Another illustration I did this week for Hudson Valley Magazine. Leaving August and getting ready for September and encroaching Autumn, so it feels appropriate.
Month: August 2016
Book Pirates
AHMM, ChronicleHE
Things are starting to pick up now that the summer is winding down. Besides the ongoing ‘coloring book’ project that I’m currently working on (samples to come upon publication), and several book projects either awaiting sketch approval or promised and expecting to start any day now, I’ve also been getting a few short turnaround projects. For the past few days at least, it has started to feel like normalcy. Above, is an illustration I finished up this morning for the Chronicle on ‘Book Piracy’, and below, another fiction piece for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.
Big Wheels
Main Line Today, Today Media, Uncle Goose Toys
Started working on a new coloring book project (samples to be posted once the book is published), and in the meantime, had a few short deadline projects. The illustration above was for Main Line Today magazine for an article about super competitive pre-school admissions. The article was more slanted toward a ‘Hunger Games’ parody, but once they mentioned ‘big wheels’, I started picturing something more along the lines of “Mad Max Fury Road”. I posted the sketch for this in the previous post, and here’s how the finish turned out. Below are a few new portraits of Hillary and Donald for a set of Presidential Wooden Blocks that I did several years ago (and have been providing ‘just in case’ portraits in the intervening years). I jokingly said to the client that since we are starting to amass a collection of ‘also rans’ that we perhaps ought to put together a set of ‘Loser Blocks’ with all the candidates who lost the presidential bid (who knows, maybe I’ll just do a series of portraits along this line on my own, just for fun).
Sketches Sketches Sketches
Delaware Today, Taylor Design, Today Media
Just finished up the sketch phase of an upcoming book project this morning (80 illustrations total), and also had a few sketches for upcoming projects come due the past few days, so I thought I’d post a few of them. Starting work tomorrow on another coloring book project, and have a few book projects lined up for the coming months. Still in the middle of the ‘summer doldrums’, but there are indications that work its starting to pick up again after a long dry spell. The sketch above is for a magazine assignment that I’ll be finishing up next week (sort of a ‘Hunger Games/Mad Max’ scenario with toddlers competing for pre-school admissions), and the two below are for a corporate holiday greeting card, that may or may not go to finish in the following months.
Coming Up
David Carrier Law, Dover
I’ve shared the above illustration before. It was from the first of my ‘scratchboard coloring books’ that I did for Dover last year, and the project has spawned a sequel which should be hitting the stores very soon, of a collection of ‘all animals’ illustrations in a similar scratchboard style. Meanwhile, I had proposed a third book to the publisher a couple weeks ago, doing an entire collection of ‘trees’ along similar lines. The illustration above was one of my favorites from the first collection, and I was itching to do some more. The project was given a go ahead and I’ve begun work on the next collection. This also coincides with a side project that I’d been contemplating for the past two years. I’ve been taking a lot of walks in a nearby park, and noticing how many interesting trees I pass on a daily basis, and I’ve thought many times of bringing a sketchbook down and seeing how many of the trees in the park I can draw, and perhaps fill up a sketchbook for the first time in my life (I’m not one of those artists that carry a sketchbook around with them all the time, constantly drawing, and it takes a concerted effort on my part to even fill one of the many sketchbooks I’ve got laying around). So, anyways, I’m looking forward to working on this project, and should have some samples to share with you later in the year, when the book nears publication.
I’m also currently in the early stages of another of those “Who Was” books for Penguin, and it should keep me busy for the latter half of the year.
In the meantime, I also finished up another of those ‘cartoon strips’ for a local elder care lawyer. I’ve been doing several of these throughout the year, but I don’t always post samples, since they are fairly similar to each other. This time, however, the style and subject matter was a bit different, so I thought I’d share this latest one. I had suggested that as a change of pace, they take a break from the usual ‘Mary Worth’-style comics and try a Disney/Pogo Possum-style animal scenario. These usually run in several West Michigan newspapers (in a variety of sizes and formats depending on the paper), with the ‘teaser strip’ running on a front page, and the larger ‘conclusion strip’ running somewhere inside.
