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Mad Men

admin — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 04:21:23 +0000

I’ve been catching up on Mad Men on Netflix this weekend for the season 5 premiere tomorrow. Here’s a Don Draper ink drawing.

Work Weak

admin — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 05:19:15 +0000

Here is a new personal piece. Sometimes it can just be a long week at the office. Created with ink and Photoshop, but set up well for silkscreen separations.

Roll Back (The Portland Mercury)

admin — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 19:52:00 +0000

Here is an editorial piece I did for The Portland Mercury about removing a planned streetcar extension in the Portland area. Click here for the full article.

Church of Skyrim

admin — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:15:00 +0000

I created this for comedian Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, hosts of the excellent video game based podcast The Indoor Kids. They have recently been living in Skyrim, so I made sure to incorporate that into their portrait. I highly recommend giving it a listen. It’s available for free download on Chris Hardwick’s Nerdist Empire here: http://www.nerdist.com/podcast/the-indoor-kids/

Mauitime Cover

admin — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 19:48:00 +0000

Cover Art // Art Director: Justin “Scrappers” Morrison

This is a cover piece I did a few weeks ago. It was for the former Art Director of The Portland Mercury, who recently moved to Maui. I had a good amount of creative freedom on this one, which is always fun! Click here for the online story. Below are a few images from the process.

Concept Sketches:

Pencil Art:

Damn You Red Planet!

admin — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:06:00 +0000

I was looking at an older poster image I made and decided to do a related image. These are made by ‘inking’ into Photoshop. I used a similar color and texture to keep the images related. The planet images are public domain from NASA.

Wordstock Feature – Portland Mercury

admin — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 08:21:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, Art Director Suji Allen at The Portland Mercury asked if I’d like to do a feature piece for the upcoming Wordstock Festival. The article would need about 10 author portraits with some extra character to them. After a few drafts, I decided on a style that I thought would work well, and some notes on what I’d like to do for each author and proposed it. Suji and the Arts Editor were really into it and had some great additional suggestions. I started with the Charles Yu illo and they were still really into it so I continued with the rest. Heather greatly contributed to these with simple, bold and loose coloring. They liked the look so much, they decided to run one (Zachary Schomburg) on the cover! I always enjoy doing work for the Mercury and it was nice to have a much larger than usual contribution to this issue. Below are the 10 author illustrations.

You can view and read the Portland Mercury article online here.

Find out more about Wordstock here.

Isaac Marion

Diana Abu-Jaber

Steve Almond

Jennifer Egan

Anne Enright

Lauren Oliver

Michael Ondaatje

Zachary Schomburg (also used as cover art)

Daniel Woodrell

Charles Yu

Here are a few photos of the printed paper. It’s a great, balanced layout put together by the Merc:

Recent Work Update

admin — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 03:12:00 +0000

Things have been busy lately. Here is an update of some projects I’ve worked on recently or that have recently been published:

Frosh Student Guide 2011 Cover // Offbeat // Art Director: Elsa Hahne

This is one of my favorite pieces this year. I loved drawing the giant gumbo dish. It was great working with Elsa on this, she pushed the crab bits larger and larger and I was happy to go along with it. I played with some layer options to get a nice glow to certain areas of the color. I worked with Elsa on the text color and placement to ensure this would work as a good, eye-catching cover.

Beer on the Bayou // Offbeat // Art Director: Elsa Hahne

Another fun piece for Offbeat about one of my favorite subjects, beer! You can read the full article here. This has a lot of good information on the growing craft beer scene in Louisiana. My wife, Heather has begun coloring some of my work and she did an excellent job balancing the hues and adding just the right amount of pop to the right areas of this one.

Queasy Rider // Portland Mercury // Art Director: Suji Allen

Full article here. This one ran in black and white in the paper, but color online. Heather did the color for this one too.

Just Crazy Enough to Die // Portland Mercury // Art Director: Suji Allen

Another quick weekend illustration for the Mercury. Here is the full article online. Suji knew exactly what she was looking for, so this one came together pretty easily.

X-MEN Variant // Comix Gone Rogue // Publisher: Edwin Vazquez

This is a great project I was invited to submit to. Basically, some comic companies released blank covered comic books with just the masthead (presumably for industry signatures or sketches). Edwin distributed these to a variety of great artists (not necessarily mainstream comic artists) to fill in the cover as they see fit. Fun stuff! NSFW – Other variant submissions and more info can be seen here.

Man Signs Dog – Offbeat New Orleans

admin — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 01:33:00 +0000

Here is an editorial illustration I made for an article in Offbeat (New Orleans). You can read the article here. I’ve done a few pieces for them recently and they are great to work with. Every illo has been music related, which is one of the top subjects I enjoy illustrating.
I did a handfull of sketches for this one. One had an iconic Hendrix pose and another one used his fro to show it was him. I’m glad the A.D. went with this one.
I used a slightly different process with this one and worked from a tight, detailed, pencil drawing instead of my usual brush inks. I wanted to put a lot of detail and textures into the music equipment and I felt the brush line would muddy it up too much. I made some adjustments to the line in Photoshop and colored with a pretty simple, balanced palette. Then added in some doodly marks for extra flare. The end result has a lot of busy lines and direction, but the focal point on the dog and signature is clear.

Philadelphia Weekly Cover

admin — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 03:29:00 +0000

I illustrated the cover to this week’s Philadelphia Weekly!

Here is a larger version of the final without the masthead and text:

Below are a few of the initial sketches I sent to the Art Director. There were a few more edits, tweaks and tighter sketches on the octopus layout (#2). I like how it came together in the end.