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Artist Interview : John Keester (cont.)

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Can you give us a quick list of your deck art for Powell? How about T-shirts and stickers, etc?

Quick list? Oh man. I've attached a list-o-rama of all the stuff I could remember. You asked for it. (*see page links above for listings)

Who gets the rights to your work when you're all done? I ask this cuz look at the re-issue Powell decks. Do the artists or riders get royalties still?

Heh, heh, what's a royalty? If they do, nobody ever told me about it. Powell owns the rights for anything I produced there. That's generally how it works when you are employed for a corporation like that. But like any artist, I have the satisfaction, or in some cases, the embarrassment of creating a particular image, rights or no rights.

Royalties? I get no respect!
Ode to Rodney by Keester

Any graphics you ever did that got rejected that you really loved?

I did a McGill that was a skull with snakes pouring out of the mouth like they were teeth sort of, I liked that one. ;) And I did a fairly intricate scratchboard dragon design that I liked that never got used. But that's cool cuz they're mine now.

Do you still have any of the original work you did? Have any reject graphics we could see? That's something I'd really love... to see the stuff that never made it to production.

I still have some of the drawings, or should. Otherwise I'm hauling a bunch of shit around with me from house to house that I don't need. I threw in that scratchboard dragon I was just talking about in some image files I've sent along with this interview. (*see page links above for listings)

Did you ever do graphics that you hated but they used anyway?

Oh yeah. Plenty. That's one thing about being a "commercial" artist that just comes with the territory. Even when you do something you like, and that the client also likes, there are often tweaks requested that make the art something other than what you had originally intended.
One that will always stick in my head is when I did the McGill Stinger and we prepared the version for the t-shirt, George wanted to have the pocket logo be the stinger tail coming out of a circle/hole. It was ass. It ruined the shirt for me. I had the production guys print me a few without that idiotic pocket logo. I just hate it when I lose creative control on something I care about. Don't get me started, I could go on...