Spooky Scary!

Hey all!
Just in time for Halloween, this is a new illustration from this past weekend's LA Times. The timing was a little tight--I got the info late Monday and the final was due Friday (with the final to be printed in the Sunday edition), but this was a fun halloween-themed illustration to work on!

The original idea of the article was about how Vampires seem to appeal more to ladies and Zombies to men, so my sketches primarily dealt with the gender division between the monsters, the first in a more graphic way, and the 2nd in a more scene-based way.

They liked the first sketch without changes, which was great, although the suggestion was that the hands could look more like adoring fans, and less, in some areas, like they were trying to grab the figures. So I started on my final, but the article's direction took a turn and replaced Zombies with Werewolves! So my illustration needed to reflect the change as well. :)
Here's the final, with the option of a smooth version and a slightly textured version:


Joey Santos was my LA Times liason & designer of the final page, and he gave great input was was really excited and supportive all the way through. Thanks Joey!
Here's the final layout (lightened up for print):

Straight Shootin'

To Reed Bond, an all-around delightful illustrator & person.
In response to his lovely thank you to me! :)
Any time, Reed!

Boys in Love and Bleeding Hearts

Despite the title of this post sounding like something out of an Emo girl's dream, these illustrations came from two very different assignments.

The first is a joint collaboration between the effervescent Samuel Bosma and myself for the cover of the October Muse magazine. It was at the request of Art Director Extraordinaire John Sandford, and it was the first time Sam and I have collaborated on a piece. You can probably see our respective areas of focus (decorative, flat-color foliage? Lushly rendered heart & hands?), but by the end of the assignment we both had a hand in basically all aspects of the final. The cover story was about "bleeding heart transplants", where the donor is technically dead (braindead), but their body is kept alive so surgeons can remove the organs. Crazy stuff, right? I had the idea of plants sprouting from a heart, to symbolize the life it gives to another person, and Sam thought that having surgeon's hands holding the heart would help add to the theme, so we both generated sketches and combined the imagery, to good effect I think.


It went through several versions, with John deciding that we needed to add some blood to the gloves so they'd be able to put text on top (guess who added the gory blood this time...it wasn't Sam!) Also, this is a kid's magazine. Whoooo.
Here's one of the earlier versions when we were still feeling out color stuff:



ALSO, a while back I was contacted by the lovely artist Patricio Oliver to do a piece of guest art for his graphic novel, Maurice in Love. It's a series of one-panel illustrations concerning the romantic exploits of apathetic romeo Maurice. Here's the press release:

Maurice is looking for love, single and dating almost everyone in his town, Maurice in love, a graphic novel by Patricio Oliver about love bizarre infatuations and everything in the middle.
Paperback: 64 pages full color
Publisher: Moebius Editora Oct 09
Language: English (Spanish Subtitles)
Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 5.9 inches

Guest artists: Nuno Plati, Ochopante, Chris Bachalo, Annie Wu, Kali Ciesemier, Jordie Bellaire, Jorge Alderete, Pablo Lobato, Daniel Krall, Sam Bosma, Lucas Varela and Rodolfo MIgliari

As you can see, some friends of mine were also invited-- Sam Bosma, Annie Wu, and Daniel Krall! We were each allowed to pick one of the panels of the story, and then re-interpret it into our own art style, preserving the dialogue and the fact that the characters were sitting. Here's the panel I picked:

And here's my illustration for it:

Cakes!

Another sketch-turned-exercise for the benefit of my class. (taking a flat-color image & adding texture to it)


Cakes!! I love dessert (and drawing dessert), so this was natural. :)

The Red Coat

This man has a secret.

Another quick calligaphic brush experiment. Not quite as successful as the last, but hey.

Detective Barbie & The Curious Cadaver

So lately I've been thinking I need to do more sketches for fun and experiment a little more with different media...it's surprising how easy it is to get used to just doing work and forget about drawing for enjoyment sometimes! For my Digital Illustration class, I also needed a drawing that I could demonstrate Photoshop color flatting & line color on. A few calligraphic brush experiments later--viola!




I thought it would be fun to go for the style of a 50's/60's Nancy Drew/Pulp Detective book cover. She ended up reminding me a little of the old vintage barbie dolls, and hence the title of this post. :)

Movin' on up!

Alright!
I've got a bunch of new work to put up and some news to share...I'm now a part of The Loud Cloud, a creative agency that represents a group of selected illustrators. I'm real proud to be in this group with a bunch of other talented and lovely illustrators, including my former teacher, Daniel Krall. My section of the site is still being updated, so we'll see where things go from here. :)

In other news, Tuesday is my first day of teaching at MICA this semester, and I'm really pumped. I'm teaching "Digital as Illustration" for freshman, and I'm excited to see what these students can do. Woo!

But, onto some more illustrations!
A couple Air Tran GO! assignments, this first one was a fun one on the subject of Career Coaching.

This next one was titled "Flying Solo", and was about independent contractors in America (like me!). I've included the sketches I did for this one. The tough part about this assignment was that I had a very limited time to do this, and neither of the first 2 sketches I sent panned out (as an airline magazine, they didn't want the image to have any airplanes in it, and they just had a city-type illustration in their last issue). Also, they wanted to put type on top of the illustration, so I had to leave a lot of space for that. (and keep the background light enough) So, when the article is titled "Flying Solo", what other flying things can you use? Birds! So, we have a lone hawk here in the approved 3rd sketch.



So, I've also recently done a slew of work for Time Out NY magazine. I was selected to create the title and illustrations for their 2009 Cheap Eats issue, and was given the challenge of drawing lots of tiny New Yorkers interacting with iconic NY foods. (Pizza, hot dog, dumplings, and falafel). When I was a kid I loved to drawing really tiny foods, so this was an amusing turn of events for me. I've also discovered that I enjoy drawing buildings and trees now...it's really fun! Maybe more fun than drawing people.






Aaaand here's another assignment from Time Out NY! This one was for an article on how Butchers, Baristas, and Bartenders are the new "Rising Stars" of the food industry. I thought a heroic profile lineup would be appropriate. :)


Thanks for checking in! MORE LATER!