K A L I C I E S E M I E R

Space suits on the house!

2012-01-02T14:43:00.002-05:00

Happy 2012 everybody-- I wish you all a wonderful new year and bold new frontiers! Thanks for your amazing support in 2011, I'm looking forward to an awesome (and maybe more sci-fi filled?) 2012!

(also, I'll be putting a print of this in my store soon, too!)

Store!

2011-12-23T18:55:00.000-05:00

Hey, I have an online store with inPRNT now! It's not quiiiite in time for the holidays, but I'd be happy to provide you with quality fine art prints any time of the year! :) Also, please let me know if there's a piece of mine you'd like to see up there that isn't already. I can always add more prints, but I thought i'd start with ones I know people have asked for previously. Take a look!

I also just wanted to say that I appreciate each and every comment you've all made, and am thankful for your continued support! I hope you all have the happiest of holiday seasons!

Happy Hanukkah!

2011-12-20T17:37:00.001-05:00

Since Hanukkah starts this evening, I wanted to put up an illo from this past weekend's edition of the Boston Globe. The article was an interesting essay written by a Jewish mother struggling with her son's fascination with Christmas.

My sketch ideas all seemed to flow out naturally and quickly, which was a nice surprise (especially since turnaround time was short).

Color took longer to figure out, but I had fun using colors that I don't often choose, and I'm really happy with the results. I have to use neons more often! Thanks again to ace AD Ryan Huddle for another interesting assignment! (and another chance for me to bone up on my square compositions!)

Snatched!

2011-12-03T14:36:00.001-05:00

Hey everyone! Over the past few months I've been working on and off on some different personal projects for fun, and this is one of 'em. I've really grown to love backgrounds, and wanted to draw some images that place a lot of focus there. I also wanted to draw something mildly dangerous! Combining those ideas, it seemed like a good solution to illustrate an imaginary heist inspired by the sculpture garden at the Louve.

Of course after I finished the image, it dawned on me that, with a few tweaks, this could easily be an illustration of a sweet biker-Catwoman and Batman, so here you go!

I've been looking at these so long, I don't really feel like I have much to say anymore. They feel a little too tight and more realistically colored than a lot of my other work, but it was fun playing with texture and trying something a little different.

I don't have it shown here, but the very first step of my process was finding lots of inspiration photos, which included these sculptures at the Louve. My sculptures aren't exactly the same, and I don't think they're all this big or next to each other, but it was really helpful to get the lighting right. The rest of my process is as follows:

First I lay out the general shapes, lighting, and tones/colors.

Then I created a rough idea of the wall moulding, and refined the figure a little more.

I added a rope to create more of a story & diagonal, and started playing with how texture could look on the statues and wall.

I turned off my starting texture layers and basically just went back in and cleaned/refined everything--thief, guard, statues, etc.

Then I turned some of the textures back on and changed/added more of them (on different parts of the image in different layer modes, like overlay, color burn, etc.)

I added some color & contrast adjusting layers on top, like 'curves'. I always waffle around at this stage. I could go nudging color sliders and opacity and layer modes around forever. A few more were added between this stage and the final image


When I was done it dawned on me that this fit pretty well into the Golden Spiral! Cool bonus!

If I were to do this again, or do more like this, I think I'd like to place even more emphasis on the surroundings, and get more action in there. Or maybe a crowd of people? I don't draw enough crowds. We'll see!

Society Of Illustrators 54

2011-11-16T14:57:00.001-05:00

I found out that I got 2 pieces in to Society of Illustrators 54! Woo! I'm honored to have both my 1200 Posters contribution (Institutional) as well as my Savoy Affair drink recipe illo (Uncomissioned) accepted! Thank you, judges!

Since Sam won the silver in Institutional, we will definitely be showing up at that exhibition--I hope we see you there!

Squares Squared--

2011-11-15T14:59:00.001-05:00

--also known as "The Anti-Social Network" and "I Lied to Stephen King", both assignments done for my great AD Ryan Huddle in different issues of the Boston Globe!

"The Anti-Social Network", about an avowed introvert struggling with the constant barrage of people and accessibility in internet social media.

"I Lied To Stephen King", a humorous essay about a struggling writer lying to Stephen King on the phone and feeling so bad about it that he made the lie a truth and changed his writing career for the better.

(Any day I get to include some film noir melodrama in an image is a good day)

I don't get many square assignments, and they present a unique compositional challenge...to offset the staticness of a square canvas, one trick is to use a lot of diagonals to lead the eye around the page and create a more dynamic space. Squares also lend themselves more easily to centralized images (which I took advantage of in the Stephen King piece)

Introvert sketches & color studies:

As you can see, I had a tough time figuring out what sort of coloring choices I wanted to make! Sometimes you just have to keep starting over again and get all the crummy stuff out of your system. It wasn't until the last image that I realized what was really missing was a lightsource to tie everything together and create a basis for complementary colors.

Stephen King sketches & color studies:

I had a poll on twitter for which color study I should use.... I was leaning towards A, but C is more classically Film Noir and I liked some of the blue tones in B. In the end the majority voted for A, but with some verrrrry close results for B & C! Ultimately I felt justified using the reddish light from A-- it's a little more menacing and relates to this gut-wrenching lie the author is telling Mr. King, and it fits with the overdramatic mood I was going with for the humorous aspect of the article.

All in all, some fun assignments! Plus, I was able to use some of the compositional experience I gleaned from the Introvert image to make the Stephen King piece work better overall. Woo, learning!

Apocalypse Coffee

2011-11-08T13:38:00.000-05:00

Hooray! The Cloudy Collection 2012 Calendar of the Impending Apocalypse released yesterday! It's a special edition of 50 calendars screenprinted in 3 colors and filled with every way you'd want the world to end.
Each month was illustrated by a different talented artist-- Emory Allen, Joe Alterio, Ana Benaroya, Amy Crehore, David Huyck, Adam Koford, Joe Lambert, Phil McAndrew, Luke Pearson, Vincent Stall, and Jamie Zollars. I had the pleasure of drawing September's apocalypse! I'm also so tickled that the wonderful Luke Pearson simultaneously illustrated October with a fully flooded town--looking our months side by side reads like a story!

Apocalypse or not, when there's crummy weather I love the feeling of being snug inside with a good book and I figured my protagonist would appreciate that as well. At first I thought of doing a fiery inferno outside, but it took me a while to get used to the rules of setting up layers for screenprinting, and none of the sketches were working for me:

When something doesn't work sometimes you just have to start over, and a change of scenery (and flooding!) worked out better for me in another sketch (and although those socks would be cozy, I thought they were too distracting from the coffeshop/maritime theme):

Some photos of the screenprinted set:

You can buy the calendar yourself and browse some of the other fine Cloudy Collection sets here!

TUMBLR NEWS

2011-10-16T15:34:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to let you guys know--I'm on tumblr! But I'm not getting rid of my blog here either! I'm going to post doodles (like the above) and finished work on tumblr for sharing, but I'll be putting up my finals & process posts on blogger for those who want to read a little more. My tumblr is: http://kalidraws.tumblr.com/, seeya there!

Urbanite

2011-10-06T19:28:00.000-04:00

I've got a few illustrations in this week's Urbanite! The article is about Online Education--I wanted to keep the illustrations pretty neutral since the article goes through both the ups and the downs.

Finals:

(the full page had some space at the top for the article title and header--also the pink was looking a little too Glenda the Good Witch!)

Sketches:

Thanks to my editor Greg Hanscom & AD Peter Yuill!

Red & Blue

2011-09-21T22:24:00.008-04:00

This past weekend I had an illustration feature in Boston Globe Magazine about how Red Sox fans can find some common ground and an enjoyable vacation in Yankee-zone New York. I didn't end up drawing a single baseball player, but I sure drew a lot of hats! (AND designed a pair of yankees sunglasses!) I have little to no interest in baseball, but I really enjoyed this project because of being able to collaborate with my art director Ryan Huddle.

When Ryan first contacted me, he was looking for a long illo to go along the top of the 2 pages.

When he got the sketches, he liked the first crowd scene and thought it might work better running along the bottom of the page, maybe with some more "I <3 NY" type additions.
From there, i suggested having some times-square-ish buildings running up the sides of the page with NY-centric billboards:

He approved & we were off!
I had a busy schedule at the time and had to pull an all-nighter to finish this one, but I re-discovered 'The Shadow' on Netflix while I worked. Now whenever I look at the final I think of The Shadow and Alec Baldwin, which aren't the worst things to think of I guess.

I was happy with how it came out, but I was REALLY HAPPY when Ryan showed me the final layout with the text he added! SO AWESOME!

One of the thrills of illustration is getting your pictures paired with great design. It's like making a nice dessert and seeing it combined with a delicious meal and then eating it all.

SPX

2011-09-08T10:06:00.005-04:00

Hey! Are you going to be at SPX this weekend? I will be wandering around on Saturday on a buying spree and I drew this 100% accurate visual reference for what my little traveling gang will look like. I'd love if you said hello!

I will have 50 new postcards to give out! These postcards!

I also feel compelled to mention that I got them from ShortStackPrinting.com. Originally I wasn't going to be able to get new postcards in time for SPX, because the expedited shipping from Overnight Prints and Jakprints etc. was too expensive, and I mentioned this on twitter. ShortStackPrinting saw my tweet and offered to upgrade me to overnight delivery for free, I took the offer, and here we are! (it was inexpensive & the printing quality is good, but the cardstock is a little thin --perfect for handing out at a con or expo, though)

Next year Sam & I might even get a table. See you there!

To YOU, Friends & Fans:

2011-08-10T13:28:00.003-04:00

I have been overwhelmed by the positive response to my Amtrak book--I haven't been able to thank all you pals personally, but I really appreciate everyone's kind posts/tweets/emails! You've made my week!

There's been some questions as to where to get the books-- they should be being sold on Amtrak trains, but may possibly be in the stations as well. If anyone encounters one in the wild, I'd love to hear about it!

AMTRAK

2011-08-06T16:00:00.011-04:00

For 4 months last year I was occupied with creating a 32 page kids activity book with the good folks at Arnold advertising for Amtrak. The book was 'released' on National Train Day (May 7th) with a print run of 150,000. I believe you can buy the books on the trains, but I haven't heard any reports of people finding them yet! (soon, I'm sure!)
I wanted to share my work with you guys, and give a major thanks to the team I worked with at Arnold and everyone who was involved in the project, which included Jamin Hoyle, Lisa Biskin, Andrea Ricker, Bob Petkofsky, Bill Cutter, Meredith Wadeson, and Christine Vaz. Thank you!!

I haven't included any of the added text with my images, except for the titles of the pages, all of which I hand-lettered (so i won't spoil it for you in case you want to complete the activity book!) ;)
This post is going to be a little longer than normal due to the amount of work I did, so bear with me...

First up, the cover sketches!
Arnold contacted 5 artists, including me, to create a potential cover for the book and give Amtrak some choice in what style they wanted to go for. The cover needed to be able to fit with the Amtrak aesthetic to a certain point, but also be fresh and kid-friendly. A lot of Amtrak's logos/advertisements already have a slight art deco feel to them, so I thought the kids book could also have a sort of decorative graphicness to it that went along with the style. Here's the sketches I sent to them:

They ended up choosing the 1st sketch as the direction they wanted to go for the kid's book, and my adventure began!

The Final Images!
The Arnold crew had worked with Amtrak to create a rough outline of what would be going on each page, and Lisa Biskin did all the copy writing for the book (they didn't expect me to come up with the word search or anything, just the illustrations for it).
Jamin provided me with rough thumbnails of what should generally be happening on each page, but gave me a lot of creative freedom to shape the book my own way. For instance, on some of the text-heavy pages, he told me there needed to be some sort of decorations around the edges.

After thinking about the kinds of picture books I liked as a kid, I came up with the idea of creating tiny landscapes that the amtrak train would be rolling through. Some examples:

(this one doesn't have a train in it, but that's because you're supposed to draw your OWN train in the trainyard!)

There were also some page borders that had more of a story to tell:
(it was decided that Raccoons would be the villain of choice in the activity book-- you'll see them sneaking onto several other pages!)

And of course a variety of full spreads:
(this is probably one of the most time-consuming images I've done....when I was sketching it out in the beginning, I tried to only allow 15 minutes per person, and there's about 70 or 80 people in there. Can you spot Sam & I in the picture?? Hint: I'm drawing!)

(if you look close, I've made recurring characters throughout the book that show up on many of these character or group pages. The flower lady, the trophy man, the greaser, the archaeologist, the short man/tall woman couple, the cowboy, the sports fans, the magician, etc etc...)

(fun fact--I wish I was eating that deep dish pizza & Chicago style hotdog RIGHT NOW)

The finalized cover and back cover:

Amtrak requested that I simplify the cover a little more, but I was able to use some of the discarded elements on the back cover. The badge there can be punched out & worn proudly!

Finally, some photos of the physical book-- it printed out really great & the typography and layout are wonderful!
(fun fact: I DID make up all the Jr. Conductor secret handshake moves. Try 'em out yourself!)

I hope you check out the book yourself the next time you take a train! There's still a few pages I didn't show. All in all, this was a totally unique and exciting experience for me, and I felt so lucky that I was able to make the book my own, as well as Amtrak's. I hope I get a chance to do more projects like this.

The power of SCIENCE

2011-07-28T13:08:00.009-04:00

Here's a series of illustrations for St. Edward's University Magazine about scientific advances and breakthroughs from St. Edward's alumni:

My sketches!
Spread 1: Eating salmon may help prevent alzheimer's!

Spread 2: Nasa is testing out a more fuel efficient engine lubricant on a fleet of carpet-industry trucks! (way to get in there, carpet industry!) AND seismic detectors exist and cellphones exist--why not combine them to create an early warning system?

