Days 41 through 45

Barrons, National Geographic, River Styx

Day Forty One

Today’s illustration finishes up a project for the National Geographic School Publishers that I started a couple weeks ago. This black and white spot illustration was a latecomer to the project and only just got okayed a couple days ago.

Day Forty Two

Today’s illustration was an assignment for an upcoming issue of Barrons. Got it done a bit ahead of deadline since I had some time to spare today.

Day Forty Three

Today’s illustration is a fiction piece for River Styx magazine.

Day Forty Four

A personal quick paint sketch today. Been thinking a lot about trees lately, as subjects. I ride my bike through nearby Riverside Park on a daily basis, and I’ve been noticing more and more of the interesting variety of trees as I pass by them. I might like to take a sketchbook down there sometime and just fill up a book with nothing but trees.
Yesterday evening I played a music gig at an art gallery in Ada, and was wandering around looking at the paintings during our rest breaks, and it sort of got me inspired to play around again with some ‘virtual paints’ this morning. Nothing overly ambitious, just a fast and loose tree sketch.

Day Forty Five (halfway point)

After a very busy week, I decided to take Sunday off. Today’s drawing is a rough color sketch for an assignment for one of my regular clients, where they asked for a Roy Lichtenstein-esque scene with a very particular set-up and text. I love assignments like this, where I can analyze and emulate another artists’ style, as I usually come out of it with new techniques and tricks that I wouldn’t otherwise have stumbled across. The finish will probably be a lot tighter in the linework and will most likely be posted tomorrow.

Days 31 through 33

Barrons, Business North Carolina, National Geographic

Day Thirty One

Today’s illustration was a quick turnaround assignment for Barrons (since it’s such a strong horizontal, I’ve also provided a larger version that you can see by clicking on the image above). Going to be a busy coming week, and no complaints, because it’s a nice change of pace from how the rest of this year has been shaping up. Keep them assignments coming folks! Now, back to the ‘virtual drawing board’.

Day Thirty Two

Spent most of the weekend either recording vocal tracks for an upcoming cd for the Jukejoint Handmedowns or working on the above illustration for what used to be National Geographic School Publishing (the company has changed hands between now and when this illustration was originally assigned). This illustration goes along with the ‘cockatoo’ illustration from a few days ago, and a black and white illustration that I’ll likely be finishing up sometime this week, once the ok on the sketch comes down the pike.

Day Thirty Three

This is the start of what is proving to be a very busy week for me. Aside from a number of assignments, I’ve also scheduled several music practices throughout the week in preparation for several gigs in the second half of the month. I’ve several samples to post today, as I take a short break from the action.
The drawing above was a rough sketch for a fiction piece for a new client. Below is a series of illustrations that I did for Business North Carolina. This is for a rather dry story about banking and takeovers and business meetings, and as a way to spice it up, they wanted rough sketches to look like ‘movie storyboards’. The hard part for me, of course, as a detailed oriented scratchboard illustrator is in leaving things loose and unfinished, so this was a particular challenge. Originally I wanted to do these using a style that looked like ‘design markers’ but I had a hard time working with the medium in a way that I was happy with, and after several false starts, I went back to watercolor wash instead.

I also was asked today to provide a black and white version of the ‘parrot’ illustration that I had completed this weekend. The size was slightly different, so I had to do a little bit of manipulation of the design elements. (pictured below, and see the previous post for the color version)

Back to work…

Days 28 through 30

Barrons, ChronicleHE, National Geographic

Day Twenty Eight

Back from the holiday weekend, and working today on a rough sketch for an upcoming cover assignment due next week for one of my magazine clients.

Day Twenty Nine

Today’s illustration is an assignment for Barron’s. Fun to get back to scratchboard again, and since I’ve been experimenting with different styles the past few weeks, it almost felt like relearning this style again from scratch (pardon the pun).

Day Thirty

A third of the way through my self imposed ‘ninety days of drawing’ challenge. Today I had several rough sketches due for a handful of upcoming assignments (a sampling of which are pictured below) plus I started work on the finishes for the NG job (above).

Days 19 through 22

comics, Freaks of Nurture Comics, National Geographic

Day Nineteen:

Today’s drawings are a couple rough sketches for an upcoming project for a west coast client. I had done a rather large project for them about two years ago, and hadn’t heard anything since, but then got a call out of the blue from them a couple weeks ago (turns out they are riding out the recession like a lot of folks, cutting back and scaling down, and have only just recently began assigning work again). There will be more to this project later, but for now, this is what I’ve been given the green light on.

Day Twenty:

Spent a lot of today working on rough sketches for upcoming projects, so along that vein, today’s illustration is more along the lines of a ‘quick sketch’.

Day Twenty One:

Today I started laying out the next comic feature for the ‘Freaks of Nurture’ project (and began the finished artwork, sample panel above). This one is a departure of sorts from the previous ones, where I’m adapting a ‘story’ that doesn’t really have much humor in it, but it is nicely written and I’m enthused to get going on it.

Day Twenty Two:

For today’s drawing, I did another experiment using the paint tools. Last winter, I did an illustration for a website called ‘Covered’, where artists submit illustrations based on old comic book covers. I decided to try this again (although this time I didn’t bother submitting it to the site, since it usually takes about a month or so to be posted, and they prefer you don’t post it to your own site until that time), and this time chose an old fifties ‘romance’ comic book for my inspiration.

Pirates Pirates Pirates

National Geographic

Spent a goodly portion of this week working on a series of illustrations for an adaptation of Treasure Island for National Geographic School Publishing. This project has been on the docket for about two months, most of it in a holding pattern awaiting sketch approvals. This was a fun and challenging project, but very time consuming. I’ve posted all the illustrations (not in chronological order), and if you click on the smaller version, you can see a more detailed view.

The rest I’m going to post in thumbnail form, and you can see the larger detailed version by clicking on the small icons.