New Illustration for River Styx

Got the opportunity to make this black and white piece for Literary Magazine River Styx. The story was very interesting and unique- about a female football player who is trying to move on with her life and career. Not too many black and white illustrations come along any more, so it was fun to pretend I was one of those guys working in monotone in the great narrative magazines of the 50s and 60s.

Michael Cera and Jonah Hill

Continuing to work on more editorial portraits here- thought it would be fun to produce double portrait of these two. I have found it interesting to watch as the two have pursued somewhat different roles since their very successful film "SuperBad" last year. In that movie they both portrayed high-schoolers- an age group Cera easily fits into but that Hillis actually far beyond.

Since that film Cera has continued to appear in all of the Apatow-inspired comedies aimed at a college -age crowd while Hill has apparently tried to branch into more matureroles (such as the well-done "Cyrus" earlier this year). I thought it would be fun to do an editorial portrait portraying these diverging careers with Cera acting the youth and Hill trying to be more mature. For fun I'll go through the process.

I started with concepting and thumbnails. This is where most of my illustrations start- with 8-10 thumbs and a lot of brainstorming. From there I just started working on getting the faces right. I had a particularly tricky time drawing Hill- went through 30 iterations or so.

From there I made a rough sketch that I used for color studies. After these I went to a full-color comp on final pencils.

Unusually, I had a last minute change on this one- I just didn't like how the background elements came out so I switched them out at the last minute. I'm much happier with the final version (bottom). I had a lot of fun with this one, and am very happy with how the colors came out.

New Piece for St. Louis Magazine! *EDIT*

Hello Everyone-

Wanted to let you know about this new piece that just got published in St. Louis Magazine- Can't post the large image yet but I can send you to the right location for it. Click here to check it out on the stlmag website. This was a fun project to work on, and offered a different challenge from my typical work.

UPDATE: Here's the illustration!

Julian Assange

I'm working to produce some faster spot illustrations of current events to keep my caricature and critical thinking skills fine tuned. Julian Assange has been in the news a lot lately due to his association with Wikileaks- and that organization's recent involvement in releasing a ton of confidential information from the Afghan War. I want to more of these current event spot illustrations- they offer a fun, quick challenge. Two versions to this one- color for the magazine and grayscale for the comics. Hope you like it!

Comic Preview- Get yourself ready for Halloween!

Howdy folks- I know I promised some sketch pages- and they are coming soon, but I thought you might enjoy seeing a sneak peek of my upcoming story in "St. Louis Spirits" an anthology I contributed to due out this fall, just in time for halloween. You won't be able to get too much of the plot from these, but I thought you might enjoy checking them out.

ICON 6 Recap!

Hello everyone!

I spent last week at the ICON in LA, and had a great time visiting with all the other illustrators and art directors! The weekend was jam-packed- starting out with the road show. Check it out-

I got to share a table with Kyle Webster at the Roadshow! That alone was worth the trip. And then of course there were the speeches- here are some sketches of the speakers- and also a paper-mache Brian Rea that was around for some reason.

Tim Biskup

John Hendrix

Todd Oldham

Gary Taxali

Adam McCauley

Wayne White

DB Dowd

Craig Yoe

Brian Rea?

Jesus De Francisco

Kathy Altieri

I'm working on setting up a new section of contacts on the right to reflect some of the great folks I met. I also took the opportunity to scan some more pages from my sketchbook. They will be posted shortly.

UPDATE: Self-Promo Summer, Prints for Sale, and ICON!

June has proven to be a very busy, but very rewarding month!

First up, I have finished illustrations for St. Louis Magazine, River Styx Magazine, and my work is gonna be out in the next few weeks in CMYK 47! I can't show any of these works yet, but I am posting this recent personal piece I just finished up.

I have also been working on a lot of promotional material to send out for the summer and to hand out at conferences. Take a look! I have new postcards set up, the bulk of which have been sent out already, and a bunch of great new mini-cards from moo.com.

My friend and former teacher John Hendrix was nice enough to loan me his button maker as well, so I've punched out about 400 buttons to hand out and sell this summer. I'm pretty stoked about these and so far people seem to like them.

Finally, if you have been wanting to get a Sam Washburn illustration in your own hands you will soon have the opportunity! The Beacon will be selling prints of 7 of my INTERSECTIONS illustrations at the Inaugural Beacon Festival next week! Be sure to stop by and pick up one of your own! There will be several different locations and events, all of which you can find out about here. You might even see me there as well!

Hoping to post some sketches soon, and keep you all updated. Cheers!

International Jugglers' Association

I have meant to post this for a while now- I had the pleasure of producing alot of the promotional art for the upcoming Juggler's Festival in Sparks Nevada held by the International Juggler's Association. Spent quite a bit of time figuring out neon effects and distortion effects for this one. Since the event is taking place near Reno, I thought a Las Vegas/glitz treatment was most appropriate. Had some great fun researching it, as you can imagine. Hope to see it in print soon.

New INTERSECTIONS: Cherokee Street!

I've been itching to draw Cherokee street for awhile now for the Intersections series for awhile now- It's a big arts district and really unique neighborhood here in St. Louis, tons of great shops, printing presses, mexican food, etc.

Took a new approach with this illo, tried using a mix of gouache and graphite before digitally coloring it. I like how it came out looking like a collage, and fits the aesthetic of the street. I've included the sketch and the final.

Special Thanks to Lyndsey Scott for her help on this one!

Congrats to the Grads

Congratulations to all my friends in the class of 2010! Hope the first year out goes smashingly!