Spread 3: The CDC's Global Disease Detection Program is like the SWAT team of infectious disease threats! (I only wish they had giant robot syringes and a bank of disease screens, though) ALSO patient medical history will soon be available to doctors on iPads, because doctors like to be cool too. (and efficient!) PLUS: Solar powered dairy farms=cheaper milk! Solar powered cows not included.

These illustrations may be some of my new favorite editorial pieces! Science is always pretty fun to learn about, and my designer Natalie and my art director Rick were both very excited and open to my ideas. A big thank-you to them, they were great to work with! Plus, I think I drew the best ear I've ever drawn on that opening spread with the salmon. (the secret: find good reference)

The Leech Lord

2011-07-19T01:49:00.010-04:00

It's been a while since I've done an ASOIAF piece (and I have other longer blog posts to write!)...buuuut A Dance With Dragons has been filling my free time with tales of Westeros and the Free Cities and I can't let Sam have all the fun with his ASOIAF portraits!

Roose Bolton only sporadically shows up in the books, but I think he is one of the most physically described side characters. His most cited feature is his disturbingly pale eyes, like chips of dirty ice. Though past 40, his pallid skin is absent of any lines, wrinkles or distinguishing marks. His face isn't handsome but not quite plain either, and his physique is neither fat, nor thin, nor muscular.

The Boltons are a shadier branch of the Stark bannermen, and Roose is a deceptively soft spoken and calculating lord. The Bolton house sigil, a bloody flayed man upon a pink field, hints at the twisted ancestry he shares his surname with. Roose's mannerly but callous nature is often overshadowed by the brutal acts of violence his bastard son Ramsay is allowed to commit. Lord Bolton is known for frequently leeching himself and touts it as the secret to long life, but it's said that his constant leechings have drained him of both color and emotion.

So whaddaya think, should I just go ahead and replace all future illustrations of happy, pleasant ladies with disturbing men?

For anyone interested in more ASOIAF art, I was recently a part of a ASOIAF art zine-- "Blood Magic". You can browse the list of artists or order a zine for yourself here.
I have also been informed there are still some posters of mine available over at 1200 Posters. Nab one yourself, or check out the new poster up for sale.

Bad Teacher

2011-06-21T16:34:00.005-04:00

Thanks so much for all the kind responses for my 1200 poster!! In contrast to that epic project, here's a recent quickie-- I have an illustration out in this week's New Yorker! I had a weekend to make an illustration based on Cameron Diaz's new movie "Bad Teacher". Jordan Awan, my art director, just wanted it to be a fun image showcasing Cameron & Justin Timberlake.
My sketches:

And final!

Justin's likeness gave me a little difficulty (he's just like a generally good-looking guy!) but overall it was quick and painless and fun and summery! I've been working on a lot of assignments with long deadlines, and sometimes it feels nice to just bust an image out in a few days. I do think it was pretty neat that I was drawing a sexy woman spraying herself with a hose for the New Yorker, of all magazines. Thanks for the opportunity, Jordan!

1200 Posters!

2011-06-12T11:53:00.016-04:00

Meet my new favorite drawing!
A while back I was contacted about contributing to 1200 posters--a project about community that features a new artist & poster each month, using quotes from Margaret Wheatley's "Turning to One Another".
I haven't had a chance to do a poster in a loooong time, and Robyn Ng & Greg Kozatek, my art directors, were pretty open to whatever idea I wanted to draw. (woohoo!)
The poster is limited to an edition of 100, only $25 each, and you can read more/buy/check out the other posters here! In my artist statement there I talk a little about the importance of the illustration community (which includes you guys!) & some of the ideas behind my poster.

If you are interested in hearing me ramble more about process, read on!

The quote I was given:
"Invite everyone who cares to work on what's possible"
This put me in mind of intrepid adventurers, and since the theme was so open I ended up deciding to try and combine a lot of the stuff I love into one image:
*Secret, hidden places
*Trees, plants, moss
*mAgIc/fAnTaSy
*Adventure!
*Ruins
*Cats
*Old-timey explorers
*Birds, why not

My brain-funnel turned these things into an idea for a floating island/garden. Anytime I think of floating islands I think of Laputa (which is fine with me since Miyazaki is a god) but I figured that since the comparison would likely be drawn I definitely wanted to make this MY island with my spin on it.
The corresponding sketches:

Also, in a fit of worry that my floating island didn't fit the theme well enough & people wouldn't want to buy a poster of a sky rock, I did some sketches for a pretty girl poster too:

BUT Robyn & Greg liked the island and suggested that the type be integrated more and that the island look more like a nest that a bunch of people (and birds!) have built. So, we came to these options:

The sketch that was decided on takes some elements from each-- type in the background fields, thatching around some areas of the island, and some more homey touches like a clothesline, windows, etc.

From there I tried to work out a color sketch, which is probably one of the most important stages for me. Because I don't render out a lot of things in my work, I feel like I have to get the colors JUST RIGHT or else the image won't stand up. Also, since I work entirely digitally, once I get the color sketch right the rest of the work for me is just refining/polishing/redrawing straight in the color sketch until final.

This poster taught me that green is a heckuva difficult color to use well, and there's a reason why I don't often use it! Just a real pain. At least it feels damn good when you finally figure out a usable solution. Here's the general progression of the color that took me several embarrassing days to puzzle out:

no way

barf!

Finally!

I got pretty frustrated along the way and ended up looking at examples of other people using green well, then I extrapolated for my own purposes. I use reference for my drawings all the time, it makes sense to use color reference too.

As difficult as it was figuring out how to put a green island on top of green fields in the background, I was really happy to be drawing those background fields. They remind me of my family, some of whom used to be or still are farmers in Illinois. Another something I love in a poster full of things I love!

Anyway, here's a shot of the piece when it was aaalmost done. You can see there's some areas yet to be completed-- upper right, floating rocks, roots, text, etc. With this piece I did a lot of skipping around to ensure everything was worked up around the same speed:

The final is up at the top. Here's some closeups:

WHEW. While working on this, I realized that I need to work on drawing interesting characters, I don't feel as inspired drawing people anymore. Maybe it's like when every 7 years your body's cells totally renew and your tastebuds change? I've switched over to only wanting to draw backgrounds. Weird.
Thanks for reading, pals!!

Doughboys and Doughnut girls!

2011-06-03T14:36:00.004-04:00

Happy National Doughnut Day, everyone!

I was catching up on my doughnut facts while I ate my free dunkin donut, and discovered the Doughboys and Doughnut Girls (also called "Doughnut Lassies") of WWI!
The Salvation Army sent their 'lassies' over to serve doughnuts and coffee to the homesick soldiers in the trenches (later called doughboys for their fondness of aforementioned treats). I couldn't resist doing a quick little doodle between all my REAL work. Enjoy your doughnuts!

Connections, The Sea, and Fate

2011-05-18T00:28:00.008-04:00

I recently completed the July/August cover for Cicada magazine, and I'm really excited to show you. John Sandford, my art director, was my first-ever art director when I worked for him at Carus Publishing in Chicago as an intern/in-house illustrator during the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. John also happens to be an extra-talented illustrator in his own right (check out his work here!), and understands that giving an illustrator creative freedom will often yield the best results. I love doing assignments for John. There were no rules with this job-- he only told me some of the general themes of the magazine for that month: Connections, The Sea, and Fate.

I wanted to try something different. I wanted to do something epic and fantastical. I wanted to take the style of my "just for fun" Game of Thrones illustrations and turn it into something that worked for jobs. I love editorial, but I would also love to illustrate more in other fields too (hey book publishers!), and I know that I can rise to the challenge.
My sketch. After looking at a lot of nature photos from old National Geographics (from this tumblr), I got really into the idea of a ruined seaside civilization. The cover image needed to wrap around and the back cover illustration had to be relatively free of distraction so text excerpts/callouts from the book could be placed on top of the image.

I thought of the girl as a traveler/descendant come to pay her respects and meet the last remnants of the civilization. Or possibly she is the last remnant. It sounds a little bleak, but I like the idea of intrepid youths carrying on ancient traditions, and I thought it fits with the themes of the magazine issue nicely. The final:

Final with cover text & address label area:

One thing I learned-- rocks are kinda hard. Kinda easy, but kinda hard. One day I will do some rock studies.
Thanks for looking! I hope to do some more illustrations like this in the future!

Parent=Parent

2011-05-09T12:08:00.006-04:00

Hello friends!
I've been balancing a lot of longterm projects over here (hence the lack of updates for the moment), but I do have some exciting things to share now!
This weekend my long-labored Amtrak kid's activity book debuted on National Train Day, May 7th! I haven't actually gotten my hands on the physical copy yet, but I will be doing a blog post talking about all that very soon!
Also on May 7th, my cover for the Boson Globe weekend magazine came out! Big thanks to my art director Ryan Huddle for making it all come together.

The big theme for the cover was "Equal Parenting", as recently pioneered by Amy and Marc Vachon. And when I say "equal parenting" I mean TOTALLY EQUAL. Each parent gets a share of ALL the chores, for equal amounts of time (albeit on different days) and each parent spends the same amount of time at work and taking care of the kids, etc. Visually "equal parenting" gives you a pretty set concept to work with, so my sketches were in fairly similar veins, but different stylistically.

They chose the less-graphic sketch but requested that the background just be one color and that both the parents look like they're going to work.
I didn't feel totally satisfied with it until I added a lighting element. I've been really digging atmospheric lighting lately.

And the final after Ryan laid the text out (unfortunately compressed by blogger):

I had a good time with this one, and wish I had that scarf the mom is wearing. And the dad's lambchops!

An Emily, a Sarah, and two Adams!

2011-04-26T13:41:00.007-04:00

Within the past three weeks, I've traveled down south twice to celebrate the weddings of 2 of my 3 wonderful Georgia cousins, Emily and Adam! (you're next, Jonathan!)
Emily got hitched with another Adam, and Adam got hitched with Sarah!
Sarah & I were bridesmaids in Emily's wedding, and Sarah suggested that I do a portrait or caricature of the bride & groom. I've always had a bit of difficulty with portraits, but lucky for me I had some good faces to work with :)

So, of course, when Adam & Sarah's wedding rolled around, I decided to do portraits of them too!

Both these sets of portraits were interesting experiments. When I tried to apply the same simplified style I did with Emily & Adam's portraits to Sarah & Adam's, I found that I needed to use a little more realism to get across the best resemblances. Different faces & personalities call for different styles, and I got some great practice out of it!

The Savoy Affair

2011-04-13T22:45:00.009-04:00

Ever want to make a mixed drink, but cocktail recipes aren't illustrated enough for you?? Boy, do I have the free iPhone app for YOU! Loud Cloud Mixtures! The Loud Cloud, the creative agency that I'm a part of, recently put out a free app for your iPhone called Loud Cloud Mixtures! All of us artists in the Loud Cloud picked a delicious cocktail, and created an illustration based around it. It's a handy gallery of visually & gustatorily satisfying drinks at your fingers, featuring such drinks as Black Forest Martini, Dark and Stormy, Lynchburg Lemonade, Pink Elephant, The Negroni, and many more! Download it from the itunes store (for freeeee) here!

At first, I wanted to do the White Russian...I tried out some sketches, but nothing really felt right for me.

I looked into some more obscure cocktails, and found the Savoy Affair. What an intriguing name, right? It was one of 20 cocktails invented by Joe Gilmore, the longest running head Barman at the Savoy Hotel in London. (another awesomely named cocktail invented by Mr. Gilmore: the Savoy Corpse Reviver)
Anyway, "Savoy Affair" is just screaming for a mysterious summertime hotel rendezvous...and that's what I decided to draw (complete with a shady character watching from the background!)

I was able to realize it pretty quickly and easily, I think it's definitely one of my favorite recent pieces.

Khal-Drogo, son of Bharbo

2011-03-24T18:05:00.009-04:00

Note! I just added labels to all the Game of Thrones/ASOIAF posts-- if you want to just see those, click either of the corresponding labels on the right of the page or at the bottom of this post!

So this Game of Thrones sketch came around after watching "Valhalla Rising" on Netflix instantwatch. It's a strangely slow, beautiful, brutal movie-- pretty dark (vikings!), not much dialogue, but some really nice compositions/filmography and an intriguing main character played by Mads Mikkelsen.

I always draw ladies, and I wanted to draw an interesting-looking toughguy.
Thus: Khal Drogo! The undefeated leader of a hundred-thousand men and horses! Warrior of the plains with a be-ringed moustachio and bells braided into his long oiled hair! I mean, geez, what a description!

I originally wanted to draw Khal Drogo and Daenerys together, but this was just a spur-of-the moment drawing for practice, and I might do an actual composition with them together in the future. In any case, I still have a ways to go with digital painting! (and drawing dudes!)

Bridesmaids Movie

2011-03-21T21:50:00.006-04:00

Hello friends!
Quick update-- this Bridesmaids illustration is in the most recent (March 28th) issue of the New Yorker. It's my first New Yorker piece, so I was pretty excited to get the assignment! The turnaround was super quick, just a couple days for everything, but the final size for this baby is only about 1.75x4.5 inches in the magazine. The movie looks really funny, (definitely watch the trailer HERE) and the illo just needed to be a lighthearted general take on it. It also challenged my ability with likenesses! Kristen Wiig is surprisingly difficult to draw!
Sketches:
(upon review, the lineup for this one reminds me of a Scooby-Doo scenario)

ALSO today I got an email from the New Yorker saying they had been contacted by Judd Apatow's assistant because Mr. Apatow wants to purchase a print of my illustration! SO COOL!! (he's the producer for Bridesmaids--and the director/writer of a million fantastic comedy movies) It really made my day, and the strange ways in which the illustration world overlaps with other areas of the universe can be so often unexpected and fun. Yay!

