Celebrate

Lace

This piece was done for an article for Airbrush Action Magazine. The article was about using lace and other materials to airbrush through to get "lacy" effects. Several different paper doilies and lace patterns were used here to get that heavy brocade robe and the fancy collar.
The artwork was done with acrylics on gessoed masonite panel. The brick background was added later in Photoshop to give it a dark, catacomb look.

Rambunctious

Get it?... ram - bunk - shoes?? Oh well, it was fun.

Balloon

This is a re-post of one of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade posters I've done, since it's all about balloons. It was for the 2002 parade.
For those who are curious, this is all digital, mostly Photoshop with a bit of Illustrator for the type and the general structure of the Macy's building. The poster elements, such as each character, balloon and float, were done individually in layers, flattened, and then assembled into the final poster file. The poster was 21 x 27", 400dpi, CMYK. The final print file was about 600mb, but the working file, with the main elements on individual layers was over 2gb. If all the layers of every file that went into this were counted (and they weren't), there was something in the neighborhood of 2000 layers, give or take a few hundred.
Here's a slightly larger version of the poster.
And here are the others I've done for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade (these are not digital).

Island

An oldie, but a good fit for the theme. This was done for an article in a travel magazine about the popularity of diving vacations.
Acrylics with a touch of Photoshop

Detach

acrylics on panel and digital

Legendary Senior Rockers

In my recent Materials and Techniques classes I've covered the mixed-media process that several illustrators use, primarily C.F. Payne and Mark English. It's a great technique for caricature portraits, so for the past two quarters I've done demos of some familiar rock and roll folks who have lots of character in their faces and in their body language. Here are the first two in what I hope will be several pieces celebrating the Senior Citizens of Rock and Roll.


Keith Richards
(scientists have claimed that the only living things capable of surviving a nuclear holocaust are cockroaches, rats, and this guy)


Bob Dylan

Foggy

This originally appeared as a cover for the novel "Liberty Falling" by Nevada Barr for Avon Books. It seemed like a good fit for the foggy theme, but I have to admit that I enhanced the foggy look a tad.
Acrylics and Photoshop

ICON5- NYC, July 2008

I had the great fortune of attending the 5th Illustration Conference (ICON5) in NYC the week of the 4th of July. Go here to get the skinny on what it was all about.

Fierce

This piece was recently done as a demonstration of rendering fur textures with airbrush and traditional brushes for Airbrush Action Magazine. It was done in acrylics on hot-press illustration board.

Baby

This image was a book cover for "Bop" by Maxine Chernoff. It was a collection of short stories which always makes for an interesting image; elements from several of the stories were drawn upon to create a surreal, dreamlike narrative which collectively relate to the book as a whole rather than to any individual story.
Acrylics on illustration board.

Worry

As an American in this election year, with our economy a wreck, in a war we can't seem to get out of, and the sketchy group of candidates from both parties that are contending for the White House, I'm more than a bit worried.
Mixed media on illustration board.

Wrinkles

A book cover I did a while back for a murder mystery called "Body in the Basement" by Katherine Hall Page.
This edition is no longer in print, so the current cover is different.
airbrushed acrylics on illustration board



Another wrinkly image, this one for "The Last Good Kiss" by James Crumley.

Primitive

The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), as well as most government institutions are not only primitive in their structure, but are "manned" by sub-humans with a sour disposition and the I.Q. of a sponge. Just kidding... I love you guys, especially next month when I have to renew my drivers license. You guys ROCK!

Fail

Doomed to fail, but you've got to admire the commitment to succeed.

Homage

This is an homage to two illustrators whose work I have admired for decades; Gilbert Stone who made the distorted portrait famous, and C.F. Payne who perfected the mixed-media layering technique that I used for this piece. Payne also distorts his figures from time to time and pays homage to Gil Stone as he does so. Of course, stretching the figure isn't a modern phenomenon, and these guys' work is an homage to the Renaissance masters like Boticelli and the Mannerists who idealized the human form by distorting the proportions to create a more idealized figure.
This was done as a technique demo for one of my illustration classes, and the model is a student of mine named Jill.

Blanket

This was originally done as the cover for the murder mystery "The Wrong Case" by James Crumley, published by Vintage Contemporaries. The heart pillow is a bonus, what with Valentine's Day around the corner.
Airbrush acrylics on illustration board

Little Things

This was done from a photo that I found funny and touching at the same time. It reminded me of my mother-in-law whose beloved little dog passed away this fall. Her love for that dog was one of the little things that make life special.
This was another demo that I just finished a few days ago for a pastel techniques illustration class.
Rembrandt and NuPastels on sanded paper


This is her little Buster that died recently. I'm so glad I did this drawing for her for Christmas two years ago.

Excess

This was done as a demo of a mixed-media technique for one of my illustration classes. It is an image that represents everything excessive that one human can do to itself. The problem I had with it was, no matter how much I tried, I could not make the illustration look as bizarre or as excessive as the real thing.

The Zoo

This is a compilation of two pages from my sketchbook, drawn from life at Zoo Atlanta which is famous for its gorillas. Willie B was the patriarch of the zoo for years. Here is a quote from the Zoo Atlanta website:
"When Willie B., our magnificent western lowland gorilla patriarch passed away peacefully at the age of 41 in early February of 2000, the Zoo Atlanta family mourned his loss deeply and painfully. He had been more than an important animal in our collection of endangered and fascinating animals. Willie was a hero of sorts, a larger-than-life character who had come to embody the remarkable reinvention and rise to success of our zoo. His graceful transition from solitary caged animal to affectionate patriarch of an expanded family living in the lush Ford African Rain Forest came to represent the institution's rise from the brink of failure to its current status among the nation's finest zoological parks."
These sketches were made in 2006, years after Willie B passed away. But some of these animals are his offspring, and they are a testament to his resilience and adaptability.