Four Days to Go!

Four more days to go on my kickstarter campaign.  Please consider pledging and sharing the project.  For $15 you will receive the ebook, $20 a post card pack, $35 both ebook and post card pack.  Pledge higher for your choice of pet/animal as a historical figure along with the original painting or drawing!

This next incentive for anyone who pledges $250 or over will be first come first serve.  Mary Shelley as a skunk.  I find skunks to be beautiful creatures.  Except when they would spray my dogs!  Anyway, the black and white fur markings remind me of the bride of Frankenstein.  Hence, Mary as a skunk.

Be the first to pledge 250 or over and choose from any one of my incentives.  Visit the updates section of my kickstarter to pick your sketch, Mary Shelley included.

Please visit and share my kickstarter with your ebook lovin' friends!

Rock and a Hard Place

Small little drawing I did for Drawn Today's Weekly Theme. It measures a super tiny 3.5" x 4".

Memory Portrait

This is a sketch for a memory portrait project. A memory portrait is a portrait created for an orphan or foster child. The purpose is that they can have something they call their own as the move around.

This is a scanned pencil drawing. I will continue to work out some of the decorative elements in Photoshop and then start painting out the illustration in Corel.

Drop Caps Drawings

These are some drop caps I drew up for an interior article. Just pencil. I wanted to feature the texture of tweed within the letters. Tweed is a big part of the story.

B is for Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica

This is part of my alphabet series. An ode to "The Office".

Butterfly and Branch

Graphite on Hot Pressed Watercolor Paper

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Inspired by the extremely cool dead wood in Yellowstone and the Rockies I decided to do a little drawing to pay homage to the beauty of gnarled wood sculpted by time and nature.

Ferns and Lilies

Graphite on Hot Pressed Watercolor

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This is a little guy measuring about 4 1/2" square.

D is for Dunce

D is for Dunce. It started as another idea involving a lightbulb...then into a girl with a beehive hairdo....then a girl with a dunce hat.....then a ramped up dunce hat.

O is for Octopus...Sleepy Octopus

The alphabet series is back! I started this last year and went on a serious hiatus with it. I figure I can get a few more in before the craziness that is Autumn hits.

This is a sketch I was working on before I vacationed. It's a sleepy octopus. And it has 9 tentacles so it was born abnormal. So be it.

IMC 2010 - Line Drawing

This is my line drawing for IMC. I am going to be starting the value comp shortly. I'll post the progress and suggested changes in the upcoming week.

Muse Challenge

Graphite on Hot Pressed Watercolor Paper

This is the preliminary for ArtOrder's Muse Challenge. Jon Schindehette is an art director for Wizards of the Coast and runs some pretty fantastic challenges that are a great way to build a portfolio. Click here to check out the specifics.

There are nine muses in greek mythology and I chose to illustrate Urania who is the muse of astrology. She is often depicted looking up at the heavens holding a globe in her left hand and a staff in the other. I was working with taken reference of Veronika, a professional model, so I chose an image showing the direct look at the viewer for a more captivating immediacy. The deadline is June 1...so...here it goes!

U is for Underdog

Graphite on Hot Pressed Watercolor Paper

As a child one of my favorite cartoon characters was Underdog. He is a canine caped superhero who has a girlfriend named Polly Purebred. This is a drawing of my trusty sidekick Roscoe...attitude and all.

Q is for Q-bert

Graphite on Hot Pressed Watercolor Paper

He's tentacley. He's cute. He has duck feet. What else could you possibly want from a baby monster?

This was inspired by tor.com's month of Lovecraft which celebrated sci-fi/fantasy author H.P. Lovecraft's novels. Irene Gallo, art director from Tor, hosted a blog challenge for artists' renditions featuring some of Lovecrafts characters.

I wanted to name him Henry....but H was already used in my alphabet. So I named him Q-bert after one of my favorite Atari games. Ah, Atari. How I miss the simple one orange button.

The next alphabet entry will feature the infamous Roscoe P Coltrain as a model. Stay tuned.