ART HEIST!

2011-03-17T02:50:00.011-04:00

OH NO, EVERYONE! I went out to buy cookies and when I came back some of my priceless Vermeers, Rembrandts, Degas, and Manets were GONE!

Some were even CUT out of their frames! With a big scary knife, I bet!

The police are stumped and I've TRIED to alert the public to this disappearing act...

...but the art could have already been passed off to a shady collector in the black market...

...OR maybe it's just sitting forgotten or unsold--stashed under someone's bed or in a dark and spooky warehouse!

I guess I'll leave the empty frames up on the wall in memorium and hope that someday the art will be found again. Only my precious cookies can console me now.

And the weirdest part is, this is ACTUALLY a true story. Minus the cookies. The Isabella Stewart Gardner museum was robbed in 1990, and the 13 pieces taken still have not been found. The estimated value of the art (which includes pieces by all the artists I listed above, and more) is placed around 500 million dollars, which makes it the largest single property theft in recorded history. Crazy, right?! These spots were all done for Boston Common magazine, which ran an article revisiting the heist. It was really interesting for me to find out about it and you might also enjoy reading the article! Kudos again to Anthony Arias, who was my great AD for this project.

I also wanted to say thanks to all the kind folks who have commented on some of my recent digital painting experiments. If any of you are interested, a lot of the brushes I'm playing with have been made from some of the free brushes Bittbox gives away. You can browse through their different offerings here. Drawn also served up a great link to these free photoshop brushes being given away by Chris Wahl-- I can't wait to try them!

Indulge me

2011-03-10T15:43:00.003-05:00

Things have been getting pretty nerd-tacular on this blog lately, and this post isn't about to change that!

I swapped some sweet photoshop brushes with Chuck Groeninkt & Sam Bosma, and I had some off time to noodle around with them. I was thinking about doing some more fanart, but I decided to hearken back to my jr. high medieval-fantasy/sci-fi roots and do some original art instead.
(The only downside to fanart is that the art doesn't really 'belong' to you in the end!)

So, here's a warrior queen & her catbeast.

I was initially inspired by these gowns & was going to do a space queen, but ended up going in a different direction. I'll draw a sci-fi lady another day!

And, for you less-medievally inclined people out there, I do have an actual magazine assignment to show you next week. It's about an art heist!

For anyone interested in me talking briefly about Game of Thrones, I have a little interview on this blog: One Cleric Short

The North

2011-02-27T15:36:00.005-05:00

To continue this series of leisurely Game of Thrones fanart-sketch-experiments while I rest and recharge, I have JON SNOW and GHOST (his direwolf!) in the frozen land beyond the Wall.

This was a further experiment in making my own photoshop brushes and slapping on more texture. I expanded and made a bunch more! The new brushes are okay, but I wish I could find a really nice sort of dry-brush ink or charcoal-y simulcrum. (besides just drawing traditionally, of course) :) To the people who are curious about how I normally draw-- I just use my wacom and a regular hard round photoshop brush, start to finish, nothing fancy. (when I need texture, I put it in layers over my work)

Horses are way hard to draw. Also, I am disappointed that Jon Snow in the HBO previews has a dumb moustache. Makes him look too old! He's supposed to be a skinny 14-15 yr old!

Sunrise

2011-02-18T13:11:00.004-05:00

This week I:

*Mailed out all the Print Giveaway prints. Thanks everyone, they'll be arriving soon!

*Finished up my 4-month-long 32-page kids activity book for Amtrak (waiting to hear if there's revisions! Fingers crossed! Pictures to come in future months.)

*Drew this medieval/Game of Thrones inspired sketch:

This may or may not be Sansa acting romantically tragic in the Red Keep...

During the last month of working on the Amtrak book I had a huge desire to draw for fun, but literally had no time. My illustrations & lettering for the book are verrry crisp and clean, and after sending in the last pages and relaxing a little, I decided to take some time to mess around with the new photoshop brushes and textures and create a new brush.

This image came together pretty haphazardly using a nice texturey brush I created (and some additional textures on top). I didn't plan anything out, I just wanted to GO. It felt good.

Plus, I learned i can draw a lot faster if I'm using a textured brush (I don't have to clean anything up!!) so I'm thinking of trying it out more in the future. What do you think?

Print Giveaway WINNERS!!!

2011-01-31T18:09:00.002-05:00

Hoo boy, I got a lot of entries and lovely comments for the print giveaway! You guys blew me away, I will have to definitely do another giveaway in the future.

I got a lot of feedback requesting more book-based illustrations. That's great, because I definitely want to do more literature-influenced personal projects! I have a few more Sabriel illustrations I've been thinking about, as well as some Game of Thrones and sci-fi stuff. I'd love to be able to expand from editorial into the book industry!

But anyway, HERE'S what you've been waiting for, we have THE WINNERS!!! (all were randomly generated!)

CONGRATULATIONS TO:
Niv Bavarsky (from the blog)
Jake (from the blog)
Irma Kniivila (from the blog)
Boum (from the blog)
Reedtard (from twitter)
Jameshindle (from twitter)
Eptin (from twitter)

If you nice folks could all send me an email to kali@ciesemier.com with your address by the end of the week, I can get your prints sent off! If someone hasn't responded by the end of the week, I will draw another winner.

A huge THANK YOU to everyone that entered! You all made me very happy. I've been wavering on setting up an actual print shop somewhere on the internet (rather than just people emailing me when they're interested in a print)-- if anyone has any suggestions or positive experiences with online stores, let me know.

Thanks again, and expect another blog post soon!

Print Giveaway!

2011-01-27T15:29:00.006-05:00

*UPDATE* I will definitely be giving away the extra Naturalist/Rollergirl/Libra prints I showed below! I'm blown away by the response so far, you guys are the besttt!(and if any of you are concerned about being in another country, if you win I will happily ship a print internationally)

Hi everyone!
In honor of the new year and in thanks to all you lovely people who follow my work and inspire me, I'm doing a print giveaway on my blog and twitter. Ends on Sunday the 30th!
It's simple-- comment on this post for a chance to win (you could tell me what I should draw this year, or not), and/or retweet my twitter announcement. My twitter name is kalidraws. If you do both the blog and twitter, you have double the chances of winning!
I'll be giving away these 4 glossy prints (2 for the blog, 2 for twitter):

BUT if I get a lot of responses, i'll give away even more, like these guys:

Sound good?? You have through Sunday to comment/tweet, and then I will randomly pick the winners and post their names on my blog next week so they can email me. PRINTS AWAY!!!

Foreeever Youngg

2011-01-10T17:29:00.006-05:00

These illustrations are a bit overdue for posting, but back before Thanksgiving I was happy to have been contacted by Hemispheres magazine. They were looking for an illustration & title text ('Forever Young') for an article on their inflight movie-- "Ramona and Beezus", based on the book by the venerable Beverly Cleary. The article was going to be a Q&A with Beverly, so they wanted to include a portrait of her and the characters. Portraits aren't something I do too often, but I wanted to give it my best shot and try something a little different, technique-wise.

Now of course I've heard of Beverly Cleary, but I was probably one of the few little girls who preferred to pilfer my dad's Sci-Fi instead of read girly pre-teen books. So, I had to do some research on Beverly and her characters and I came away with a lot of respect for her dedication to writing humorous, relatable books for children and young adults (without preachy moral tones).

Thanks to my AD Ellie Clayman for the assignment, and thank YOU for stopping by.
(also, I haven't forgotten about a print giveaway--I'm waiting for my printshop to reopen on the 18th so I can get some goodies for y'all!)

Lightbringer

2010-12-31T13:58:00.004-05:00

Happy New Year everyone!!!
It's been an interesting year for me. I drink coffee now! I sorta figured out how to do my taxes! I did some fanart for the first time since jr. high! New jobs, new friends, new places (and a new imac!) It's been a lot of fun, and I want to thank every person that has made it that way-- my family & Sam, my buddies here and across the internet, my art directors, my students, and everyone in between.

(P.S. Twitter was a fun new discovery this year and a nice way to talk with great illustrators. I'll probably be doing a twitter print giveaway in January...my twitter account @kalidraws will be dispensing updates a little later on!)

Anyway, I figured I'd cap off my blog posts for the year with the last horoscope illustration I did before starting my current Amtrak project...
Saggitarius! The archer, a storyteller who brings light and laughter into "the darkest time of the year."

The first sketch was a dud, so I tried a more modern style for the second sketch which I liked better. Ultimately my lovely AD Anthony Arias decided on the 3rd sketch, but with the request that it get slightly more sexy. (which in my mind equated to less waifishness & extra body armor for tough love)

Looking back, I think I spent most of the year in my own "safe zone" and I'd like to gather up more new experiences next year. Art-wise, location-wise, everything! Woo woo!
Best wishes dear readers, and I hope you all have a safe and happy 2011!

"A Beauty, A Beauty"

2010-12-11T18:46:00.002-05:00

So I took a break from drawing trains and drew a knight instead.

Here's Brienne of Tarth, from the Song of Ice and Fire series. She's a naive young woman with idealistic views about knighthood and honor. She also happens to wield a morning-star, is like 6'4" and super big, a strong fighter, and has a broad, ugly face with a broken nose, limp flaxen hair, and huge lips/teeth. Her one "pretty" feature is her large, clear blue eyes. She's a really interesting character. I probably drew her a little prettier than she should be.

Sam & I are huge fans of the Song of Ice and Fire series (read 'em!) which will also soon be released as a new HBO show, Game of Thrones. We've been thinking of doing some fanart from the books and then making a tumblr together...we'll see, once we both have some more free time!

TINY PEOPLE

2010-12-10T16:47:00.005-05:00

This blog post is a TRIPLE THREAT because I'm posting THREE different kid-related spot assignments, all from Family Circle magazine, from different times this year. OH YEAH!

Jr. High back-to-school scenarios (sweep the leg!):

Different stages of childhood development, from newborns to early-teens:

(While working on this, I was listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks and secretly imagined the 14 yr-old trying to buy robitussin as Ron Weasley. I've since tried to include Rons or people wearing R's in other illustrations)

The Boy's & Girl's club of America, encouraging creative after school activities (the ginger is not a Ron specifically, but close enough):

Thanks for looking! (and maybe reliving awkward Jr. High memories with me)

How to Fly your Cat Plane

2010-12-02T13:47:00.006-05:00

So yesterday Sam & I watched "How to Train Your Dragon" while we were working. It was a frustrating day, we were both having issues with color, and it felt like I was banging my head against a wall. I was having a bit of tunnel-vision, so I thought I needed to shake things up somehow. The movie was fine, there was some good stuff and some not-as-good stuff, but it was sort of fun to note all the behaviors that the dragons in the movie and regular cats had in common. So, I thought I'd apply the principle of "Dragons are essentially flying cats with fire" to our own cat, Ripley, and do a quick drawing for fun.
Then, of course, since Sam & I both have Norwegian backgrounds I had to put us in there as Vikings.

Ripley is a feisty, stout, loud American Bobtail, and she just has a little stub tail that waggles when she's excited. She's named after Sigourney Weaver's character in the Alien movies.
Ripley, on a hot day.
Makes me wish I had more time for fun little doodles! And drawing people I know as Vikings.

Detective of the Zodiac

2010-11-23T16:07:00.004-05:00

Any Scorpios in the audience? Working on this horoscope assignment I discovered that Scorpio is "The Detective of the Zodiac, unraveling mysteries is your forte and passion". I suggest you all become film noir detectives, like this lovely lady! (what! role-reversal!)

This was my 3rd horoscope assignment for Vegas magazine. With the detective imagery in the article I thought of film noir immediately, but I had done vaguely medieval/magical illustrations for the other horoscopes and I wasn't sure if it'd be too much of a departure. For my sketches I did one medieval/magical seeress (with a scrying bowl for detective work) to fit in with the rest of the images, and also the film noir lady. I am happy we went with the film noir theme after all, I enjoyed working on this one a lot.
Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone! I'm going to STUFF MY FACE and I hope you all do too! Yay!

Status Update + Deco Los Angeles

2010-11-17T17:38:00.007-05:00

First off, congrats to the SOI winners! Just found out that Sam got THREE pieces in, and Nick Illuzada (who is still a student at MICA) won silver in Uncommissioned. Yowza! Gotta stay on my toes!

Sam and I also received our copies of Spectrum 17 the other day--that Greg Manchess cover is the bomb and there are so many pieces in there that kill me. Awesome. Pick it up.

So I've been MIA for a while now and owe you guys an explanation! I've been sequestered in my apt. working on a kid's activity book for Amtrak, simultaneously battling some cold/flu thing for a while, and even snuck in a trip for my cousin's wedding!
When I was informed that I got the Amtrak job, I basically just dropped everything and had to get to work. To my great disappointment that meant that I also had to drop my Anthology Project comic. Sorry dudes, I hope to be able to complete a published comic SOMEDAY, and the work that's going into the Anthology Project is looking AWESOME. I'll be working on this book until early February, but I wish I could show you some sneak peeks! It's coming together. This is Amtrak's first kids book in about a decade, and they're going to be giving it away for free on the trains!

For now, I can show you some of the illustration backlog I have piling up from previous work. Like these pieces I did for LA Weekly's Best Of 2010 issue! Each of the sections in the newspaper had an opening image & spots that corresponded to a different decade in LA. Darrick Rainey assigned me the roaring 20's for the Food and Drink section, and I was PUMPED to do the illustrations for this.

