Offshoot Art Show Presents: Jake CREEP Crawley (Part 1)

Sometimes, can art needs to be…creepy. Weird. With leaky noses, exaggerated expressions, and gnarly, wrinkled faces. It’s a particular style we were drawn to while brainstorming the first few Offshoot Beer Co. cans for 2018, and Jake CREEP Crawley, an illustrator and graphic designer from California, knew exactly what we had in mind. This month, he drew up the gnarliest, two-faced cans he could imagine to give our hazy IPAs a sketchy, kooky touch. And we loved it.

I Know You Are (Hazy IPA) & But What Am I? (Hazy DIPA) are just the first of three pairs of can designs drawn by Jake for Offshoot Beer Co. After he was done hiding pencils in his beard, we picked his brain (not his nose) to learn a little bit more about his style and ideas for our first can releases:

We don’t think you’re that much of a creep. Where did the name come from?
Haha. I can be a real CREEP when I want to. The name comes from those little creepy crawlers I would play with when I was a kid. You know, the little ovens that you could cook up a batch of spiders and scorpions in. My last name is Crawley so a lot of kids in school would call me Creepy Crawley. Fast forward a few years when I started getting into art, I was signing my drawings with my name and just wasn’t really digging it. I was also getting into grafitti and wanted a tag name and CREEP just seemed like it was meant to be. The whole grafitti thing didn’t last very long because pretty much everytime I tried to do paint in the street I got caught. The name stuck though, and I just kept rolling with it. As my style has matured the name makes even more sense. I draw creepy stuff, what can I say.

We love your style. Our eyeballs are literally coming out just looking at your sketches. Tell us a little bit about your work.
If your eyeballs ain’t popping out then I’m not doing a very good job. I’ve always drawn faces. Lots and lots of faces. Faces with big leaky noses, hairy ears, age spots, and horrible teeth. I love to exaggerate, elongate, twist, wrinkle and bend. As if every character I draw is made up of the same stuff Gumby is made of. I also really enjoy lettering. I’ve been playing with different lettering styles for some time now and really enjoy drawing letters just as much as my goofy characters. I’m wildly inspired by skateboarding, motorcycles and Basil Wolverton. (If you’ve never heard of him look him up)! Anytime I feel like the creative juices just aren’t flowing like they normally do I pick up his book and start skimming through and all these ideas start coming to me. His drawings make me laugh out loud and that’s what I aim to do.

Let’s talk about I Know You Are & But What Am I? How did you approach your first Offshoot Beer can art? What’s your concept?
I always start by sketching in my sketchbook. So I started off making a bunch of quick loose sketches and trying to find a good idea that really stuck. The concept behind “I Know You Are” is the wizard-like gnome character is somewhat of a magical, wise, and mystical guy. He knows everything about you before you even meet him. He knows “Who You Are!” He’s a nice guy though, the kind of guy that you’d want to drink with, full of the craziest stories.

The concept behind “But What Am I” is a guy that is really two guys. It’s a reversible face, he’s got two personalities. He doesn’t know who he is. Am I this dude or this one? I also really like that it’s an interactive design. As you drink the beer those around you will see the magic happen as it goes upside down and the other face magically appears. As for the lettering I really wanted to create an interesting and flowing combination of type. I also wanted it all to be hand drawn. Almost everything in both of these designs is hand drawn, scanned and brought into illustrator for fine tuning and layout.

How does it feel seeing your art on a can?
It’s totally surreal. It’s been an art dream of mine for a long time and you guys made that dream come true! Thank you. It’s such an amazing feeling to combine two things that I love, beer and art. Another one of my art dreams is to paint a 60’s style long chopper and that dream looks like its going to be manifesting real soon.

Any cool artists or designers you find inspiration from?
Ohh man the list is always getting longer. Some of my all time favorites are Basil Wolverton, Robert Crumb, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, Robert Williams, David Mann, Dave Kinsey, Phil Guy, Doze Green, Matt Ritchie, Hal Robinson, Ralph Steadman, and Barry McGee

If you weren’t drawing super sick designs and art, what would you be doing?
I’d be hanging out with my Fiancé cooking a scrumptious meal drinking wine while laughing our butts off, or I’d be skating with my DEK brothers drinking some brewskis chuckling till we buckle.

Check out more of Jake’s work on his website and Instagram.
Don’t miss our next Offshoot Beer Co. can release! Sign up for our email Interest List at OffshootBeer.com.

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