Portland Mercury Illustration - Fare Check

Here is an illustration I did for this week's Portland Mercury. It's about how the fares on TriMet (the local public transit system) are going up, without increased service. The concept was presented by the art director, and I did the final draft. You can read the online version of the article here.

R.U.R. - T-shirt Design at Design By Humans

I liked that drawing in the last post enough to try it out as a T-shirt design. If you like it and want to see it produced, go on over to Design by Humans and vote for it. Here is the direct link: http://www.designbyhumans.com/vote/detail/25972

R.U.R.'s Recycled Beats

So originally, this I was working this up for Illustration Friday. But it kind of went in a different direction. The theme was 'routine', but while I mulled that around in my head, at some point it turned into 'repetition'... And while that's a similar theme, I think I ended up fairly removed from the original topic. In the end though I think I came up with a cool piece, and isn't that what really matters when it comes to these free/fun competitions?

Detach - Illustration Friday

I've been playing with technical illustration a bit lately as well as isometric drawing. And I thought these techniques would work nicely to illustrate the topic of 'detach' for Illustration Friday.

Crazy Ballot

I did this quick spot illo for the Portland Mercury this week. You can read the full article here.

Space Sailing - Illustration Friday

An illustration for Illustration Friday. This is what I think a space sail would look like... something like that anyways. Like a big ball of solar panels for energy... might also have mass controls to vary the pull of gravity between planets. I dunno.. makes sense in my head.

RipshaW t-shirt design - in progress

I'll probably finish this design in the next few days, but I wanted to post the progress on it. After finishing the pencils and doing the inks it will be set up for a one color silkscreen on a t-shirt. Right now I'm thinking white on black for starters, but we'll see when it's done.

Calling Doctor Cheap-o! - Portland Mercury

This was a quick fun project for THE PORTLAND MERCURY. It's a feature about finding cheap to free healthcare in the Portland area, when you don't have insurance. I had done a little work for the Merc before, but this was my first opportunity to work with the new AD there, Mark Searcy, which went really well.

The issue came out today so run to your nearest Portland, Oregon newsstand and pick one up! (Or just browse the paper on their website...)

Sour - Illustration Friday

So I used a little different of a process this week, parts of it I liked and others I didn't. I can see that in the end result. I started off with a pencil sketch. I kind of had a loose idea of how I wanted it to look anyways and I pretty much captured that. I think it would've lost a lot more life had I NOT done a pencil sketch. I scanned the sketch and outlined my shapes in illustrator. I think that's where I went wrong. The illustrator shapes are just a little too rigid. Next time I'll remember that and probably hand draw each shape over a lightbox. I took the pieces into photoshop, messed with layer options and threw in some grunge effects. Then cropped it all down. So I liked some of the process, but I should've done it a little more hand drawn and a little less computer aided. But it's done, thats whats important - and I learned from it.

Gravity Bomb

Viewer: Jon, what's a gravity bomb?
Me: I dunno, but I want two. One for up and the other for down.

I guess this is a one page comic. I wonder if there are rules or a definition as to how much content a one-page comic has to contain. "Use the gravity bomb" and then the other guy does... I suppose it falls under the 'Conceptual Product Demonstration' comic genre.

So I did this in my sketchbook, and liked it, so it got a bit of a Photoshop treatment and Voila! Now it's online for the world to see. Enjoy World!

Litterboxx

Well it's been a while since I've done some real comic pages, but this looks like the project that's going to get me going again. I've been getting more comfortable with my inking approach, so I think these are going to be some really solid pages.

It's for a submission to an anthology called SIDE B, and even though it's not due for a while, I figured I should get going on it... especially since my schedule has been a little unpredictable lately.

These are the thumbs for it. The basic story is theres a band of cats called LITTERBOXX that fly around in an octopus space ship and play music for their fans... and theres a anti-music robot that tries to stop them... but the power of rock is just too strong.

Hoard, Illustration Friday

Well, I enjoyed doing this last week, so I'm going to try to get in the habit of it. The theme this week was 'hoard' and as I started to sort out ideas I kept thinking of the definition for 'horde'.. which is different.. Anyways, I looked it up to be sure.

I did a 3 page comic with this 'piggy-bank-for-a-head-man' character a while ago. It just seemed to fit for this idea. If you're interested check out the comic pages here.

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures

I got a nice little surprise in the mail, it's the new comic textbook from all-star cartoonists Matt Madden and Jessica Abel. I was an intern for Matt and Jessica while they were writing it. I did a character construction exercise that they included in the book, which is really cool.

I mostly saw the outlines and some rough drafts, but I could definitely tell this was going to be big. They've really covered the art of comics from all angles in this book. I'll enjoy going through this in depth and I can already tell it's going to be a great resource.

It's published by First Second and available at Amazon (among other places I'm sure).

Punchline

So theres this thing called Illustration Friday and I've been meaning to participate the past few weeks, but I've been so busy that it's close to the following Friday before it's getting close to finished. This time, I kept it a little simpler. The theme is 'Punchline'. This makes sense to me, but comment if it's too vague. I'm curious if it comes across like intended.

An Effing Foodie

I have posted about this project before, but hadn't put up the final web banner. The first draft was more of an illustrated cartoony style, but the client was thinking of something a little more elegant. This style works a lot better with the layout of the site. See for yourself at http://www.aneffingfoodie.com/.

Mangia Mix

I was browsing through my past work folders and realized I never posted this project online. Theres a few that slip through the cracks now and then, but this is one I especially enjoyed. Rich has made a business combining two of my favorite things: food and music. He does great music mixes for restaurants in the NYC area. I designed his logo, business card and some miscellaneous stationary.

This is the front and back layout of the business card. I had them printed at overnightprints.com because they're good, cheap and can do those nice rounded corners that I wanted.

Evil Bird cover

One day I'll have time to actually get some finished pages done for this comic. Still slowly working out some kinks to the story and it's still pretty much on the back burner. But I had a hankering to work on this cover image, so I put it together. The bird was fully inked, but I decided to crop it for design purposes. I played with some photoshop stuff that I hadn't really messed with much before and I'm happy with the results. I was unaware that there were two methods of achieving 'halftone'. I like this one much better. It's filter>sketch>halftone pattern. Although it doesn't seem to be available in CMYK mode. No biggie though for this piece. I also worked with illustrator for the logo, played with gradient and layer options and pulled in and manipulated some grunge textures.

Battle Ground Harvest Days 2008

This is a poster design I did for the Battle Ground Harvest Days event put on by the Chamber of Commerce.

I used a new tool (for me anyways) for my inking on this. Its a winsor-newton series 7 size 2 brush. A lot of people have recommended this as the ultimate inking tool (including Tom Pitilli ). I found it incredibly easy to work with and I love the lines I got out of it. It's been a while since I've used a traditional brush (brushpens and foam brushes lately), so I had a bit of trouble figuring out the water/ink workings of it, but I got it pretty much down.

I started using an ink i was excited to try 'fw acrylic artists ink', but the blackness of it was very week. I ended up using a winsor newton ink, which was much darker and cleaner.

Colors were done in photoshop, but I figured out my palette using the color tools in illustrator, based on tips from colorist Ben DeRosa.

RipshaW

Heres a quick thing I did for my brother's band.

Family Portrait

Found this sketch I did a while ago. Maybe will eventually ink/color, but figured I'd share.