If you haven't been able to tell from some of my past pieces, I LOVE art deco. It would be great to be able to do more illustrations with a 20's theme/style. Darrick remembered my Estelle LeBlanc poster and wanted me to do my illustrations in the same style.
Here's the sketches I sent:

We liked them both, but Darrick thought that the more streamlined style of the right sketch fit better, even though we both enjoyed the crowd scene. So I combined them into this:

Upon reflection, I think I should have just gone with the 2nd sketch of the girl dancing. It probably would have had more impact. I guess I just wanted to draw a crowd!

Here's the final. The colors are pretty modern instead of strictly 20's, but I figured upping the saturation would help it show up on newsprint.

Darrick also needed some B&W spots to scatter throughout the section, so I decided to make a little story out of them (dining, dancing, and PROHIBITION)

I was happy with how these pieces came out, but looking at it again I'm wondering if some texture might look nice (I was worried at the time that the texture might muddy on the newsprint). Hindsight is 20/20. On to the next.

The Mediator

2010-10-12T15:02:00.005-04:00

In early 2010 I got the chance to do the March horoscope illustration in Vegas magazine for Aries, and after a long pause I've been doing a horoscope illustration each month for them...here's the first of the new batch, Libra!

The writing says:
"Holding the Scales of Justice, Libra weighs, divides and distributes the summer harvest. Libra embodies this time of equal day and night while seeking to find balance, integrity and fairness for all"

This was for Vegas Magazine's men's issue, so it made sense to make Libra a dude. In the original sketch he also had a scythe for the summer harvest, but the editors thought it looked a little phallic (eep!) and we changed it to an hourglass:

Aaaand the final!

Seeing it again, I think his head/face look a little doofy. It's always funny when you look back on your work and just itch to change something around... Ah well, on to the next!

P.S. Wow, we've gotten a great response on the Anthology Project kickstarter project! Thank you to all the donors!! Almost to the goal!

Anthology project!

2010-10-08T12:13:00.005-04:00

Hey everyone! The Anthology Project (volume 2) has a Kickstarter page, and we need your help! The Anthology Project is an anthology of comics contributed by a whole bunch of great artists like Sam Bosma, Joy Ang, Edward Kwong, Sam Bradley, Emily Carroll and myself! (You can see the full list on the kickstarter page!) Also Ed Kwong's lovely cover artwork is on the banner above!

The book is being self-published, and we need your support to get it off the ground. With Kickstarter, you can pledge an amount (from $1 up) and then if we meet the monetary goal ($7000) by the deadline (December 1) your money goes to our cause and you can get a prize to sweeten the deal!
IF however, we do not raise $7000 by December 1, you aren't charged at all & you keep your money. Simple!

The kickstarter page says it best:
This is an opportunity for us (the AP crew), to build a relationship with you (lovers of all things art). It’s a way for everyone that loved Volume 1 to not only pre-order volume 2, but for you to help out in getting it off the ground in a very meaningful way!

Beyond that we’ll be offering other things like prints, buttons, original sketches, special editions and signed copies of the books depending on the size of the donation.

Please check out the Anthology Project's Kickstarter Page for more details!

And if you're curious, my comic is about this gentleman here:
He's up to something.
Thanks for your support!

Brains: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

2010-10-04T17:20:00.005-04:00

A while back I did a quick piece for the LA Times. Joey Santos (my always-great AD) came to me with a feature story on Alzheimers, and an illustration was needed for ways of reducing your risk of Alzheimers. The writer had attended a conference about Alzheimers and noted that it had been a bit disappointing-- there's no 100% proven way of preventing Alzheimers and a lot of research has yet to be done, unfortunately. There's a few things you can do that seem to be able to help reduce the risk, however:
Exercise, mental stimulation, and a Mediterranean diet.
I tried to reflect that in both my sketches:

This was a very fast turnaround, and I sent this progress piece to show Joey. He suggested the man should be aged more, and also preferred a pink brain instead of a yellow one. (I still kinda like yellow!)

The background in the final is a bunch of neuron synapses.

BRAINS! We should all thank ours.

BABIES. And pregnant ladies.

2010-09-27T17:36:00.008-04:00

Things have been pretty darn busy over here, teaching started at MICA again (I'm teaching Intro to Illustration for freshmen this semester!)and I've had a lot of fun projects that have kept me frantically working away into the nights. (needless to say, that's contributed to some stress) NEVERTHELESS It's time for me to cowboy up and share some of the rest of this work backlog I'm accumulating, and try and keep up a regular blog schedule again.

Thus: pregnant ladies. A while back I did a feature and 2 spots for Pregnancy magazine about celebrity pregnancies and how they set a vastly unrealistic image for post-pregnancy weight loss. Having never been pregnant, it was interesting for me to hear about realistic and unrealistic expectations...it can take a year (or more) for new mothers to lose their pregnancy weight, but there's all these stories about celebrity moms getting back into their swimsuits in a couple months. You don't think about how these celebrities have nannies to watch over their kids and chefs to cook them healthy meals and fitness trainers to customize workouts for them, etc. etc.
The opening image is a generic celebrity mom looking slim and luxe and carefree.
Sketch (I used a spot in Rodeo Drive as ref for the background):

Final (My AD suggested the paparazzos!):

The spots are of a new mom trying to fit into her old jeans, and later accepting her body and just enjoying the time she's spending with her baby.
Sketches:

Finals:

Thanks for looking! & thanks to Robert at Pregnancy Magazine!

Skulls in the Woods

2010-08-07T15:05:00.004-04:00

Yikes! I have a backlog of work to show, and summer working/munching/reading/relaxing has slowed me down! Time to get crackin'. Without further ado, here's the image I created for the Humboldt Roller Derby 2010 program cover and bout poster, all the way out in California!

They wanted me a full-body illustration of their lovely logo lady wearing the team colors (army green/gold/white):

Since they're the Redwood Rollers, I figured I'd give a nod to their forest sentinels with the twig & tree motif. I treated this more as a pinup than a scene, since it was to be used for the 2010 program cover & I thought it should be more symbolic. Drawing kick-ass ladies is always enjoyable, and with Roller Derby I feel like I have to hit a balancing point between toughness, sexiness, and originality that can be kind of tricky to find!

Animal People & Bonus bogus logos

2010-07-19T16:51:00.006-04:00

So! Getting back on the wagon train, I have a comic I did for Muse Magazine & the wonderful John Sandford! Muse sometimes has a 4 page myth-based comic (I previously did Hercules and the 12 labors for them) and John came to me with an Okanagan myth from the Pacific Northwest. The premise of the myth is about how the Great Spirit names all the animal people--they all have to come to his great lodge the next morning and pick their names, first come first served, and The Great Spirit will give each a job to do. Coyote is a trickster, and he schemes to stay up all night and be the first to receive his name (something grand like GRIZZLY BEAR or EAGLE) but all his scheming just causes him to sleep in and be the last to arrive. He is left with the name of Coyote, but also given the job of protecting the people of earth.

John suggested the totem-pole-like style, and I got to hand-letter the title as well!

ALSO, a while back I did a little piece for Inside Counsel magazine. It's a magazine for lawyers and people in the law department, and the article was about how campaign finance reform is changing & companies are now allowed to back political candidates. I thought of Nascar suits and all the advertising that gets crammed onto them, and applied the same principle to business suits. I had a fun time finding red-based logos and blue-based logos, and then twisting the names around so I didn't infringe on any copyrights. (Gatorate and Kol-Aid are some of my favorites) See how many you can recognize!!

Faux-logos always remind me of the awesome DVNO music video by Justice, enjoy!

More Sketchbook

2010-07-15T20:02:00.003-04:00

Hey guys! I'll get back to posting more finished work shortly, but I did these sketchbook pages over the last couple of days and figured I'd share them too. Like I said before, I'm trying to use my sketchbook more, and I think the trick is to get colored pencils involved in the situation...immediately more fun for me! Maybe it hearkens back to my childhood, plus it's fun to play with colors!

So, we've got a girl and her moth pet, because moths and girls are cool:

And a vaguely Mr. Darcy-ish man striding about with a tittering companion, plus a misty lady in her garden.

I suppose all these things stem from me currently reading the Song of Fire and Ice series (courtly-things, medievaly) and listening to the Harry Potter audio books while working (precocious youngsters and magic!). Yup, there you go. Despite what my editorial work may say to the contrary, I am a nerd who enjoys medieval adventure and magic kids.

You're such a prat Ron

2010-07-06T01:51:00.004-04:00

So, not only have I been listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks while I work, but I bought the most recent Harry Potter movie from Blockbuster's store-closing sale. Yes, it's safe to say there's a Maximus of Magicus going around here, or whatever latin J.K. Rowling would translate that into. Sam and I watched the movie tonight, and I did some silly sketches during it. I don't show a lot of my non-professional work on this blog, and it's about time to start! Now you can see all the stupid drawings I do to make myself giggle.

Ron is just the saddest and goofiest character. Harry is the orphaned hero, Hermione is the "brightest witch of her age" (or so the author keeps reminding us) and Ron just blunders through everything getting the wrong idea and wearing sweaters with his initial on it. My salute to Ron.

Butter Beer looks delicious in this movie! Even Ron gets a mug (and a wonk hand)

For those who know Sam and/or would like to try and decipher my handwriting, I took quick note of some of our moviewatching experience. Sam is always ready with a snappy comeback, even when a movie is just going about its business.

Enjoy!

Carbo OVERLOAD

2010-06-29T15:38:00.008-04:00

Hey guys! Who doesn’t love food?! I love being an illustrator, but cooking has been one of my new favorite hobbies, probably second only to eating. I recently got to do a piece for the Vegetarian Times, and I did a write-up on it for The Loud Cloud too! (it has all the same info as here, but its laid out nicer, hehe)

I don’t often get a chance to draw delectable dishes for an assignment, so I was excited to try my hand at this one! The article, “Carbs Demystified,” includes a lot of technical information about carbohydrates—good carbs vs. bad carbs, glycemic load, glycemic index, and net carbs. Part of the great thing about being an illustrator is that you learn a myriad of interesting facts from the articles you’re assigned (sweet potatoes have a lower glycemic index than white potatoes, despite their name!) but sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what the focus of the image needs to be. The A.D. on this story, Scott Hyers, helped me out by specifying that the illustration shouldn’t get into the technical info or define good or bad, but instead should just show a general choice between foods.

As someone who will spend 15 minutes deciding what type of cookie to eat, I understand the overwhelmingness of choice. Since there are amounts of carbohydrates in every food group, I figured a diverse representation of food would be the best way to go for my sketches. The food had to be all vegetarian, of course. I know there are different levels of strictness in people’s diets, so I checked with Scott to make sure I wouldn’t be in the red if I included egg or dairy products.

While sketching, I enlisted the help of my trusty cookbooks for some examples of tasty-looking dishes. I admit to being biased—all the food I sketched happens to be food I enjoy eating too! I liked the idea of a traveler finding his way through a jungle of food, and also tried some other approaches, like catching whatever meal you want on your plate. In the end the gastronomical explorer was chosen, and I set to work!

Throughout the project, I looked at my childhood doodles for inspiration. I’ve had a huge sweet tooth my entire life, and one of my go-to drawing subjects as a kid were various types of desserts. I was excited about bringing together kid-Kali and adult-Kali in one illustration! I remember drippy chocolate-glazed cakes and fruity cupcakes were some of my favorite scribbles to do, so I made sure to include an updated version of each in my final illustration.

Any time I deal with a lot of objects in one illustration, coming up with a solid color scheme is extra-important so all the objects don’t look too cluttered or disconnected. Colors like red, orange, yellow, and green have been shown to trigger hunger, and I wanted to go with a bright, summery feel. It took me a while to balance all the different food colors, but in the end I was pleased with the results. All in all a very satisfying project, with the only downside of making me perpetually hungry!

Sabriel Posts & the "God Molecule"

2010-06-18T14:29:00.011-04:00

Hey guys! Wow, I've gotten a bunch of comments on my most recent Sabriel post! Thank you, I really appreciate all your thoughts and support--as I've said before, none of us at the Picture Book Report are getting paid for our work on this project, so hearing from you guys really makes it all worthwhile. I got a request to make it easier to find all the other Sabriel posts, so now if you scroll down the column on the right side of the page, you will find a section named "Labels" with a handy link to all the Sabriel posts! (I'm considering labeling all my other posts too, for easy browsing)

Okay! So it's way past time for me to get back to posting weekly pieces, right? The past month of so I was in a bit of a slump--feeling creatively burned out, wondering where my illustration/life/future is going, and having some mild health problems that just sort of added to the bad vibes. It seems common in creative-types to cycle between these on-and-off times. Resting and focusing on non-art pursuits (cooking! exercise! reading!) seems to have done the trick and I'm feeling better now and ready to go!

So, to put you in a good mood for the weekend, here's 2 spreads that accompanied an article about dying! ;P It was actually a pretty cool assignment from Tom Kachadurian, a great AD at Spirituality and Health magazine. The article talked about the use of a psychedelic drug, nicknamed the "God Molecule", to help people with terminal illnesses deal with their eventual death. Apparently the drug induces a hallucinogenic state where you feel totally at one with the universe and a higher power, as if you had died already, so the participants don't feel as scared of actual death anymore. Tom wanted to go for a swirly psychedelic look without getting too much of a 60's/70's vibe, and I wanted something calming and epic for such an intense experience.

My thoughts went to a galactic-type feel...like the participant is floating through the universe. It was a double-page spread, so I tried some different views with rich blues, whites and red/oranges (that I ended up combining in the end). I also tried an overlay of the human nervous system (approximate, at least), but Tom thought it looked a little too scary and skeletal.

I tried both a closeup and expanded view. With the expanded you get more of the calming, floating feel because you can see more of the body. I kind of like the head sketch on its own, but it does feel a more creepy than calming!

