Detective of the Zodiac

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

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.