I sound bitter and mad, well yeah.  Fuck Global and GNR!

14 hours ago, Mcs953 said:

Just curious if you are doing the Colorado poster, hoping for a shining theme.

I did do that one. 

14 hours ago, B5Redeye said:

No worries. It was just a wish and outside chance! Keep up the great work!

Are you doing the Atlantic City shows?

I was asked to but I’m probably going to pass and not do any more lithos at all. 

Looks like I’ll be lucky to get one poster for myself. Sorry to anyone that thought I’d have APs. At this point I’ll be blessed to have a piece of my own art to hang on the wall. 

54 minutes ago, RedHook said:

 

 

One of the best Lithos ever,

These sold out fast,

and even though I was at the show an hour before Mammoth WVH went on, I still wasn't able to get one, and had to settle for the T-shirt.

and now my collection of local show lithographs is incomplete.

I have

Foxboro July 19 2016

Foxboro July 20 2016

Boston Oct 22 2017

Any chance you sell some artist prints of this design at a later date?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the kind words.  I'm glad you like it.  I actually will have some APs available at some point.  I haven't received them yet so I'm hamstrung until then, unfortunately.

1 hour ago, goneshootin said:

Looks fantastic! Are you doing the MetLife one too?

I am. 

8 minutes ago, guitarpatch said:

Sweet design. Would be cool if they did a pack of tour themed baseball cards for these type of shows 

That WOULD be cool

Found a final art version on my phone so I fixed my post. Sorry, on vacation for my birthday so I don’t have access to my computer. 

3 minutes ago, allwaystired said:

The double apostrophes don't seem to be on the shirt version which is weird. 

Won’t be in the poster either. 

1 minute ago, Blackjacker said:

So much better as a print than the t-shirt; the baseball card design gets lost on the shirt.

But the double apostrophes… ugh.

Apostrophes are fixed. This is just what I had on my phone right now. It’s all good. 

On 7/14/2021 at 7:44 PM, Ixtlan said:

You got Boston? Please tell you did something cool for Fenway.

I think it's pretty cool.

7 hours ago, RussTCB said:

Do you have a website or Instagram or somewhere we can check your work out? 

www.geoffmay.com

19 hours ago, Stryker said:

Super exciting! Got Chicago and Baltimore on the docket, hope you do one of them. 

So far I've done Boston, Denver, New Jersey and Columbus.  Probably will do a few more before it's all done plus overseas ones.

16 minutes ago, ZoSoRose said:

Very cool! Hoping for one of them to be the Detroit show !

One was for Detroit but we changed it to Boston.

On 6/18/2021 at 10:38 AM, amaninjapan said:

It's been a while, everyone. Hope you're all keeping safe.

I've been keeping myself occupied throughout the pandemic and amongst other things, I completed a little pet project of mine that I thought I'd share.

For years, everybody has talked about a GNR litho coffee table book and how awesome it'd be if they released one. Sadly, it feels like it's just not on the cards. Perhaps it's a little too niche, perhaps it's just a lot of work for minimal profit. There's only so many manhours available and it's best to spend that one profitable merchandise, right? I don't really blame them. A lot more money in t-shirts, for sure.

But you all know my passion for the lithographs and I imagine you all know my website by now. I made the website to share my love for the artwork with other people, as well as all the information I had gathered on the lithographs over the years. Deep inside however, I too kinda wished for a coffee table book.

So... just like how there was no single website on the internet to get all the litho info I wanted, so I just stubbornly made it...

There was no coffee table book about the lithos... so I just went ahead and made it.

Before anybody asks - no, it is not for sale. I am not selling anything. A lot of hard work went into it, but in the end it's really just a self-indulgence and something for my own personal enjoyment. I present to you my LITHORATI book:


It is 12 inches x 18 inches. Although you can only see the front cover in this photo, it wraps around the back. It lists all the cities that held a concert during Not in This Lifetime.


It has layflat binding and black-edged pages. I have a fairly big collection of books, including big books such as coffee table books and one of my pet peeves is regular binding.
Regular binding always results in a 'gutter' in the middle of the book that is always curved and hard to see - and if the book doesn't have the right proportions, the book won't stay open at a given page.
It's even worse when it's a picture book because the whole point of the book is to show nice photos and well... you end up losing some of the photo if it crosses the center. Very annoying in my opinion.
So I decided that if I was going to go to all this effort, I was going to make the book MY way and despite the added expense, there was no compromising with the binding.
I went with black-edged pages because all the pages in the book are black and it just made sense.


I split the book into separate chapters for each leg of the tour. I started with the idea of a splash image for the start of each chapter and that turned into a full double-page spread.
Each chapter page uses a lithograph from that particular leg of the tour, reduced to monochrome and then selective color for the red roses in the image.


The pages include more than the information I've provided on the website. The website is very matter-of-fact with the notes and references.
The book has this information but included with it is a bit of narrative. You'll notice that most the lithos take up about 3/4s of the vertical height of the page and are sometimes aligned at the top or bottom.
I did this intentionally to reinforce the 'narrative' feeling. I've seen many books about collections that end up very sterile, very much like a catalog, which ends up looking quite boring.
By having the lithographs and text situated up and down across the pages, I felt that it helped establish a narrative flow.
You'll also notice occasionally that some lithographs will take up almost all the vertical height of the page - what I refer to as the "XL treatment."
The "XL treatment" is usually reserved for significant, popular or interesting lithographs from that leg of the tour. But it also helps change up the layout of the page to keep things lively.


Some pages feature a concert photo - all these photos were taken by me at NITL shows. I took a lot of photos over the years and there were a handful of which I was quite proud.
I occasionally needed to space certain lithographs apart (to keep certain related lithographs on the same page for thematic reasons) and well, what better way to fill it than with my own photos?


