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.

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.

Metal for Veterans

 

This is a poster I put together for a group of metal bands playing a benefit show in Boise, ID next weekend. My brother is in the band RipshaW and their album is now available. Give a listen here.

On the process of making this: The skull image was sketched out in pencil using reference from GoMedia. I inked it with a Sumi brush, using a very wet brush for a slightly sloppy flowing effect. Then some dry brush for some details and texture and then some layers of grays for more texture and tone. Then I used a flag image and messed with the layer options in Photoshop until it looked 'right'.

I thought the dogtags would be a nice way to display the band names. I started with low res versions of the band names and a dogtag image from Google images. In Photoshop I created a brushed steel pattern with the dogtag outline and then used some layer options on the band names to give them a 'stamped' look. Once I had the skull and dogtag elements, I brought them into Illustrator and added the requested logos and text. The font was free from dafont.com. Spent some time nudging and tweaking and that's about it.

Shoot the Horses - The Portland Mercury

Here's an illustration I did for the Portland Mercury. They loved the illustration, but decided not to run the article in the end. The Merc posted it on their blog though: http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2010/05/13/best-illustration-we-never-got-to-run

One in Two Million - Willamette Week

Here is a news feature illustration that I did for this week's Willamette Week. It's about a weird case of double road rage. Check it out online here.
This was a same day turnaround job, so I didn't have much time to play with the concept. But I like how it came together, and I think it illustrates the story well.

Another Crash

More art for your eyeballs

Loan Shark Hunting

Here is a new illustration for the Portland Mercury. I'm really happy with how this one turned out, and it started with an awesome concept from the AD.

I tried something a little new with this one, I inked it on watercolor paper. Usually I just ink on sketch or bristol paper. It's kinda hard to tell the difference when it's all finished, textured and colored.. but the ink on the paper looked really cool. So yeah, paper does make a difference.

Read the full article here.

CRC in the Crosshairs

I did this editorial illustration for an article in the most recent Portland Mercury. This was a combination of pencil, ink wash and digital manipulation and color.

You can see the illustration in context and read the full article by clicking here.

Tyrannosaurus Ax

Here's a new t-shirt! So, this came about while watching an old slasher movie (The Prowler) while thumbing through an old collection of comics (The War that Time Forgot). I did a full page sketch of a scene that kinda looked like an old grindhouse movie poster or something. I started to ink it (Sumi brush & ink) and realized that the dino itself was much cooler than the whole scene in itself. So I thought it would look best like this on a shirt.

New Art - sketchbook

A few recent things. The Lloyd City piece is from my sketchbook - a fun little illo with colors and grunge textures in Photoshop. The other thing is a Photoshop brush sketch.. not something I normally do in PS, but I like it.

Smoke and Fire - Portland Mercury

I did a new editorial illustration for this week's Portland Mercury. You can read the full article here. The color version is online and the gray version is in print the printed article this week.

I used a few different tools for inking this. It's been a while since I used a nib, but I used a HUNT 99 for most of the line work on the city image. I filled in the blacks and did the line work on the rest of the image with a size 0 sable brush from Rosemary & Co. Also, I added a bit of spray effect for the flame using a toothbrush. Coloring was done in Photoshop.

New Shirt - Sludge

I made a new shirt and put it on mysoti.com for now. Eventually I'll be selling these shirts separate from mysoti I think, but this works until I get that going.

This was a fun design to make, I penciled, inked and finished it off all today. I used a Rosemary & Co. Series 33 size 0 brush for the linework. I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted it to look like in the end, but I did things a little differently with the brushwork. Instead of filling in all the 'black' areas, I outlined the penciled linework, then in Photoshop just filed the inside and subtracted the brushed lines. Working this way made the line weights extra important.

I wasn't sure about the face. Adding it made it look a bit cartoony and leaving it blank made it look more creepy.. but a little less interesting - so I went with the face.

While inking I was thinking a lot about 'process' and I came up with this: "Your process is the answer to the question 'how do I make this look the way I want it to?'" - That may not be the best or fullest explanation, but that's kinda how I think of it.

Baby Card

Here is a baby card I illustrated (and crafted!) for a friend's newborn.

Fall Leaves - High Res Photoshop Brush Set

Here is a set of 10 Photoshop brushes that I made. They are free for use on any projects, though you may not sell, redistribute or host them. They are high resolution and were created in Adobe Photoshop version CS3. They were tested in CS3 and CS2, but may not work in earlier versions of Photoshop. Here is a preview of what they look like:Also, I made a color palette from the fall colors in our backyard that is also in the .zip file.The .zip file contains the .abr brushes file and the .aco color swatches file. Load these to their respective folders in your Presets folder. Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments.

Click here, or right click and select 'save as' to download the .zip file.

Enjoy!