Roll Back (The Portland Mercury)

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

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

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!

 

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

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

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

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

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. 

Offbeat New Orleans - Wolfman!

Here's an illustration I did Offbeat, a music review publication in New Orleans. It illustrates a part of the article about a particularly lively musician known as Wolfman, testing out his new teeth on a bartenders neck. This was put together with using a layer of ink, watercolor, Photoshop color and texture. You can read the article here: http://offbeat.com/2011/07/01/across-the-bar-music-venue-bartenders/

Buckaroo - Original Art on Etsy

My Etsy store is open now and I posted my first item. Check it out here:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/72055792/buckaroo-original-painting

The Logic of Sex Laws - Portland Mercury

Here's another illustration for the Portland Mercury.

Offbeat

Here's an illustration I did for Offbeat magazine in New Orleans. It's the header to a listing for a jazz festival. Here's their website.

Ball Busters - Willamette Week

I did this illustration on an article about Smash Putt. It's basically miniature golf + alcohol, which is pretty great in my opinion. I think the article mentions this, but the Portland recipe for success seems to be: Something you enjoyed as a teenager + alcohol. You've got Ground Kontrol - an awesome classic arcade/bar. There are several movie theaters that serve beer and pizza (my favorite is Laurelhurst on Burnside). I think there's also a comic shop that serves beer.. I really can't complain. I wonder if you could legally do Go-carts + beer.. and would you want to?

You can read the article online here: http://wweek.com/portland/article-17269-ball_busters.html

Transformers

My friend Ulises Farinas has been doing some cool stuff for the Transformers comics lately and it got me in the mood to draw a robot in disguise... or at least on his way to being in disguise..

Portland Mercury Editorial Illustrations

Here are a few recent editorial illustrations I did for the Portland Mercury. There is a section on their website that has all the images I've done for them, kinda neat: http://www.portlandmercury.com/gyrobase/ImageArchives?by=2431044&section=22100 . Also the Art Director over there, Scrappers, recently did an interview on Escape from Illustration Island, IT'S GREAT STUFF!: http://escapefromillustrationisland.com/2011/03/02/efii-podcast-episode-73-art-director-justin-scrappers-morrison/

Here are a few of the drawings I made at a live model session at Hipbone. I went with Tom, he posted a few of his awesome drawings on his blog here.

Bikes, Brews, Banks, Oh My! - Portland Mercury

Here are a few spot illustrations I did for the current issue of The Portland Mercury. I like the black and white versions a little more than the color versions.


READ THE FULL ARTICLE WITH COLOR IMAGES ONLINE HERE.

Happy Holidays!!!

In an effort to be a little more 'green' this year, I've decided to put out our holiday card online as a desktop / mobile device background. Please feel free to click any of the linked images below to open up the correct size ratio for your screen or device and download it or set it as your desktop background or iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch background.

This image was inked with a Pentel brush pen on a sheet of bristol and colored with watercolor. I scanned it into Photoshop to adjust color levels and added some halftone pattern to the shaded areas. The text was laid out in Illustrator and copied into Photoshop as a smart object, then resized as needed.

Thanks to Thomas Pitilli for letting me borrow his scanner. And thanks to Of Zen and Computing for the Photoshop Action Set that made it easier to save out for various screens.

iPhone / iPod Touch

iPad

1024x768

1280x800

1280x1024

1600x1200

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2560x1600