I think it needs to be stressed how BIG this book is. Each page is 12x18 inches, but that means a double-page spread is THREE FEET WIDE. This makes it bigger than most of the lithographs!
An 18x24 inch litho underneath to give some perspective.
Not only is this book BIG but it is also HEAVY. Because of the size, binding and number of pages, it weighs 17lbs. Don't try to open this on your lap - you'll need a coffee table!


As mentioned previously, the spacing was to make sure related lithos ended up on the same page/spread - such as Foxboro. Obviously didn't want these to be separated.


I had the freedom to write as much (or as little) as I wanted on each litho and well, some were easier to write about than others. I believe the total word count was around 50,000.


Some pages got full size concert photos - what can I say, I thought the photos turned out pretty well!


Although lithographs like Dubai don't show up on my website since they were never printed, I took the opportunity to address them in the book. The website is a
resource for the lithos. This book is more about the artwork, the journey and the collection.


I haven't updated my website for a while and there are a few things I've learned recently that I've added into the book. I'll get around to updating the website eventually...


Again, another example of the unprinted lithos (Rio de Janeiro in this case) at least getting some acknowledgement and respect in the book.


I tried to balance out the concert photos so there's roughly the same amount of photos of Axl, Slash and Duff scattered throughout the book.


Not the greatest photo of the unprinted Barcelona, but that's in there too.


One of my favorite Axl photos.


I took some photos in color too!

I might not ever be able to share the whole book with everyone, but at least you guys can check out a thumbnail overview:


Anyway, that's one of the few things that has kept me occupied during the pandemic. I never kept count of how many hours I spent on this, but needless to say it was a lot. But I'm very satisfied with the results.
Knowing that this was for no other reason than to put a smile on my own face, there was a certain level of satisfaction having total control. I'm a stubborn guy so obviously
I wanted to do it all myself which obviously resulted in a very painful grind as I worked from concept to production. Doing the layout probably was the most stressful because of
how precise things needed to be. Constantly checking alignments and widths and colors were correct etc. But writing was probably the most difficult because that's truly where
creativity is essential. Even if only a handful of people end up reading what I wrote, I know I didn't want to halfass it.

How much did it cost? You don't want to know. It wasn't cheap but I can guarantee you that I might have paid double if it meant being able to avoid the hundreds of hours
required to actually create it in the first place. But I didn't compromise on anything - It's the size I wanted, the paper stock I wanted, the binding I wanted, the quality I wanted.
I only intend to do this once, so I knew I had to do it right or not do it at all.

What do I do with it now? Well it's going to end up under my coffee table of course! No matter how interested in GNR or lithos a guest to my home might be, explaining and
showing the lithos to them always ends up being an awkward affair - so much so that I rarely even try unless I'm certain they're a GNR fan. But with an actual coffee table book,
it actually makes it a lot easier to talk to people about it. Even people who might not even care about concerts. It's a pretty powerful icebreaker to be able to say "Hey, check this out. I made this."
There's just something special about the tactile nature of flipping through a book.

So yeah, hope you guys enjoy. Maybe one day GNR will bring out their own book... but I always think mine will be better Even if I do say so myself

Wow!  That book looks amazing.  If it ever goes to print let me know.  I'd love to have a copy!

1 hour ago, Rockytop said:

That's a good point. I hadn't thought about that litho showing fade more easily.
 

I do landscape photography, mainly just as a hobby, and I get prints done on metal. It's a great medium for landscape shots. I know it's utterly impractical and expensive for concert lithos, but it would be a cool high end and unique thing if that was ever done. 
 

With the colors on your Vegas litho, @facefirst, I bet it would look awesome printed on metal. Have you ever printed your work on metal? 
 

I think it's an amazing litho by the way...can't believe they didn't use it. 

Thanks for the kind words. 
 

Yep, I’ve had prints done on metal before. Some illustrations that I gave a friend as a Christmas gift. They turned out really cool. Expensive to do, though. 

28 minutes ago, Rockytop said:

Just curious to see what the group thinks. 
 

I have an outdoor living room and was thinking about putting a litho out there. It wouldn't have any direct exposure to sun or rain, but it would be outside. Of course, there is humidity (I live in Tennessee) and condensation. 
 

I've had a Danny Schmidt framed litho (singer songwriter friend that no one has heard of) out there for about 6 months, and it's not showing any ill signs. That doesn't mean that eventually it will. 
 

I'm guessing most would say don't do it, but just curious if anyone has done that in a similar climate or has an opinion on it. 

If the frame is airtight I can't imagine it would be an issue.  If it's not then eventually it will effect the paper over time.  It's not something that's going to happen tomorrow, next month or even next year but over time it will compromise it eventually.

20 hours ago, nycgunner said:

I'll volunteer to head this in terms of helping FaceFirst coordinate logistics.  As of now, I have 5 people who would be interested (nycgunner, Mcs953, ZoSoRose, alangarcianr, rossco).  Assuming we get critical mass for FaceFirst, I can help coordinate names, mailing addresses and email addresses.  Or if easier to protect people's privacy, I'll keep a list of user names and then we/FaceFirst can create a private Google Doc (or something) so only FaceFirst gets in the contact details.  For example, I have no interest in getting anyone's personal details, but I am happy to help facilitate since I suggested this idea.

Thanks!

Sounds good.  Thanks!

4 hours ago, ZoSoRose said:

@The Holographic Universe you are coming off as a massive piece of shit. I'm shocked with how much of a douche you are in here rn. Its not even up for debate

Preach!  Oh well, I've got him on ignore so I don't have to listen to his stupidity.

40 minutes ago, Blackjacker said:

I'm in for one if it's the artwork already shown, with the GNR branding.  If not, it's a definite maybe.

Will not have any GNR branding.  That's a definite.