So, we end up with a space-goddess, with some swirling energy and a burst of enlightenment! I remember watching an X-files episode with aliens in it while working on this assignment. I wonder if there was some subliminal influence... Swirly marks come really easily to me, but once I go crazy with them I have refine a bit to ensure there isn't a distracting amount of swirls or strands or colors! I tried to go for a more watery look, like ripples and eddies of energy.

In addition to doing the space-goddess spread, I also did some edging on the following two pages. I actually really like the spread I created for these pages, it's simple but I spent a while balancing everything.

I hope you like 'em! Thanks to Tom Kachadurian at Spirituality & Health!

Abhorsen's House!

2010-05-28T18:30:00.010-04:00

First off, I updated www.ciesemier.com with some new work! If you've been keeping up with the blog there probably isn't anything there to surprise you with, but if not check it out!

Second: This is a really long post!! I did a lot of sketches and prelim work for this month's picture book report piece so I'm just dumping it all here! Apologies for the extensive Sabriel-jargon and analysis, I don't blame you if you just skip through to the pictures. ;)

Third: Sabriel! Whew, a bunch of false starts this month! You can check out my little narrative post at The Picture Book Report.
I was having a really hard time deciding what scene I wanted to do next...Sabriel runs away from the Mordicant, she gets to Abhorsen's house, meets Mogget, and sets out in the paperwing. All really cool things I'd like to draw! In the end I probably chose the least narratively-involved thing to draw, but I needed a bit of break from all these dark, intense scenes.

When I was trying to decide what to do I made a bunch of super-quick thumbnails from different scenes in the book I was interested in. I then narrowed down the total 12 (or 11, since I missed a week) that I'll have done in the end...super hard, there's so much cool stuff! I don't think I'll give anything away by posting these because my sketching and handwriting probably look like chickenscratch to anyone else:

I was still struggling between drawing Sabriel and the Mordicant, or something involving Mogget at Abhorsen's house, OR the scarier form of Mogget Sabriel encounters a bit later on...I decided not to do the Mordicant, since it will show up in an illustration later, so I thought maybe the Free Magic version of Mogget would be fun (he's kind of a big lighting-monster!) I ended up with this color sketch:

But the colors weren't working, and the pose was so-so after a million revisions and I was just feeling stuck. I decided to set it aside and try a different subject. However, in the process of making this sketch I had to work out Sabriel's Abhorsen outfit. As I've pointed out before, I really love researching into illustrations and I wanted to be accurate to the book's description of her wardrobe as well as realistic to similar medieval counterpoints. Here's the different pieces of the outfit, in the order they are layered:
*A thin cotton-like undergarment
*Baggy drawers
*Linen shirt
*Doeskin tunic
*Supple leather breeches, reinforced with hard segmented plates at the thighs, knees and shins (and a padded bottom for riding)
*Long armored coat, buckled at sides--knee-length split skirts, swallowtailed sleeves, made of interlocking ceramic/stone plates, like a fish's scales.
*Hobnail boots (guessing they came from Ancelstierre since they're more modern)
*Blue surcoat with embroidered silver keys
*Sword belt and bandolier, with a helmeted turban

Whew! Lots of stuff, eh? Well, in the end a lot of the layers wouldn't fully be shown, like the tunic or shirt, but I like the idea of knowing that they all exist and what they look like together. Here's my sketchy thoughts:
Because I was lazy I didn't put the keys on the surcoat or the plates on the armored coat on the right hand side
I made sure the armored coat and the surcoat were split up the front and the back, because side slits (though sexier) are of no use when riding a horse, and the book points out that her pants are padded for riding. Medieval surcoats in general seem to be sleeveless, or have very short sleeves (probably so they don't get caught while you're flingin' your swords) so the sleeves of her armored coat would be sticking through--probably with a bit of her linen shirt showing at the neck and wrists. I also kept the neck of her doeskin tunic up high, for a bit of extra protection around her neck where the armored coat might chafe. I think the idea of the pants are pretty cool with the sewn in armored plates, even though they're not seen much--it made me think of the overlapping layers of a samurai's armor. Hobnail boots seem to come up around the mid-calf region, so plating in the pants would have to end around there.

I decided not to have Sabriel at all in this month's piece, but at least my rough guide will be helping me in illustrations to come!
Instead, I was charmed by the idea of taking a break and giving Mogget & Abhorsen's House their own illustration. I did many bad sketches, or starts-of-sketches. Some of them started working better:
Mogget by the front door, Mogget in the study, Mogget at the end of Sabriel's bed
Abhorsen's house with Mogget at the front door
I liked the close-up drawings of Mogget that I did, but I thought drawing the house's exterior and doing something brighter and more architectural would be a nice counterpoint to the figure-dominated pieces I've been doing. Plus, I like looking for excuses to use the white of the paper in a spot-type piece, and the whitewashed exterior of the house would be perfect for that. (We have a great Battaglia book here that's a big inspiration for that sort of style). I wanted the house to be a safe-haven (and typical of mishmash medieval architecture), but still a little ominous. Here's the resulting final:

Geez, if you guys stuck around and read even half of that you deserve a pat on the back!! I always really appreciate your comments, and if you want to weigh in on the outfit or Mogget or how I write too much I would encourage it. :)

SABRIEL, as always, is copyright Garth Nix.

Mass Appeal

2010-05-26T12:44:00.006-04:00

So for the April issue of Air Tran GO!, I did a couple illustrations for an interesting article on the power of crowdsourcing. Otherwise known as THE HIVE MIND!!
When I got the job, it didn't take long for me to get a sense of what I wanted to do--something vaguely reminiscent of a 1960's science textbook style, with bright overlapping colors and simple linework. GO! wanted some space for text within the illustration--the perfect spot for a giant lightbulb, given the illuminating qualities of the article (hohoho). Because I already had the general idea of what I wanted to do, all my sketches were variations on a theme:

And thus the final and spot:

Thanks for stickin'around! See you guys at the end of this week for some Sabriel work with a kitty innit! ALSO if you're interested in LOTR or the Hobbit (or just some sweet artwork based on it), check out this great blog post Irene Gallo put up on Tor.com, with a bunch of great artists and interesting contributions (including Sam!)

Spring Bloom!

2010-05-19T14:07:00.005-04:00

So for the third in my series of lady portrait-type assignments, I've got this more realistic one for the LA Times! No sassy bra-ladies this time ;). Joey Santos came to me with an article in the weekend issue about spring tips and trends in makeup as told by Carmandy of What Not To Wear fame (I used to watch What Not To Wear all the time, to Sam's chagrin). The general theme was out with the old and in with the new and fresh, with a particular emphasis on floral colors like corals, pinks, and reds. I was feeling the zest of spring and wanted to do something light and airy with plants and flowers to signify the season.

The assignment turnaround was just 4 days from start to finish, so my sketches were necessarily brief. I had a little trepidation about doing the sketch that was chosen because I wanted the girl to look dreamy but not too silly, though I'm very happy with how it turned out.
Joey also suggested adding her other hand putting makeup on, and toning down the floral wreath-- a good call on both counts! I've been trying to expand my color palette to include some more neutral colors, so I wanted to limit my brights to just the pinks and reds spoken of in the article. Because the emphasis is on the face and the "prettiness" of it all, I really enjoyed going with a more realistic fashiony style. It turned out to be one of my new favorite pieces, I hope you like it too! :)

Feminist Porn Awards!

2010-05-12T14:59:00.006-04:00

So here's a quickie for you in my line of lady-portraits-- I did the cover for the Toronto Eye Weekly highlighting the Feminist Porn Awards. They basically wanted to do a modern-style version of Rosie the Riveteer--in magenta glasses and a bra, holding the award statue. You got it!
The original Rosie:

My version:

Obviously mine doesn't transcend the original iconic piece, but it's my little homage. The colors are a little lighter in my version (since it prints darker on newsprint)...The tattoo was originally going to have info in the little ribbon, but it didn't happen in the end. I chose the axe for the tattoo because the doubleheaded axe was a symbol for the Amazons, and now for feminism and lesbianism. I love secret meanings!
Art Directed by the talented Taylor Shute-- www.taylorshute.com. Thanks Taylor!

There Had Been Too Much Death On This Hill

2010-04-30T17:10:00.011-04:00

Hey guys! It's that time again...Picture Book Report Time! I've got another Sabriel piece to share! Check out my post at PictureBookReport.com to get a little more background on the story behind the illustration. I'm glad many of you enjoyed the previous Sabriel process post and I wanted to show the process for this one too.

I started out with the Cloven Crest sketches I had made previously and did some color comps for them...
...which made me realize it just wasn't that interesting to look at! I wasn't really excited about drawing it.

I decided to revamp and do something more focused on Sabriel and her encounter with Thralk. (I was a little sad I couldn't fit the broken charter stone in there though!) N.C. Wyeth's work has been blowing my mind and I've been looking at all his strong compositions--you can probably see the silhouetting influence in this!
I started with a bunch of quick crappy b&w photoshop sketches, trying different silhouettes and cropping. Once I found one I liked, I developed it more and tried a color option.

I wanted something spooky and cold and snowy, and finally settled on these colors:

I looked at a lot of reference for knickers, boots, and coats of the period. The coat she is wearing is one of her father's old hand-me-downs, and is only specified as "oilskin". Since Ancelstierre is vaguely 1920's, I figured her father's old coat could be a variation on the WW1 trenchcoats. I really love researching into illustrations, and I also spent a while sketching ideas for how her bell bandolier functions.(I think the bell handles would have to hang down, so they don't ring while she's walking)

I cleaned everything up and added textures and some digital painting to my usual flats. I wasn't expecting to put the red in there, but I really ended up liking it!

Voila! And here's some closeups!

Thanks for checking 'em out!

ToBoldlyFold + Family Circle DUBPOST

2010-04-23T15:43:00.006-04:00

Hello friends!
So recently I've been doing a lot of portrait-type illustrations of women, which I'll continue to share in the next few weeks. They range from the more stylized (like below) to more realistic. It's been interesting trying to find different ways of doing them.

Family Circle magazine asked me to do an illustration about women's arthritis and joint pain for one of their March issues & I was happy to oblige! They decided later that it'd look good as a full page with room for text, which was easy for me to convert my illustration into.

I would've been happy doing either sketch, but it was interesting to be asked to do the simpler portrait since I feel I usually end up doing more complicated illustrations. (I drew her holding her wrist, because I'm super afraid of getting arthritis in my hands when I'm older!) The whole project was AD'd by Lisa Kelsey. Thanks Lisa!

In other news, Sam & I received a lovely care package of sketchbook goodies from To Boldly Fold! One of the perks of going to an art school is that you meet lots of other talented people who sometimes give you some of their great work, and we are lucky enough to know Mel Chao & Mark Grambau who generously sent us this parcel of high-end handmade sketchbooks. (check out Mel's other handcrafted sketchbooks at http://www.toboldlyfold.com and http://www.etsy.com/shop/toboldlyfold)
We each got a nice big leather sketchbook, and a couple of smaller varied ones!

The big sketchbooks are made with Rives BFK, hand cut genuine leather and a vintage button. This was all a total surprise to receive, and I LOVE the button and the stitching and the dark leather on my book, it fits my personality perfectly!! I also love how Sam's sketchbook totally matched with the shirt he was wearing that day (and his had dark green thread--his favorite!). My sketchbook is so nice I am honestly intimidated to draw anything in it. I hardly sketch traditionally anymore, but I'm glad I've got an excuse to now so I can post stuff to the ToBoldlyFold.com flickr website!

An extra bonus was that both books came with a sweet stick-on bookplate graced with the illustrations of our talented friend Nancy Muller!! (I got the bat!! I loveee himmm) I do not know how this girl doesn't have a prizewinning children's book out already.

Thanks so much Mel & Mark!!

Hot Off the Press!

2010-04-15T14:51:00.006-04:00

Hey dudes! It's been a while, I fell off the wagon a bit with blog posts last week because of taxes and busy-ness, but now I'm BACK and I have things to show you!

First up, I can't believe I haven't posted this yet, but this was done back in February for PLANADVISER's "Hot Off the Press" section...
It is AD'd by the charming SooJin Buzelli --I was happy to meet her and Chris Buzelli in person at the Heads for Haiti gallery opening last weekend.

I like the final, but had some trouble with the sketches....I had done a very straight-laced business illustration beforehand, and had some issues loosening up and finding a very non-literal interpretation of "Hot Off the Press". I think it worked out in the end, though (and taught me a good lesson!)

Sketches:

Final:

P.S. I found out that "Spring Awakening" piece from a few posts below got into Spectrum 17! Sweeeet.

When it Rains it Pours

2010-03-26T12:29:00.007-04:00

Hello Dear Readers!
First off, thank you for all the lovely comments about "An Unexpected Visitor". I really, really appreciate it. Unfortunately I have some bad news for you....no final Sabriel piece this month. I'm bummed about it, but I've been extra-super-busy with work this month and just didn't have the time to spare (I woke up this morning with my fingers aching from all the non-stop drawing!!)

However, I'm PUMPED to get back into Sabriel's world again, and I think the next piece will be sweet. :) In the meantime, I've got some sketches for different illustration/spot ideas I was thinking about.
Both the top ideas are Sabriel at Cloven Crest, which will probably be my next illo for the Picture Book Report, but I also had an idea for Sabriel passing through the wall to the Old Kingdom (showing the seasonal discrepancies on either side) and the Abhorsen, from the beginning of the book, when he saved newborn Sabriel in the waters of death.

And here to try and make up for this delay is a kitten that wants to sell you eyedrops:

It'd be fun to do a series of these with different animals as unlikely product spokesmen.
Have a good weekend everybody!

