Dave Matthews Band

I just finished this illustration as a present. Used the opportunity to produce an editorial portrait of the Dave Matthews Band. My presentation has them as an ice cream sundae. I figured this was a good way to show them as a variety of musical traditions connected together in a cohesive unit. Plus, college kids love ice cream, right? I've also attached this rough draft for your viewing pleasure.

Sketch Book Update

It's been quite awhile since I last updated the blog with images from the sketchbook. I was hoping to do a massive post after finishing up my latest pocket moleskin. Unfortunately, I LOST that moleskin on my recent trip to the east coast (with about 10 pages left to fill! I was very bummed).

I still wanted to post something though, so I took out my red moleskin, used it for sketching the rest of the trip, and now present dome selections in it to you. Hope you like it!

p.s.: I just started drawing in a 300 page flexi-sketch book, highly encourage everyone to get one. They rock!

Animals in Suits hits 200!

Check it out y'all! Just hit the 200th animal over at AiS. It's been a ton of fun do far, but can I make it to 365? Stay tuned to find out!

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.