Memory Portrait

So this is it. I'm calling it quits. I could go in and rework some of the areas but it's time to move on. I had a lot of fun with this and opened up a new color palette to my portfolio which was needed. The first image is the cropped version that she will be receiving at 9x12 which is the requested dimension. I have yet to decide which one I want to put into my portfolio.

Now.....arrowheads and wild cats.

Springtime for Illustrators

Once January disappears all sorts of things happen. Snow melts, birds chirp and illustrators start to come out of the studio and pop up in venues all around.

Matthew Stewart

This spring I had the great fortune of having Matt Stewart visit the illustration department at Moore. My students and co-workers were elated to have him there and his presentation was truly inspiring. Among original oils he also brought in sketches and showed his process. He was a great inspiration to listen to and a super nice guy too!

Joe DeVito

Joe DeVito will be speaking in Doyelstown. He is an amazing person with a rich history in the industry. Among his numerous accomplishments you may know his illustration of Superman and Lois as Spectrum's logo. Oh, and he had a monster marathon party at Harryhausen's for cryling out loud! The man is insane awesome. Thanks to Glenn Zimmer for putting this together.

Gallery Provocateur

Among lectures and visits there are also gallery shows featuring stellar work. Gallery Provocateur in Chicago is featuring a collection of illustrators inspired by Frank Frazetta. Dominick Saponaro and some of the Drawn Today gang are involved. You may notice Dom's piece in this collection...wink, wink.

Since I'm on a roll........The University of the Arts in Philly will be showing Leo and Diane Dillon's work for a few months. You can check out the exact dates by visiting uarts.edu.

I will be traveling to the Society of Illustrators this week to see the Advertising and Institutional show as well. The fun never stops.

Memory Portrait WIP - Details

I'm still working on this portrait but I haven't posted in awhile so I thought I'd throw a few details up for your viewing pleasure. These are very small areas of the illustration. I'm having a whole lot of fun with these decorative elements!

Memory Portrait WIP Color 2

It snowed again and I'm waiting for my class to arrive so I thought I'd post an in progress of my memory portrait. Lots more to do...

Oil Study - Valentine Cupcake

6x6 Oil on Board

This was an oil painting demo. It's a mini Valentine cupcake painted in oils on 6"x6" board.

Memory Portrait WIP

Detail

This is the Memory Portrait in progress. Still have a ton of work to do but it's moving in the right direction. This week I have to shoot reference of a model to get some interesting lighting. The image I have of the child is good but the lighting is somewhat flat. I need some more definition of value.

I have a student who I am mentoring during this project and she has volunteered to pose for the shoot. It's kind of ironic because she has the same shape face as this little lovely girl! Alright.....time to get to work!

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.

It's egg month 2011!

Under-paintings

Every spring semester I teach an oil painting class for sophomore illustration majors and I introduce several techniques using an egg as the subject. The egg offers a simple breakdown of value offering a clear and concise mapping of the different lights and shadows.

They poke one hole in the top and bottom of the egg and blow out the contents (gross) and then they have an egg to work with for several weeks. They use different lighting effects as well as oil painting techniques. Underpainting in acrylics and over painting in oils, wipe outs, mounted drawings with overpainted color, glazing and scumbling and much more.

It's a challenge but it's a great build up to the trompe l'oeil project. It's gotten fun for me to do and now I have a serious collection of eggs!

L is for Luna Bird

Graphite on hot pressed watercolor paper. If I take this to final color I would make the orb glow and look all misty. But for now it's just a sketch.

Last of the Dingbats

These are some more dingbats I did in Illustrator. They lie beneath the title separating it from the body text. These are derived from portions of the stories.

Dingbat 2

Here are some past dingbats I did for GreenPrints. They were done in Adobe Illustrator. I chose to use Illustrator because I can work really fast in that program (I've been teaching it for 10 years) and it has super crisp output. These guys were printed about the size of my thumbnail so clarity was really important.

I have done pencils and Painter for dingbats in the past but they usually didn't work out. It's easy too caught up in gradations and values and more time was spent rendering something that didn't show up or show up poorly.

Sketches and Dingbats

This is a page from my sketch book that shows a small study of decorative patterns. I found that some of these worked for my dingbat assignments. Dingbats are small decorative symbols used in publishing. Most of the time you will see dingbats accompanying type. They are used to fill up dead space and liven up the article or story by giving a interesting visual for the reader's eye to land on for a split second.

I also have found that these studies help me add decorative additions to some of my final illustrations.

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.

Last Summer

Oil on Panel

I kept meaning to post these but they ended up on the back burner. In August Dominick and I were very fortunate to visit our friends Will and Shelly in Colorado. They took us sight seeing in the rocky's and we drove north to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park. It was a wonderful trip hiking and being engulfed in nature.

We wanted to fit as much sight seeing in as possible so Dom and I didn't paint that much. This is the only one I didn't wipe off my board. It is a view of the Tetons which was painted in a small alcove off a hiking trail. The sketch was a little flower we saw in Colorado right before encountering a moose.....which was my biggest find!

Cat Queen

Cat Queen

And so it is put to rest. I finished the never ending project in time for the new year. Open deadlines are a pure nightmare for me to work with. I work much better under pressure. I will say that I did take advantage of the time and explored a lot of techniques I wanted to work with before but couldn't find time to do.

This became a pivotal piece for me. I'm happy. The client is happy. And now it's time to move on to a follow up piece. Decisions, decisions.