Spring Awakening

2010-03-19T16:56:00.005-04:00

This was an entertaining assignment for VEGAS magazine, highlighting the March horoscope for Aries. I've been enjoying my small foray into more fantasy-type artworks lately!
The illustration's concept was pretty open, it just had to pertain to Aries in some way. I found a lot of the imagery in the article very appealing and descriptive:
"With a Ram at your side, diamond in your sword and warrior in your blood, you charge forward."
I thought it would be interesting to translate this sentence into my illustration (trusty ram companion, flaming diamond sword, etc.), and allude to the springtime with the decorative flower border. My AD was totally on board with turning this into a fantasy illustration and I loved the opportunity to geek out. I definitely hearkened back to my high school days of doodling badass warrior chicks in my notebooks. Fitting the illustration into an unconventional shape was a secondary bonus--it was a fun puzzle, and something I hope I get to do more of.

Here's what the whole thing looks like uncropped:

And an initial sketch & alternate color idea:

Surprise!

2010-03-09T12:45:00.002-05:00

A comic about a cupcake.

In other news, California was a blast! It's one of those states that just looks and FEELS big, like Colorado. I might post some photos from it later, I've got great reference if I ever need to draw a redwood forest scene!

Heads for Haiti

2010-03-01T15:24:00.006-05:00

Hey everyone!
Thanks for all the warm comments about my Sabriel work, you make it all worth it. :)

I've got something a little different here now, I was asked to be a part of the 100 Heads for Haiti charity exhibition being held by Spur Design here in Baltimore.
There's some BIG names in the show that I'll be able to share when the website for it is up! The exhibition is being held on April 10th, and each of the heads (all about 7x9 in) are selling for $100 each, to benefit Doctors Without Borders.

I'm a little sheepish, it's been a long time since I've worked traditionally, so this was a bit of an experiment for me. I hope someone will give her a good home, for a good cause.

I'm going to California for a while this week, and I'll have some fun illos to show you when I get back!

An Unexpected Visitor

2010-02-26T12:15:00.011-05:00

My first full Sabriel illustration for The Picture Book Report! Yay!
I talk about the illustration and the passage it's illustrating on the Picture Book Report, so I figured on here I would show my process...

Often when I'm first trying to puzzle out a layout, I sketch quickly into photoshop with just black and white until I get a vague idea of what I'm going for. (oftentimes this involves me erasing everything or deleting the layers afterwards when I know what I'm doing, which is why I don't have that to show you!)
As you saw in the last post, once I got the idea of Sabriel turning in her chair in the study, I started with some photo ref to set the groundrules.

Oftentimes in my editorial work, I will go straight to color after thumbnails. Since this was going to be a little more complicated, I worked out the general layout in B&W first. I've been looking at James Gurney's tips about tone & composition and Maxfield Parrish's B&W work, and I was excited about the idea of Sabriel's head being silhouetted by the fire.

From there, I worked out the colors. I imagined the room being dark and warm, that's where the tans come from. I tried out a really blue room too, but that ended up looking less elegant.

Aaaand then most of the rest of my time was spent clarifying all the details, color tweaking, rearranging things, and adding decorative elements!

Finally, I added different texture layers and final tweaks, like the outline of light or shadow on different surfaces and some detail on Sabriel's skin.

Voila! It's certainly a bit different from my very flat work, but I'm interested in where it's heading. Stay tuned for more in the future!

The Vanishing Gatekeepers + Hint

2010-02-22T20:14:00.005-05:00

This was a recent quick-turnaround job for LA Weekly about the music industry's A&R men (Artist and Repetoir men--the execs responsible for scouting new music stars). Because many bands these days are able to record their music and find fans through the internet, the music industry is increasingly choosing the bands who have already cultivated a fan base and have less of a need to pay execs to scout through seedy bars for the next big thing. The full article with my illustration is up here!

Since the A&R guys are described as the "Gatekeepers" of the music industry, I thought it would be appropriate to have some band dudes sneaking over a fence to get to the fans, instead of having to go through the gate.

ALSO, I am currently working on my Sabriel stuff for the Picture Book Report and I thought I'd give you a hint.
I rarely shoot reference, but I wanted to get the angles right and I happened to have a pretty good old-timey chair and the right outfit.

I'll be posting the final on Friday, but keep visiting the Picture Book Report! There's been so much great work posted and time invested by all participants, and we're doing it for YOU!

Good Debt

2010-02-17T20:40:00.006-05:00

Hey friends!
First off, I'm on Twitter now! If you want to follow me, I'm kalidraws.

Second off, I've got another piece I did for Air Tran.
This one had a tough concept to crack! It was entitled "Good Credit" and was about how it may be good for some businesses to go into debt for good reasons, because they will be paid back with even more money (i.e. printing up a bunch of extra-fancy products for a particularly big client, because they know the client will pay them back and will be impressed).

As you can see, I tried out various metaphorical ideas, but Air Tran really just wanted to go for a more straightforward approach in the end (debtor using the bank to reach clients with money on the other side).

And here we are:

A note on style:
My style still changes around a bit sometimes, and I'm never really sure if that's a good or bad thing. (From what I've been led to believe in school, it's a bad thing, but at the same time I feel like I am still continually defining and improving what I want to do) I've never been married to a specific style in the way that many illustrators are, but I still feel like there is a thread of similarity that binds all my work. I usually get pretty clear visions for what I want different assignments to look like and go with my gut. In the case of this assignment, I decided to try out something a little more different from my usual texture work. I may see if I can integrate it a little better with my other flat work in the future.

Valentimes

2010-02-14T12:33:00.002-05:00

For my honey!

Sabriel Sketches

2010-02-09T13:11:00.004-05:00

I'm in the middle of several illustrations, but I managed to sneak some sketches of Touchstone and Sabriel in preparation for my Picture Book Report project!
Sabriel of course is copyright Garth Nix.

So, Sabriel is supposed to be 18, with pale skin and black hair "fashionably bobbed". In most Sabriel illustrations, including the lovely cover, her hair is long, which always confused me a bit. She comes from a 1920's-ish world (and goes into a medievalish one), so I tried to reflect some of that in her hairstyle. She's strong and competent all-around (but with youthful naivete), so I always pictured her relatively pretty but not super-feminine.
Sabriel was pretty easy to get off the bat, but Touchstone was much harder...he ends up being her traveling companion from the Old Kingdom, and seems to be in his twenties. He is fairly serious and careworn and I had a tough time trying to make him look rough around the edges and not too pretty, but still a handsome young man. (Sam Worthington ended up being one of my references) I'm kind of proud of his hair. It's tough to make "short tightly curled hair" look good and not look like this...

...so I think I did okay. :) (sorry Justin, you look much better now!)

DUBPOST: Sabriel Book Plate & Runner's World!

2010-02-05T14:08:00.007-05:00

Hey Everyone!
My Bookplate/Bio/Explanation is up on at the Picturebookreport.com! I was the last one, so you can check out everyone else's awesome bookplates & info there too! The first illustrations start rolling in next week, so check back!
addendum: For those of you who have read Sabriel, that fiery guy in the back is the Mordicant, with a lemon tree from the Inn of 3 Lemons & Mogget with a view of the aquaduct from the ocean.

And for something totally different....here's my illustration in the Jan/Feb Runner's world! It was for an article talking about the benefits the author has found about using a treadmill (watching her daughter, avoiding bad weather).
It went through some different revisions, but I'm happy with the result. Enjoy!

Sketches, alternate color:

And the layout!

Picture Book Report & BONUS PRIZE!

2010-02-01T15:59:00.009-05:00

Hey everybody!
FIRST I've got some big news! I'm psyched to be a part of the Picture Book Report!
Please take a look!

We're a group of illustrators, each choosing a book of our choice, which we will create illustrations for throughout the year. That's 12 illustrations per illustrator (once a month), with 15 talented illustrators participating! How can you go wrong??!
Posting with me will be Meg Hunt, Will Bryant, Daniel Krall, Andrea Kalfas, Sam Bosma, Israel Sanchez, Jeremy Sorese, John Martz, Julia Somni Heglund, Laura Park, Lizzy Stewart, Phil McAndrew, Patrick Murphy, and S.Britt.

The bookplates and info for Meg Hunt, Will Bryant, and Sam Bosma are currently up on the site. Meg will be periodically updating the site this week with the everyone else's bios and bookplates (including mine), so check back! The first final illustrations start rolling in next week! It's gonna be great.
Here's a teeny tiny sneek peek of part of my bookplate for Sabriel, my book of choice:

Visit again at the end of the week to see the full thing!

And now for the bonus prize: THE TRIUMPH OF OPTIMISM!
Pretty epic title, right? It was the header of an article for Los Angeles Confidential I had the pleasure of illustrating. The article was all about seeing the good in bad things--a mindset I am constantly striving to emulate. So, yay! Here we go sketches:

And the final, trying out a slightly different technique:

The Cleve

2010-01-21T21:28:00.006-05:00

A while back I got a job from Cleveland Magazine for a holiday section on philanthropy in Cleveland...I had done a philanthropy illustration before for Air Tran, but this time it was supposed to be Cleveland-specific. I had a good time looking up Cleveland landmarks (Terminal Tower is rather ominously named) and watching the 30 Rock "Cleveland" episode ("If the whole world moved to their favorite vacation spots, then the whole world would live in Hawaii, Italy, and Cleveland").

Here's the 2 second-stage sketches we settled on:

And the final spots:

And the final layout of the first page!

"Buyer's Remorse"

2010-01-12T19:03:00.005-05:00

Hey everyone, I hope you had a good new year! This is a little after the holidays, but I think everyone has had the experience of trying to find a good present for their significant other...This article for Michigan Avenue Magazine (Chicago shout out y'all!) is about the difficulties and pitfalls of shopping for your wife, from a man's point of view.

My AD, Amy Petriello, had the idea of a caveman/hunter looking bewildered in the women's section, so I came up with a couple sketches....

And the final layout!

I've got a big backlog of stuff to share, so more this week I think!

Master Plan!

2009-12-10T18:34:00.006-05:00

So this assignment was for Air Tran GO!, Air Tran’s inflight magazine. They are one of my oldest clients, and they’ve been great about letting me get creative and take some chances with my work. This piece is one of my new favorites, because I got to just go crazy with it and they even let me design the title! Great fun.

These were the sketches:

And here is my original image!

For those who know me, you know I love art deco...for this I was trying to channel that "stylized industrial" feel. My style sort of changes depending on what type of assignment I get, and I felt the one I chose worked really well here. Here's hoping for more good fits in the future!

thanks to my Designer Elsie Aldahondo and AD Shane Luitjens!

Glam Punk Mormon Librarian

2009-11-30T20:09:00.004-05:00

Hey everybody, I hope my U.S. friends had a delightfully stuffed Thanksgiving! I know I did.
This particular illustration isn't particularly holiday-themed, but it does warm the cockles of my heart to see video of skinny 70's punk rockers dressed in women's clothing with hair teased to epic proportions. I was recently asked to do in illustration for the Calendar section of LA Weekly, and one of the events was a reading of the book "I, Doll", written by Arthur "Killer" Kane of the New York Dolls.
Not being familiar with the Dolls, Wikipedia soon informed me that they were big influences in the early years of punk/rock and included people with such stage names as "Sylvain Sylvain" and "Johnny Thunders".

Arthur is on the far right--photo by Bob Gruen

So anyway. Unfortunately, Arthur "Killer" Kane died in 2004 of leukemia, but before he did he converted to Mormonism, became a librarian, and also got a metal plate in his head. It sounds like quite a life. So here's to Arthur:

Tough Love & Unitasking!

2009-11-22T20:12:00.004-05:00

2 illustrations for the November Los Angeles Confidential here!
I think it's fitting that I am currently watching Tough Love 2, and I did these spots for an article about LA Dating written by Steve Ward, the host/matchmaker! As a fan of the show (as crazy/silly as it is) I was excited. :)

This second illustration was a lot of fun too, it was for an article on "unitasking" by Arianna Huffington. I thought it was interesting that taking ONE task to completion is much more efficient than trying to multitask and do several things at once (which I think I and most other people are often guilty of.)

Both pieces were AD'd by the wonderful Anthony Arias. Thanks Anthony!

Unrelated, but the new Spectrum 16 arrived...hoo boy, there's some awesome work in there! I'm honored to share the pages with so many talented artists. I was also pleased to see Sam & I's work on the same page, and a big congrats to my buddy Jeremy for winning gold!
I have a backlog of pieces to show, so more soon guys!

Spooky Scary!

2009-10-28T13:09:00.007-04:00

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'

2009-10-13T03:32:00.004-04:00

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

2009-10-02T17:15:00.009-04:00

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!

2009-09-15T14:46:00.004-04:00

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

2009-09-10T00:34:00.004-04:00

This man has a secret.

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

Detective Barbie & The Curious Cadaver

2009-09-08T00:01:00.003-04:00

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!

2009-08-30T18:39:00.009-04:00

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!

Invisible Things and other Things

2009-07-30T17:22:00.008-04:00

Hey guys!!
Whew. Times have been busy around here! Sam & I got a feisty little bobtailed cat named Ripley (see here) who has been taking up our free time, and we took a nice jog into the Midwest to spend vacation time with my family for a week, which was awesome.
We are all big fans of Frank Lloyd Wright, so taking a 4 hour walking tour of Taliesin East in Wisconsin (in some of the most scenic country I've ever been in) was grrrreat! His life story is full of genius, adultery, murder, arson, graverobbing, priceless Japanese art, capes, and seemingly endless & self induced bankruptcy. He is quite the character. His architecture may not always be the most practical, but it is breathtakingly beautiful. (for any of you who don't know who Frank Lloyd Wright is, I suggest educating yourself.)
PLUS, once the end of June and July rolled around, I just got buried in an avalanche of work and have been behind on sharing it with you! Without further ado, here's some mashups of all my spots for that Invisible World project I kept promising to post (see if you can guess the invisible item each is referring to! Answers at the bottom!):

In the first mashup, clockwise from the left: Germs, the Jet Stream, Morning Breath, and a letter from the Title!
In the second mashup, clockwise from the left: DVDs, Dust Mites, Air Quality, Radio Waves, and Computer software!

