New Dragon Slippers Cover Art

I was asked by Bloomsbury Publishing to create new covers for a reissue of Jessica Day George's "Dragon Slippers" trilogy. This is the art for the first book.

Doodles

I've been creating watercolor textures to use for various projects and as I look at some of them characters start to emerge. Here's a couple of little monsters that were hanging out on my desk yesterday.

Portrait: Charlie Sheen

This is a new project for my illustration class.
The idea is to choose a celebrity and after researching him or her assign keywords that will determine how the viewer responds to the finished art. Not one to ask my students to do something I wouldn't, here is my interpretation of Charlie Sheen (circa spring 2011). My keywords were: "Manaical, Self Involved, Dangerous"

Here is the process I used to arrive at the finished piece:

I researched a bunch of photos of Charlie Sheen and chose one that had a single light source and strong cast shadows.
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Adjusted the photo so that it was more contrasty and the shapes that made up the features were clearer.
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The original photo did not have the feel/keywords I wanted so I modified his face to look more like the photos of Charlie Sheen when he was at his most volatile.
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Redrew the light and dark shapes so they could be transferred to watercolor paper
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Created and ink wash of painting of the photo, being conscious to use the brush to create quick angular strokes that would reinforce my keywords.
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I wanted to add a second element that would further reinforce my keywords and decided on the "catchphrases" Charlie would endlessly spout during this period. Again, actively using a mark making style that would suggest a person coming unhinged.
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The two pieces were composited digitally and this is the end result.
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What's really fun about this process is that you can easily substitute other equally compelling images to achieve a similar effect.

Sidewalk Stroller

The inaugural drawing of my brand-spankin' new set of mid-toned sketchbooks. (Very excited to be drawing in these again!) This stroller was just sitting on the sidewalk today, and while I admire the engineering that has gone into modern "baby-jogger strollers" there's just something evocative about this design.

Recent Sketch

Welcome to a new year everybody! This amazing skeleton is on display at the Natural History museum in London. Possibly one of the coolest places I visited on my last trip there.

Recent Sketch

I have a great book of Fantastic and Mythological Creatures. These are just some of my interpretations.

Travel Sketch: London

While I definitely liked the V&A museum, what I REALLY liked was the Natural History Museum right next door. Call it the 8-year-old in me, but big skeletons of dead animals are just cool to look at.

Recent Sketches: Font Faces

Anybody who checked out my post yesterday might have noticed I started drawing the type as I watched "Helvetica". One of the things that starts to happen when you look at a letterform for too long is that the negative shapes start to become more interesting that the positive ones. (Sorta like when you look too long at your written name -- it becomes a meaningless jumble of strokes) Anyway the counter of the bowl of a lowercase "a" became fascinating to me as just a shape and I wanted to see what I could do with it. So these faces are make up of the negative shapes of the lowercase "a", "s", "e" and "w" from the font Helvetica. Makes me wonder what kind of expressions I might get if I had a go at Baskerville.

Recent Sketches: Fredrick takes a Bath

9.20.09 Various Sketches

I can only imagine that some version of "Harvey" was floating around in my head as I started these.

Creatures

I'm having a great time playing with old images of monsters/creatures from various manuscripts. Basically extrapolating from tiny drawings into these various different poses/interpretations.