Sketch #6 - P is for Parasite

Graphite on Hot Pressed Water Color Paper

This was created for an online group I participate in. One of the members recommended "parasite" for the theme. I researched online and found a close up of a hookworm that was pretty creepy. Teeth and indents as eyes. Jordu Schell mentioned that nothing looks more alien than insects and if your creatively stuck with ideas just look through at some scary insects. Although a parasite is not an insect it most definitely looked alien.

As I was drawing this it evolved into a story in my head. I pictured him as a poor guy who can't get dates. I kept thinking of what he would put in a personal ad if he posted one. Funny where the mind goes when drawing!

Sketch #5 - Dingbats

Graphite on Hot Pressed Watercolor Paper

Dingbats are decorative characters used as a typesetter's ornament. Above is a small drawing I created for a job that will be used as a divider between the text and title. In the past I have created all the dingbats in illustrator to maintain a crisp clear line. I'm trying a different approach by going back to traditional medium. It may not work when shrunk down but I can easily redraw it in Adobe Illustrator without a problem. The publication size is about 1/2" tall .... very tiny!

Sketch #4

Pencil in Sketchbook

Reference and Studies. That is the basis of everything illustrative. This is a little fun study I drew of an Art Nouveau pattern I found. Jotting little thumbnails of decorative studies is something I should do more often. It opens my mind to new ways of linear involvement and compositions in vignette forms. You'll notice the noise in the background of the sketch...this was done on the back sheet of one of my sketchbook pages. Because it's a study I'm not really concerned about the presentation. I have sketched on lined paper, bills and sometimes even napkins. Sometimes a simple doodle can turn into a great idea. Just make sure to redraw it onto something more presentable before proposing it to a client or instructor!

Sketch #3

Graphite on Hot Pressed Watercolor Paper

This is an illustration for another poem. It's a four liner describing the people who make us happy as gardeners of our lives. I wanted to add humanistic elements into the flowers to give the feeling of external emotion. In addition I have added dancing shadows intermingled with the strands of her hair. The final will be finished in black and white for the publisher.

Sketch #2

Lilacs

Graphite on Hot Pressed Water color paper

This is a preliminary sketch for an article about a woman's memory of her early teenage years. I had to create an innocent exchange involving a lilac between a college age hippie and an early teenage girl. It takes place in the late 1960's. I had to make this pretty literal for the key illustration but I decided to add additional elements of garden life to layer the composition. The bird bath adds a bit more to the story. The foreground may be my favorite part to work on. I enjoyed drawing the azaleas and look forward to painting them. As many of my interiors this will be in black and white.

Sketch #1

"Irish Blessing"

Graphite on Hot Pressed Watercolor Paper

I haven't posted in a very long time so I am going to make up for it. I've got a couple projects underway plus some alphabet sketches that I'm looking forward to finishing. I promise this week will be an every day thing! This is the kick off to my 7 days of 7 sketches!

This is a sketch for an interior illustration for one of my magazine clients. It's based on an Irish Blessing about rain. As an art student I always wanted to illustrate poems but now I find it very challenging. There usually is very little amount of imagery to work with and it's tough to open up new and exciting possibilities and still remain true to the publication. I used a wordier poem called "I Died for Beauty" by Emily Dickinson to set a mood in my mind. It also happens to be one of the only poems I know by heart so it is something I have always wanted to play off of.

The final will be in black and white for the publication although I'm hoping to take it to color for myself. I'm looking forward to getting that misty atmosphere, mossy stone and old wrought iron. I'm still batting around a color theme....green or blue...warm or cool. Oh the decisions!

M is for Mummy

Graphite on Hot Pressed Watercolor Paper

Here is a sketch in honor of the Halloween season. I wanted to do something familiar but put a little bit of a twist on it. A screaming cat should do the trick. I used reference of a yawning hairless cat. Very frightening. I also put an eye on the left arm....a little homage to Mark Ryden. Happy Halloween!