I've also been doing the illustrations for Pagepath Technology's monthly newsletter--here's 4 months worth:

My style has been changing around a bit, but since Pagepath is very flexible with what they're looking for I'm using their illustrations as mini experiments. I've been tiptoeing a little more into texture land, although I won't be able to show some of my most recent explorations until September. Expect another update soon, I have some big news to share with everyone and plenty more illustrations to put up!

Hairduel!

2009-05-29T18:25:00.003-04:00

That's the title of my diptych for the upcoming "Vs." show I'm in! There's a bunch of great people in the show, and most of them are my friends/former coworkers from Big Huge Games & Firaxis! If you're around Baltimore COME AND SEE!

Here's the blurb:http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
BALTIMORE-BASED VIDEO GAME ARTISTS, COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, ILLUSTRATORS TACKLE VS. THEME IN EXHIBITION JUNE 5-JULY 31
Opening Reception Takes Place Friday, June 5 at The Windup Space in Station North 7-9 pm (located at 12 W. North Ave, Baltimore, MD 21202)
VS. BLOG HERE!

And here's my dueling hairdos:

There's so many ways to go with the theme of "Vs." and I was trying to think of an idea that wasn't necessarily action-oriented. In retrospect, I probably should have gone even crazier with the hair, but I was enchanted with the idea of drawing greasers. I'll also be selling a nice big framed print of my Naturalist there, since that goes with the theme too. :)

In other news, Sam & I are moving so it's been craaaazy around here...I have more stuff to share but it'll have to wait! Hope everyone's summer has started off well!

Less is More & Due Diligence

2009-05-12T23:56:00.004-04:00

Hey guys, thanks for the congrats on Spectrum! In other awards news, I found out I got my Naturalist piece (you know, the one with the lady with a bunch of heads on the wall? Got into SOI and Spectrum too? I guess I did something particularly well in that one!) got into the American Illustration's online gallery TRIBUTE. Woo! Apparently they had A TON of entries this year. Anyway, I've got some new pieces to put up, in addition to those Carus illustrations I shared in the last post (I'll get back to those later).

So, here's my stuff in the April issue of Air Tran GO! magazine-- all about how to deal with people that owe you money! Persistence is key, as is showing you're not afraid to use some muscle (but only if needed)! I always love the spreads that the GO! designers come up with. :)

And the spot:

Here's my illustration for the May GO! magazine. This one is very appropriate for the economic times right now--it's about making due with less, in terms of supply and demand, and looking for neglected areas that have more demand than supply. Like beekeeping, apparently! This was an experiment using texture & some colors I don't usually utilize. (No red and teal?? what??)

aaand the spot:

KAPOW!
More later!
(and my root canal went great, hooray!)

Spectrum & Stuff!

2009-04-14T20:20:00.004-04:00

So I found out what I got into Spectrum, and it is as follows:
THIS

AND THIS

Hooray! I couldn't be more happy that I got these two in, I was guessing that if I got picked, they'd probably pick one or the other, but it was a pleasant surprise that both got in! Congrats to everyone else who made it! I'm excited to see the final book in the fall when it comes out.

In other news, here's a taste of a recent assignment for Muse magazine that I was involved in. It was a multi-page story with varying sizes of illustrations about "The Invisible World". The end result of the magazine pages and the layout looks different than it does here, but I'm including the lo-res pages as an example of what I was working with. Here's the first!

Enjoy!
I'll be posting more later.

Also, if anyone knows a good dentist/endodontist in Baltimore, let me know! When I was back in Chicago this weekend I found out I had to have a root canal (great surprise!) because apparently there's been an infection in my tooth for several years now, left over from when I fractured my jaw/teeth in highschool from fainting. Never fall on your jaw. It's a gift that keeps on giving. I got the first part of the root canal done, but I still gotta get the rest taken care of...there's just something inherently creepy about getting your teeth drilled into. Brrrrrr!

BIG HUGE posts!

2009-04-08T21:09:00.009-04:00

Well folks, Big Huge Games, the videogame company I worked at for 7ish months, was dropped from THQ a few weeks ago and it looked like they might have been toast. Fortunately they are not, and unfortunately they still had to let go of a lot of lovely people. While I was at BHG I mostly worked on a fun Animalcrossing/Zelda-ish game they were developing for the Wii. I also worked a tiny bit on the more realistic epic fantasy RPG they were also developing, and I'll put that work at the end of the post.

It's sad that both these games have been permanently shelved, but it does mean that I get to share some of the work I did. As you can see, a lot of it was idea-generating and not as polished as my illustration stuff, so it was an interesting adjustment for me. It also got me hooked on sketching on the computer.

So without further ado, here's a bunch of my concept work!
(all work copyright THQ, drawn by me!)

Two posters I drew up for the Wii game:

HI FIVE! Soda-can style.

Aaaand a few bits for the fantasy RPG (you can see the style is much different):

Thanks for lookin'! I will be posting some more illustrations soon!

And Now for Something Completely Different

2009-04-02T14:24:00.002-04:00

Can you guess who this happy man is?

I certainly hope so, because it's supposed to be Cedric the Entertainer!
This was done for Los Angeles Confidential magazine, for an article that Ced wrote himself about his 4 favorite gadgets. The fantastic four are as follows: His Iphone, MagicEye cinema glasses for his ipod, a cool watch with a clear background (so anytime someone asks the time, he can say "It's skin o'clock"), and the Magic Bullet.

This is my second attempt at a portrait/caricature-- the first one being the hypnotic David Bowie I did for my fashion class' art show a year ago.

Things have changed. (although Bowie will remain eternal) Any caricature advice appreciated--this is still a very new thing for me!

Fantastic!

2009-03-21T01:03:00.006-04:00

Long time no post, eh? I've been remiss in updating lately, but I've also been busy sending out postcards/emails and working on some new projects.

Big news is I've found out that I made it into Spectrum 16 along with my partner-in-crime Sam Bosma and my good buddy Jeremy Enecio (who won Gold in Unpublished!! As he should!)
Still not sure which piece(s) got in, but should be finding out soon!

For this update, I've got a sketch I drew in photoshop based off a vision I got. It wasn't really a vision in the sense of the epic sort of "I AM SEEING THE FUTURE!!" vision, but oftentimes when I'm laying in bed before I go to sleep, I get a stream of images in my head. Does that happen to any of you? Like, just random images? Sometimes they're ideas for fashion or clothing, or sometimes just random pictures, like a person's face lit in a particular way or, in this case, a crumbling wall with two portraits on it.
I couldn't fall asleep, so I decided to just sketch it out. I'm trying to play a little more with lighting than I normally do, and I was thinking about the economy and portents and all that sort of predicting-the-future type stuff.

Photoshop and wacom has officially replaced my sketchbook/pen as my preferred mode of drawing. I just think better when color and shape are involved, and erasing into things, versus just drawing line.

Here's a piece (also entirely photoshop-done) for PagePath Technologies' monthly newsletter-- it's about how their product makes it easier to sort and print receipts and generally keep things organized.

I like how it turned out. I've been trying to use colors in different ways than my usual brights & I've also been experimenting more with texture, though I don't think I've hit the nail on the head quite yet.
MORE UPDATES SOON!

Society of Illustrators

2009-02-18T21:46:00.003-05:00

So these past 2-3 weeks I've been transformed into a work zombie, complete with uniform of day-to-night-sweats plus matching haggard appearance and an unquenchable thirst for brains. Or chai tea. I've been working on 12 illustrations for 3 different assignments, so I'll have a bounty of work to show in April! (Including such subjects as Debt collection, Cedric the Entertainer, and the Invisible World!)

In the meantime, I just wanted to say congrats to my fellow MICAns and friends from other schools who got into the Society of Illustrators Student show. To see everyone's great work you can check out http://soicompetitions.org/?section=institution_list. (however, I also think there was a lot of great work that didn't make in in..)
My piece "The Naturalist" made it:

And now, back to work! I'm also aiming to put up some new personal work soon, so keep yer eyes peeled!

5 Reasons You Will Read this Blog Post

2009-02-02T00:36:00.003-05:00

1. If you are arriving at the site I assume it is because you want to see what is on it, and thus will probably decide to read the words included.

2. You are a wonderful person.

3. You may think I have a surprise for you.

4. Surprise! I don't! I'm sorry!

5. This post title is merely a cheesy gimmick playing off the name of the article this new illustration was done for.

So this is another full page for Air Tran GO! inflight magazine for an article about the power of numbers in business. Titled, you guessed it, "5 Reasons You Will Read this Article". The 5 in my image is the 5 in the title, I'll be probably be posting what the layout looks like a little later when I receive it.

For now, here ya go!

I think it was good practice trying to draw lots of interesting faces, and I wanted to make sure I didn't revert to my tried-and-true red & teal color scheme. It was also pointed out to me that the bearded man on the lower right looks a lot like Abe Lincoln. Albeit a little fatter.

Hey, Thanks!

2009-01-30T16:06:00.006-05:00

A big slice of gratitude for the folks over at Drawn! and a pleasant Hello! to anyone new coming over to check my stuff out! This is the second time John Martz has written me up, and it's awful nice of him to do it. :) (it was also nice of Sam to submit my site to Drawn...)

Lucky for me, I just updated ciesemier.com (although I've found that sometimes it's necessary to clear the cache in Firefox before the new changes appear) and I'm gettin' serious here about freelancing, so now's the time. :)

I'll be putting up a sweet new piece on Sunday or Monday (it'll be in the February issue of GO!) but I can also now share this B&W piece I did for BITCH magazine-- it was about the role of Jane Eyre character archetypes in literature.
(I don't know about you all, but I do enjoy me some period romances on occasion. It's a break from the asian action movies I usually enjoy watching. Anyone else excited for Chocolate? Eh? Eh?)

I'm not too practiced in B&W (or graphite pencil!), so I think this could maybe have been better. I'm trying to play around with some new media though, so any suggestions appreciated!

Thanks again, guys!

2008-12-19T14:12:00.004-05:00

I'm heading home today to get a jump on my little holiday break in Chicago, but before I go I wanted to share an illustration I did for Baltimore Magazine. It's about a real-life school for Santa Wannabes, taught by a guy who is the spitting image of Father Christmas himself!

I also wanted to say I'm feeling a little better about the whole illustration thing. Thanks for all your support with that. I just need to keep working at it and not giving up. (that's sort of the solution for everything, I think...)
Also, for any of you derby fans, right now I'm in a Rollergirl-themed gallery show at the Rogue Buddha Gallery in Minneapolis, MN! (Running until December 30th, in case any of you want to swing by! If you're out there, maybe pick me up some Lutefisk too) :) The Northstar Rollergirls of Minnesota also asked me to do their May Championship bout poster, so that should be pretty sweet! I wasn't able to attend the opening, but here's one of the photos from it with a smiling dude and one of my pieces:

Anyway, I hope you all have an excellent and delicious time with your own family and friends! I know mine will be filled with my family and their great food and and heated political/religious exchanges. :) It's what the holidays are all about.

That Time of the Year

2008-12-07T16:59:00.007-05:00

Hello again friends,
First, some news. The Bad:

My file that I was working on for the Popgun Comic Anthology 3 totally crashed and burned. I have nothing to show for the 3 weeks I've been working on it. I was even making a bit of a breakthrough in my own work and style, but there is nothing now. Believe me, I'm angry at myself for not making a backup copy.

Consequently, I won't be able to make it into the publication alongside my awesome friends and many other great artists. The first Popgun won a Harvey this year, and I have no doubts the 3rd will do even better.

I've pretty much lost the desire to draw. I had lost it when I came back from England, feeling like my work had gotten stale and bad in comparison to so many other people, and then used Popgun as an excuse to try and force myself to make something interesting and fun for myself again. Now that it's all been erased, I'm back where I started, feeling like I've wasted so much and not really knowing what to do next.

On a better note:

The wonderfully huggable (and, of course, supremely artistically talented) Nancy Muller was just on Drawn!, see here. Finally. :)
A little while back, my ever-amazing boyfriend Sam Bosma was also on Drawn! here. They spelled his name a little wrong, but they sure can recognize great artists.

Also, since it's been a while, here's another full page and spot in the December issue of AirTran's inflight magazine, GO!:

It's for an article on business philanthropy called "To Give is To Receive". To see what the layout looks like in the magazine, go here and type in "88" or "89" for the "Go to" page number.

Finally, I'd like to say thank you to those of you who post and tell me you like my work. Thank you. It's definitely an encouragement.

IS YOUR SISTERHOOD STRAIGHT-UP?

2008-10-24T14:48:00.004-04:00

That is the question asked by a quiz page in the Oct/Nov issue of Girls Life Magazine. Consider wisely.
Are you:
A. REAL & RIGHTEOUS
B. EASIN' ON THE HONESTY
or
C. TUNIN' OUT THE TRUTH??

For a visual accompaniment to these varying degrees of honesty, consider the following:

My illustration! In stores now. :)

Two more notes:

1. Tonight is the final Baltimonster closing party! 9 pm tonight! Free admission! A bunch of bands! Costume party! Cool art! Next door to Windup Space, 14 North Ave., Baltimore, MD 21201! Be there!

2. I will be gone for 2 weeks, starting this saturday! I'm going home for a few days, and then skipping off to london next Wednesday for a vacation with my aunt, uncle, and cousins! My first time out of the country. :) (except Canada, which doesn't really count...) Jolly good!

