Tribal Law

This is something I've been working on sporadically in between jobs. It's sort of a companion piece to the Tribal Tech image I posted not too long ago. I decided to finish it or at least get close to finishing it before I head back home for Christmas. I think I'm happy with where it is right now, but I do look forward to tuning it up when I get back to NY with fresh eyes. Happy holidays!

Old Man

A sketch I did this morning in charcoal and pencil. 11 x 14

Sex and Violence, Round 2

I decided to go back into this one and mess around with colors. Decided to go for a very simple graphic look, with some lightly rendered areas for emphasis. Been getting a few questions as to whether or not I would be turning this into a print, so feedback is more than welcome before all that happens. Hope you like it!

Perfect Chemistry

A piece done for the cover of the 2010 Directory of Illustration brochure. This year's brochure theme was "Perfect Chemistry." The large gold central atom was meant to be cut out to reveal the 28 on the next page, or for the 28 to be printed 0vertop with some sort of special ink. You might notice the composition is somewhat odd because the right half will be the front cover and the left half will be the back cover.

This was a lot of fun to do. The challenging part was getting the lighting to feel believable even though it's coming from everywhere.

detail

Lovecraft

A small piece I did to promote an upcoming group show at the Nucleus Gallery in LA. The show is a tribute to the horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft. Cthulu is Lovecraft's most well known character, and I thought he would be the perfect iconic image to introduce the show. Apart from this, I will be doing another, more substantial piece for the show as well. More details here.

acrylic on paper, 11 x 14

progress shots

Tribal Tech

Growing up, I used to draw nothing but fantasy themed art. Not elves or unicorns, mind you, but monsters, warriors, tribal cultures that don't exist, etc. This week, I thought I'd have a go at nerding it up a bit, and getting in touch with my fantasy roots. It's been quite a while since I've gone anywhere near this subject matter. Hope you like it!

some details

Mario Gomez

Three pieces I did recently for the July issue of Men's Health Germany on an article about German soccer star Mario Gomez and his workouts and training regimen. They wanted the images to depict Gomez being tackled and pulled by six defenders from other teams. Those defenders are Rafael Marquez of Mexico, Rio Ferdinand of England, Fabio Cannavaro of Italy, Lucio of Brazil, Pepe of Portugal, and Carles Puyol of Spain. To anyone from those aforementioned countries who read this blog, please don't hate me!

I felt that painting the defenders' skin red would keep their presence in these images from being too literal. I wanted it to imply that he's sort of fighting through his inner demons and interacting with figments of his imagination as he trains.

Joanna Silvestri

Here is a piece I did for the July issue of Playboy magazine. It's for the short fiction "Joanna Silvestri." The story had very soft imagery, with an almost nostalgic feel to it, following an aging porn star as she revisits her past. This was a lot of fun to do, and probably the most pleasant art direction I've ever experienced.

I am super excited to be a part of this magazine. It seems nearly all of my illustration heroes have been supported by Playboy at some point in their career. Artists like Frank Frazetta, Yuko Shimizu, Phil Hale, James Jean, Sam Weber, Tomer Hanuka, Marcos Chin, Gary Kelley, Kent Williams, Robert Mcginnis ... all artists I attribute to greatly influencing my artistic development. It kind of feels like joining a club. The big boys club (plus Yuko)

detail

A few of the preliminary sketches

A Mute of Hounds

A small piece I did for a show at Gallery Meltdown in L.A. to benefit the dogs of Downtown Dog Rescue. A majority of the dogs they rescue are pitbulls or pit mixes, so needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity to help out. The markings on this dog are modeled after my own pitbull.

Acrylic and colored pencil on watercolor paper

Uglies

Thought I'd put these up on the blog today. While the rest of my fellow man was watching LOST, I was working on a piece for the show "A Mute of Hounds" at Gallery Meltdown in LA. Busted out the acrylics, completely skipping the watercolors. I decided to mess around in my sketchbook while waiting for paint to dry (I really need a blow dryer). I think they look funny.

Real updates coming soon.

More celeb portraits

So I promised I'd be doing more of these, but never got around to it. Here are a couple more for now. Next up, I'm definitely thinking Brad Pitt because he is just too undeniably cool. Maybe Bea Arthur as well.

Grace Jones
My favorite eccentric from the 80's. Super model, actress, singer, artist, muse.

Carl Sagan
Who doesn't love this gentle spirit? I first learned about him years ago in science class, yet he's been popping up a lot lately.

Curiouser and Curiouser

This is the piece I did for the Curiouser and Curiouser show at the Gallery Nucleus back in February. I chose to illustrate Alice eating the two sides of the mushroom, as prescribed by the hookah-smoking caterpillar. I wanted to model Alice off of Alice Liddell, the little girl Lewis Carroll wrote the book for. Done in watercolor and acrylics.

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A close up of the caterpillar's face.I couldn't find my pallets...

Men's Health

I've been meaning to put these up on my blog for a while now but somehow have not gotten around to it. They were done for the January 2010 issue of Men's Health Germany. The article was called "Volle Power Aus Dem Verstärker" which translates into full power from the amplifiers. It was about motivation for exercise, and the power of different types of music for different work outs. The first one was a double page spread, and the other two were single page spreads. Photographs from Dietrich Halemeyer.

These three images will also be in an upcoming issue of Men's Health Korea.

On an unrelated note, if you'd like to ask me questions anonymously, feel free to leave them on my formspring and I will try and answer all of them. Started it a while back, but have recently regained interest in it. Go wild!

Sex and Violence

A few days ago, my brother and I were having a conversation about the idea people have that the reason there is so much violence out there these days is because of violent video games and movies. We both felt strongly that this idea was absurd and that those who go on the air to spread their faulty logic don't really have much interest in human psychology or child development. This got me thinking, and soon I was visualizing scenes in my head of violence, drugs, sex, and all the goodies your parents wouldn't want you to see on television. I didn't go to any extremes though, instead, going for more of a representation of the violence to come, like a standoff in an old western film.

Mostly, this image is an exercise in composition (as well as my personal contribution to world peace). If anything, I'm just glad I had some time to do a bit of personal work. As of now, I'm not sure where I will end up taking this piece; whether I should render it and add texture, finish it off with flat colors, or maybe just leave it as is.

I sketched directly into photoshop with this one.
Here's the finished line work. I just noticed a few lines that are missing, like the Native American's left upper arm...

And here it is with a little bit of color, trying to adopt the flats technique I learned from Sam Bosma. I fidgeted around with the hue/saturation and ended up liking the...well, flatness of it. I will play around with it, and see how far I can go with rendering.

Larger image to show details

100 Heads for Haiti

I was recently asked to take part in a charity exhibition called 100 Heads for Haiti held by Spur Design here in Baltimore. Basically, the exhibition will consist of floating heads on a white background. It will be held on April 10th, and each of the heads (by 100 different designers and illustrators) will be sold for $100 each. All proceeds will go to Doctors Without Borders.

watercolor and acrylic, 7 x 9

Zombies in Love

This February I'm participating in a show entitled Zombies in Love at the Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, CA. If you know me, you'll know that I absolutely adore zombies of all kinds; slow ones, fast ones, magical ones, rabid ones. So needless to say I was super excited when I was asked to take part in this show. Here's my piece for it, done in watercolor and acrylic.

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honeysuckles