Krampus is coming!

My new Krampus piece is finished! Its on display at the Fool's Mansion art show in Salem, MA

Beware Krampus is known for stealing your sweetheart during the holidays! 

New quick self portrait sketch

Be Happy with Who you Are

How does he do it kids?? Lots of coffee!!!

Heres a little piece I just did for my Brother Nick Who is a huge Batman fan. He wanted an illustration from all the artists he knows, the only requirement was the subject has to be Batman. Heres what I came up with one night. I figure if he spends his night fighting crime, he's got to be an avid coffee drinker.

I'm working on a series of portraits based on the characterization style of people I'v been working on for my children's book art. Some are based off real people I know and others will be made up, but Iv'e been using my friends as reference.

Self Portrait

Here is my Promotional Self portrait done in my children's book style. It took me a while to figure out how to draw myself in this style but I finally think I figured it out, I also wanted to incorporate my Cat Character to add some fun. This will be the start of a small series of characters to come, I will Call it "Cat Disruptions"

"Oh Scarecrow, I think I'll miss you the most"

Hey gang, here is my finished Wizard of OZ piece for the Illustration theme show at Montserrat on Feb 15th. I wanted to expand on the technique I used for the coffee girl painting before this one and print my final sketch on my watercolor paper (which my new printer is doing a great job of) and inking it with water proof per to maintain my sketch line work, then going in with watercolors. I'm pretty happy with the out come so far but want to experiment a bit more till I find the right balance. I feel like I want more of a sketchy feel to the line work in the end, just got to loosen up a but more when I ink. The theme I went with was a quote from the movie when Dorothy is saying her good byes and at the end says "Oh Scarecrow I think I'll miss you most of all". Take it any way you like but I say something when on between the two of them at some point that we missed ;) enjoy!

Coffee Girl test character

Ok, I know its been a while but here is some new stuff I have been working on. I'm trying out printing on my watercolor paper and then inking my characters with water proof ink then going in with watercolor. So far I'm pretty happy with it, I'm still trying to stay with my stylized characters, but now a more modern day theme, enjoy my little coffee girl test character. Got the idea from Meg and Gabby, thanks guys :) I'm going to do a little series of characters like this and see where it leads me.

Hallo-Kitty

Hey everyone, Its been a while since my last update. Here is the Halloween Illustration I created for the Fool's Mansion Art show In downtown Salem,MA for the Halloween season.

Self Promo for my Perseus children's book

Well here is the finish done in the Greek red figure style.

Self Promo

Working on a more finished and developed painting to advertise my children's book in the Greek red figure style of a more accurate telling of the story of Perseus. I'm using some of my new techniques, like I have been with the cat illustrations. This time I did the pencil drawing at about 11x17 first, then scanned it into photoshop and cleaned up the line work, I then printed it out on my watercolor paper and painted in all the solid black sections with acrylic gouache, which is the second image you see. Now I'm in the process of painting the color sections in watercolor. I will post it when its finished.

Color study update!

Here are some color studies I have been working on lately. I have been experimenting with printing out sketches I posted earlier onto watercolor paper and playing with the style and colors. So far I pretty happy with the results, the printer I'm using for this is working well, the inks don't really run when I hit them down with washes of watercolor as long as I don't start off to heavy and I don't print the lines too dark. I think I have found a nice balance so far. Also I wanted to play with what the final color of the cat would be. Its a black cat, but like the real life animal he was never completely black, rather shades of brown to make a rich black color. I may play around with him more but for now it works for me.

Vote for my Design!

Hey Everyone, Please vote for my Threadless design so I can get printed! I need enough votes by the end of the 7 days!

http://www.threadless.com/submission/359566/Cat_thulhu

Cat-thuluh

Oops, well been busy for a while there with other projects and vacation and all. Well..I do have something to show now. Here is the project I did for the Fool's Mansion Art show in Salem. The theme was H.P. Lovecraft, and I did a fun little experiment with scanning my line drawing and tweeking it in Photoshop and printing it on my watercolor paper so I could paint and keep my original drawing. It worked out pretty well, the ink from the printer did smudge a little bit at first, but once I had enough layers of paint on that stopped. I think I'm going to try playing with this method more, I still need to find the right balance.

Weekly Sketch update!

More Character designs, More cats!..this time of the main character

Weekly sketches up date

Ok, so I did do some urban sketching with Pete again this past week..but there not very good this week. Mostly I think because I was really excited about the character designs I was working of for the new children's book dummy I'm working on based off a story April is writing that involves our favorite thing...Cats! So enjoy!

Weekly sketches up date!

On going Sketch Blog

Ok, So now I'm going to keep an on going blog of my weekly sketches to get into the habit!

Playing with printers

Hey all! I 'm finally back to my blog. I've been doing a lot of sketching lately so I will be posting them as they come now to keep my blog fresh. I recently tried to print out my sketches on watercolor paper in a light grey scale so I would no have to transfer or redraw my finished sketch the old way. I found not only did I loose a lot of the line quality but it never really came out as nice as my original sketch. Also It will save my poor wrist from the pain of pressing into the watercolor paper through the photocopy that has messy graphite on the back of it. So here is my test, the lines my printer produced did not really smudge when I applied water and paint! I think with a better (and larger) printer in time it will work even better.

Postcards are in!!

Just got my new self promotional postcards in. I will be sending them out to potential publishers and art directors soon. Thanks to Kelly and Antoine for the design help!