Paul McCartney

I went with my family to the Paul McCartney concert at Fenway Park in Boston yesterday and was wowed by the performance(s) and the venue so I decided to create a tribute. Illustrated above is one of Paul McCartney's guitars surrounded by the songs he performed.

Below is a photo I took on my iPhone which I had to enhance to try to get a better image (too many things conspired against me- a low-quality camera, bright skies behind a dark arena and vid screens that were often too bright for the camera to deal with).

And then there is a video I took (again with the iPhone) of the light show and fireworks during Live and Let Die:


If you're a Beatles fan, this show would not have dissapointed you. What a great night!

Baby- that's my logo!

I was at a party with friends this past weekend when I spotted something familiar. A 7-week old named Jonah was sporting the logo that I had created for a summer camp! What a kick it was to see something I had designed, completely out of context and while in my civilian identity (when I wasn't working). Isn't he a cutie?

Here's the logo:The logo went through many, many incarnations before we finally settled on this look, these colors and the gazebo which is one of the first things you see when you drive into the camp. I'm very proud of how it turned out.

2 (Cool) Old Guys

I decided to put myself through an exercise today: Design a poster that makes these old guys cool.

My motivation was to keep things fresh while also updating my website (this will go in the 'design' section under 'posters'). Yeah, I used some popular conventions in the design (the style of the photo, edgy type) but I hope you will agree that I made the design my own with the concept.

First, I decided that these guys should be in a band, and what better name for a band than going with exactly what they are? It helps that they are dressed hip (certainly better than I was dressed when I shot the photo in Boston. I recall a pair of flip flops.). Then I gave them a venue and a couple of performance dates. (If you took a few minutes to Google the venue you would find out that it's an assisted living community where the median age is 80. Just having fun!)

I considered putting something about the type of music they play but decided against it- leaving this out suggests that if you were cool you would already know what they play.

Portrait for Twitter and Facebook

Cindy Bernat is a successful real estate agent in NYC who decided she wanted to shake things up a little bit, which, during a down economy and terrible housing market, isn't such a bad idea. So she contacted me to illustrate her portrait for use on her Twitter and Facebook accounts (with a revamp to her email signature).

I worked from a photo she supplied me to create the portrait, then we discussed what the background might look like. My first pass (see below) was a background comprised of random New York buildings.
Cindy felt that the buildings were too non-specific and the feel was of an area of NY that she doesn't represent. She also wanted to be wearing a white shirt with a collar and a more straight-forward necklace. She provided me with some thoughts of what she wanted in her background and I began to work on it.

And then I pulled it all together, adding color but keeping the buildings a gray tone so they wouldn't compete with the portrait.
Finally, as you'll see in the final image at the top of this post, we added the 'SOLD' sign and pulled her collar out to overlap her jacket (she knows fashion much better than I do!). And the image is complete.

If you want to see her new image in action, Cindy can be found at www.twitter.com/cindybernat

French Windows

A bit of a departure from my usual 'ED' (cartoon-y) stuff, this photo-realistic 'FRED' image based on a photo I took in Paris is one I've been working on for quite some time. I'll open up the file from time to time and just work on bits until I get distracted and put it away for another time.

I really like the yellow-ish color of the building and how the areas where the sun hits get bleached of any color. Someday I'll finish it up...

Crocodile and Goldfish

A quick sketch for a promo book illustration. I was really trying to show the care with which the crocodile is carrying the fishbowl.

And here's a picture I took in Tanzania of a decidedly less friendly crocodile trying to take a bite out of a wildebeest it had sneaked up on. Somehow, the wildebeest got away unscathed, but probably had a heart attack an hour later.

Bird fountain

I was in Jerusalem and I found this bird sitting on top of a large sculpture topped with a bird spitting water. From time to time the real bird would reach down and drink some of the water coming out of the fake bird's mouth. There was another photographer at the fountain but I don't think he noticed what was happening at the top of the fountain. Perhaps he is writing in his own blog that the other photographer near the fountain did not notice the two-headed yak with a tattoo of Isaac Mizrahi on his neck that had just jumped over the walls of the Old City, but I still think I got a cooler shot.

Peeling sign in Vermont

I found this sign while traveling through Vermont. Although it is in a state of disrepair and conveys a message that is not very enticing (dirty, old, out of date- probably like the kitchen used to make breakfast) it is still employed by the restaurant to attract (!) customers. Buyer beware!