illustration

Witches Continued

Llewellyn

Been using the iPad and Procreate more and more these past few weeks, especially for finished illustrations. This one above was the 2nd of several illustrations I’m working on for Llewellyn’s upcoming ‘Witches Companion’ annual. I’m still working out the bugs in this new software, but I’m enjoying the feel of the drawing materials, and am looking forward to trying the Penguin finishes in this manner (even though it might mean a little more prep work on the front end, at least in the early stages, until I figure out how to streamline operations).

Anniversary

Dover

I and my wife’s 38th wedding anniversary today. Going out for a seafood dinner this evening in celebration.

Not much work going on here in the early part of December, but today I had a coloring book page update to Dover’s President Coloring book. This is a book I’ve contributed to once before, four years ago, when the ‘previous guy’ inexplicably got elected. The rest of the book is filled with similar looking illustrations by a couple other illustrators. There is some talk that the publisher may consider redoing the entire book so it has more of a consistent look. I’m hoping this happens, as I’d love a chance to take a crack at it.

Color Book

Dover, self portrait

Since I began doing more and more book publishing projects over the past few years, I have been posting less and less online samples (as I work on them), mostly due to pre-publication contractual obligations. A color book that I did for Dover last year (2015) has hit the market, and seems to be getting some decent customer reviews, and in a few of the reviews, they have posted thumbnails of most of the pages from the book, so I figure the cat is out of the bag on this one, so I’m going to post the illustrations from this book on this blog at long last. This was a ‘scratchboard/woodcut’ style coloring book project, and I was given little direction other than ‘use a variety of subject matter, flora, animals, people, landscape, abstract’, and basically anything that struck my fancy. It was a fun project in that respect (though I didn’t care for the ‘abstract’ topic, and you’ll see there’s only one example, and a poor one, at that). I even managed to sneak in a self portrait in one of the illustrations. I actually got a fan email shortly after this was published, which was a nice bonus.

So, anyways, here’s all the drawings from that book (some of them are in color, as I was asked to do a couple color versions for the cover and advertising), and here’s a link where to buy it on Amazon. Happy Coloring! (and if you like this one, there’s an even bigger follow-up volume that will be hitting the market soon, all animal images, that will include the animals from this book, plus fifty more)







Album Cover (maybe)

Jukejoint Handmedowns, music, self portrait

callwildweb
After six months of ‘busy’, I find myself suddenly in the summer slowdown period. Keeping myself busy with personal projects, and since the band is in the planning stages of another album, I got ahead of the ball and started work on the album cover. The concept of this next CD is a collection of songs about our home state, Michigan, and we’ve only just begun gathering and learning the songs, but as with the previous three albums, I’ve gotten the cover art done way ahead of the actual recording. I may change my mind in the coming months, and some revisions may still be taking place in the design, but so far I’m liking the direction.