New "INTERSECTIONS": St. Charles

This month I visited St. Charles for my Intersections series. It has a great historic feel to it and some amazing buildings on the main street. It also has a spectacular site for artists to work in called The Foundry, which is a remodeled factory that stores several working artists' studios. I highly suggest you go check it out!

For this illustration I tried a new approach which mixes my sketchbook work and my typical illustration approach. Basically I went straight to ink instead of using graphite to create gradients as I usually do. If you'd like to show the Beacon some love, plus get quick links to the other illustrations in the Intersections series- click here.

More coming soon!

illustration for St. Louis Magazine!

UPDATE! Here is the illustration- in full color glory!

I can't publish it on the blog yet, but I highly encourage you to go out and buy the latest issue of St. Louis magazine- featuring an illustration by me! Best part? It's of animals...in costume! They even posted a mini-profile of me in the magazine! Very exciting!

I will post a longer bit on it when I can. In the meantime, here is a link to St. Louis Magazine's online version of the article.

Special thanks to Kevin Goodbar and Danny Elchert for art direction on this illo as well!

Metro illo or the Capitol!

March has been a VERY busy month. Ended up traveling to the East Coast, meeting with lots of great folks and LOSING a sketchbook!

One of the great things to come out of it though is this- Another piece for the Capitol!

Many thanks to my art director Mitchell Hoffman- he always gives me great projects! You can see the link to the article and The Capitol's site here.

New "INTERSECTIONS": Forest Park

This was a fun one- saw a ton of folks walking dogs while researching- so of course I had to add that in. Here's the link for the Beacon's post.

Time Challenge- Editorial Op-ed Explorations (EOEs)

Hey all- Working on some big illustrations right now, but can't post them yet. From time to time I like to challenge myself with an editorial assignment. My teacher, John Hendrix, would always suggest to us that if we were looking for an editorial challenge we should check out the Op-ed page of the New York Times. So I decided to see how fast I could turn around an idea from one of the op-eds.

I basically went with the first one I clicked on- called "Global Weirding is Here" by Thomas Friedman, published on the 7th of February. You can click the title to link to the actual article and compare how you think I did.

I was aiming for as fast a turnaround as possible and got this done in about one work day (b&w, newspaper format). Over all I'm happy with the concept- which took the longest to figure out. I'm looking forward to more challenges like this down the road.

And now, for a change of pace, ...Adrift (IF)

Hey there! Wanted to experiment a little this week with Illustration Friday. Found some spare time between projects to put this together. Tried a whole lot of different things!

First, the concept is a complete departure from my usual work (where are the animals?!) - I went for a more serious approach, as oppose to my usual humorous takes. This also gave me an excuse to sketch form reference I took at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (so awesome).

I also spent time draining the image of setting, which I usually dig. The result is a much more cerebral illustration. Fun project, might try something like it again some time.

New illustration for The Capitol!

This just got published over at The Capitol in New York. Fun assignment involving local politicos and a farm bill- plus I got to draw a tractor! Always good.

SPEED ILLO- Illustation Friday: Clumsy

So, I felt like a challenge tonight! This piece was started at 9 pm this evening. I went from concept to this in that time. I've decided to post it to make sure I get it in on deadline, but hope to continue refining it later- what a rush!

At any rate, Lady Gaga's tailor is looking awfully clumsy here. Just sayin'

New "INTERSECTIONS": The Hill

This one was a lot of fun! I am definitely going to spend more time at the Hill now, I got some proscuitto from Volpi that was AMAZING! I highly encourage everyone to visit. A great example of a neighborhood that does an amazing job keeping it local and authentic.

Show the Beacon some love as well by checkin gout their site here- link.

Hopefully some more exciting news coming soon!

Characters!

Heyo! I have been hard at work with some big help from my friend Mike Murdock on a new website! Pretty soon My beloved blog will be getting a much-needed face-lift and more images! In the meantime though, I wanted to post some of these concept sketches I did on a plane flight a couple of months ago. They are for a game my friends and I are working on! It was a fun way to spend 3-4 hours.