Have a great weekend, everybody!

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...

2008-10-15T19:08:00.005-04:00

...my illustrations! In a magazine! In AirTran planes! A couple of my illustrations were in the September issue of Air Tran GO! magazine. They were for an article on the changing trends towards more casual clothes in business dress. (Appropriately titled "Changing of the Garb")

My art director Shane Lutjens designed the layout really nicely, and I was fortunate enough to get a copy of the pdf from him. I'll also have another illustration and spot in the December issue. Woo!

Here's the opening layout:

And here's the individual illustration and spot:

A final note:
I've noticed that ALL the illustrations I've posted up on my blog recently use at least one (usually more) of the colors of my blog. I guess I just see the world in shades of blue-green and orange-red. :)

Baltimonster invasion!

2008-10-11T23:42:00.005-04:00

So today was the opening of "Pain of Being Dead 2: Baltimonster!" gallery show at the Echo, right next to The Windup at 14 North Ave., Baltimore. I'm in the show, as well as a ton of other people (including a host of talented locals from my link sidebar like Sam Bosma, Andrea Kalfas, Jimmy Giegerich, Daniel Krall, and Brian Ralph) and there's about 150 pieces total! Monstrous!

Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to the opening today, but the show goes on until the big closing costume party on October 24th which I am planning on attending. To see more about it, visit the Baltimonster myspace and come check it out sometime! What's not to love about Baltimore and monsters?

Sam and I were originally going to make a diptych together called "Lumberjack and Lumberjane in the Forest of 1000 Monsters" (an idea which I still think will be awesome...) but we had to save that for another day when we have more time to work with. Instead, I had to think of something else. Monsters have never been my particular specialty, but boy can I bust out ladies! Voila!

It's called "Catch of the Day" and I'm selling 50 high quality archival prints of it for $40 each. If anyone is interested, shoot me an email!

I've also been working on some magazine stuff, which I'll be posting next, and I'm in the process of figuring out my comic for the upcoming Popgun anthology. I'm thinking it might be a background story for the Gardener from my Millionaire series. We'll see!

Back again!

2008-09-20T18:33:00.004-04:00

Okay, okay, I lost track of things again...but look! Here's a little doodle I made especially for you, blog-land!
I've been in the travel state of mind lately after buying plane tickets home for thanksgiving and thinking about my trip to London with my aunt, uncle, and cousins in late October. Outside the US, I've only been to Canada, so this is a big deal for me! Hooray!

Anyway, here's a lil' something:

More very soon, I promise!

Hey wait, remember me?

2008-07-07T21:45:00.005-04:00

So, I've certainly been gone a long time, eh? There's really no excuse, but nevertheless I'll explain that I've been graduating/moving to a new apartment/starting a time-consuming concept art internship at Big Huge Games. In any case, I'm trying to get back on track with my true love: Illustration!

So, here's a long overdue photo:
My senior thesis show! Look, there's me, and there's a selection of my work!

Also, I recently completed a full page illustration for Spider Magazine, about a magic trick. (the page is titled "Abracadabra!") Whee!

Also, this past week/weekend I was volunteering at ICON5 in NY with an assortment of other Mica alumni/undergrads that Whitney Sherman (the chair of our department, AND the president of ICON5) recruited, and some lovely people from other art schools.
Some of the work we had to do was less than enjoyable, and we had to stay in coffin-sized YMCA rooms for 2 nights before moving to the hotel, but there were several open-bar events when I had a lot of fun chatting with the talented and excellent illustrators Sam Weber, Jillian Tamaki, and Frank Stockton.
I also bought a great $10 signed Process Recess print (radical!), and received a free American Illustration book (jawesome!). All in all, a good experience. Here's a couple of thumbprint doodles I did in the "Wreck This Journal" book I bought while I was there:

ALSO, I was featured on Lost at E Minor! Sweet! A big Thank You To Ilana!

I'm working on some new stuff, so updates soon!
'Till then! (I'm getting back on track, I swear!)

Walk it out

2008-05-06T15:48:00.004-04:00

Last piece for my "fashion" class! This was the last assignment Frank Stockton gave us-- we each got a fortune cookie, and we had to illustrate our fortune.
Can you guess what mine was?

If you guessed, "Spring is here! 2-headed men are out for strolls." you'd be wrong.
My actual fortune was "Smile to others, honesty and friendship bring you fortune."

Get it? The girl's smiling at the man? The man has two heads, named Honesty and Friendship? He's bringing her a flower? Which is like a fortune? eh? eh?

Okay, I know it's kind of a stretch, but if you can give me a more interesting idea, I'm all ears. I just wanted to have fun with my last bit of work for the class (although I'm thinking I should have added some subtle patterning into the suit and dress). Frank was a really good critiquer and it was great to have him there. Thanks Frank! Good advice all around. I'm also very pleased in general with all of my work that has come out of the class as a whole.

Just one more class now-- Thesis. Still so much work to do for it! I always seem to get into these crunch periods. There should be an update early next week, if not before. Tally-ho!

Holy Graft Zeppelin, Batman!

2008-05-04T14:04:00.005-04:00

Wow, I got linked by 2 blogs today!

The lovely ladies over at 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast asked if they could feature me in their monthly "Up-and-Coming Illustrator" section, and I was only too happy to agree. Here's the link to my bit! Whee! A BIG thanks to Jules & Eisha! You're the best, ladies. (Jules, you are too kind. I'm saving a creepy topiary face in the future for you.) And thank you to anyone visiting from their blog!

ALSO, another tip of the hat to Elizabeth from Urban Palimpsest, who featured my rollergirl illustrations (and some others!) on her blog today! Awesome. Thank you so much!

I've got a lot of work to do today and I should have a new piece by this evening, but I thought I'd at least post a coupla photos from the Society of Illustrators Reception.
The drive there and back was really draining, so we look really weird and frazzled in most of the photos, but here's one anyway of me & Sam, with my piece popping out around my head:

And here's a photo of all of us MICAns that attended, whether they were in the show, or SHOULD have been in the show, but were dragged there by their significant others (Thanks for putting up with everything, Megan & Sam...) From left to right: Eamonn Donnelly, Megan Russell, Jason Hoffman, Whitney Sherman, Jeremy Enecio, Me, and Sam Bosma.

Interesting note: We ALL wore clothes that had white and blue stripes (except Megan, who had polka dots, but close enough), but none of us planned it. We made the coolest art-gang.

Back to work!

Jukebox Hero

2008-04-28T21:34:00.008-04:00

New piece this week! But first, a small pat-on-the-back for myself-- I got into CMYK magazine!
The piece that got in is this one, which also got into the Society of Illustrators student contest this year:

Andrea Kalfas also made it into CMYK! Hooray!
Also, I'll be going to the Society of Illustrators awards ceremony this friday with fellow MICA Society of Illustrators winners Jeremy Enecio (the grand prize winner!) and Eamonn Donnelly (a $1000 winner!). Unfortunately the other MICA SoA winner, Jimmy Giegerich, isn't able to attend, due to a rockin' band performance he's putting on the same evening.

[ALSO in awards/winning news, Sam Bosma got second place in the Project Rooftop Iron Man redesign competition! Second only to the formidable Daniel Krall! Congratulations all around, men.]

Aaanyway, self-congratulations aside, turns out I decided not to do living with bears or $1 buffets for Frank Stockton's assignment, "Something worth shortening your life for", which was actually an article he had done illustrations for in Esquire, which you can see here. I ended up thinking "Rocking too hard for The Man to handle" would be something worth shortening your life for. Hence my Office Rockstar, annoying his pencil-pushing coworkers while catching some sweet air with obligatory double-necked guitar!

It's not really an activity that is immediately life-shortening, but getting fired from your job and put out on the streets could take some years off your life.

Also, a big thanks to everyone who has commented on my blog already, or just stopped by to take a look. Thank you for being interested. It keeps me happy inside!

Next up: the ever-elusive Thesis work (possibly?!), and my interpretation of a fortune-cookie fortune! Team break!

Grab-bag

2008-04-16T13:45:00.011-04:00

     First of all, thanks to all of you who took the time to visit my little blog kick-off! It was nice hearing from everyone who commented on my first post, and hopefully I can make some more posts to hold your interest.
     I know I said I was going to put up thesis stuff--but I lied......I'm sorry! I'm actually feeling pretty uninspired with it right now, but I'm working on getting back on track. In the meantime, I have some sketches for your perusal!

     In our senior thesis classes, we each started off with a moleskin sketchbook, which we had to give a one word theme (like, "discovery" or "flower" or "skullcrushing" or anything else we could come up with). Then, every week you had to grab a new sketchbook and put something in it relating to the theme. Here's some examples of themes I drew for (sometimes I added photoshop coloring, just for fun):

"Wings"

(however, according to zeitgeist expert Jeremy Enecio, drawing people with antlers just went out of style, so I'm ashamed to say that I'm terribly unfashionable)

"Anxiety"

"Birds"

"Snack"

Silly. That picture is actually from a fashion show I was in last year--the designer made a bunch of postcards with me on them (eee...), and I figured I might as well put them to use. Plus, I love sweets!

Hey, remember those sexy Hindenburg people? I had always meant to do one more, and this was actually my favorite one, but I never got the time to do it.....maybe this summer. Here's the lineart and my rough color sketch:

Finally, just a random sketch from my sketchbook I decided to color real quick:

Jeremy also tells me that owls are also out of fashion, but I liked owls before they were in fashion. So there!

More updates later. This was our first week with Frank Stockton in my fashion class! Our first assignment is to make an illustration for "something you wouldn't mind shortening your life for" (Doesn't "being an illustrator" fit into that category...?)
It's a toughie, but I'll have some sketches for next week.
Maybe they'll include buffets! Or bears!

One is the Loneliest Number.

2008-04-08T18:29:00.017-04:00

     So, this is the first post in this new blog, and it's a little intimidating.
There's probably not even anyone actually looking at this yet, but I'd still like to show you, imaginary audience, some nice things.

     The launch of this blog corresponds with the update of Ciesemier.com to v2.1, so I'll take a moment to point out some new pieces and explain a bit about them:

     Most of my new stuff is from a class I've been taking this semester which covers fashion and lifestyle illustration, taught in thirds by different teachers. The first and only actual MICA teacher is the always enlightening Daniel Krall, who assigned the class to pick a specific time and place, and then do 3 illustrations incorporating modern-day clothes from designers. Literally, my first thought was "the Hindenburg disaster!" so naturally I have a series of very sultry people lounging around with cigarettes while the Hindenburg goes up in flames, one of which is shown below.

     The series isn't strictly accurate, as there weren't actually any ladies (in Alexander McQueen couture, no less!) shimmying down ropes, with nonchalant men smoking and falling in the background. I tried a little different technique than my usual pen-and-photoshop-flat-color, and used pencil lines and more shading. It was a nice departure, but I think I could push it a lot more should I ever try it again in the future. More texture!

     The second guest teacher who I've had the pleasure to be taught by is illustration-god Sam Weber. It was really awesome to be able to see all his original work, because it's just sooo....perfect. I'll never be able to use the same style he uses, but his talent just makes me cry silent tears.
     Sam really dislikes pencil lines used in conjunction with photoshop coloring. He really, really dislikes them. Accordingly, I switched back to good old pen 'n photoshop for an assignment based on the hierarchies of playing cards. The piece shown here is the Queen. If you check out my website, King has a collection of animal heads, and Jack has a shady wine cellar.

     The theme I was going for was "Eccentric, slightly dangerous millionaires with collections". This one was real tough to think of the concepts for, but I'm happy with how things turned out in the end. I feel like there is still a little something to be desired in the Jack, though.
     The other assignment Sam had us do was a theater poster for any Shakespeare play. After initially taking a liking to the imagery in the Tempest, I ended up doing a piece for Macbeth. I've never read the play, but I liked the idea of contrasting the three fates (as lovely ladies) with a bloodthirsty and grizzled Macbeth.

     I'm pretty happy with how the composition and colors work in the poster, and the way Macbeth's face and hand look, but Sam Weber harped on me for the use of pencil lines everywhere else. I think I agree with him, using pen lines for the hair and cloak would probably give a cleaner look. Perhaps if I have time this summer I can re-ink things. For another approach to the poster by a talented person much more knowledgeable of the actual play, check out the acrylic stylings of Sam Bosma. Ana Benaroya's Blog also shows her solutions for a King Lear poster. There was a lot of great work that went up!

This week was Sam Weber's last week, and it was great having him around, hearing his opinions, and seeing his heartbreakingly-good artwork. Plus, both my lady and gentlemen friends in the class agree that he has the most perfect hair curls of anyone we've ever seen. Sam left us with some advice he gleaned from a video of Todd McFarlane drawing and giving advice: "When in doubt, block it out." (preferably with a log.)
Next week our guest teacher is the extremely talented Frank Stockton, who I am looking forward to having in class! We don't know what our new assignment is going to be yet, so things should be interesting.

So, I guess this post ended up being much longer than I expected, and if you stuck with it and read it all, THANK YOU! I owe you a nice crisp high-five! Also, if you have a link to me and I missed putting you on my links list, or if you'd just like to BE on my links list, let me know! I'd be happy to put you up. I haven't had a links list for a looong time, and it's time for me to pay up! There are so many illustrators and students that do great work, it makes me proud to be one too.

That's all for now, but my next post should have some sneak peeks of my Senior Thesis project! (Mysterious portraits! Done in acrylic??!) Any comments or critiques are greatly appreciated, or thoughts about Ciesemier.com! Is it easy to view? Easy to get around? Does it look fat in those colors? I hope y'all have a lovely evening--I bought some York peppermint patties, so mine is sure to be delicious.