Elephant print

My goal here was to draw an elephant that was different from my usual kid's book elephants. To give it a very different look, I ran the illustration  through some filters to get an imperfect press-printed quality. Click on the image to get a larger view- you'll see that the inks spread and the spot colors were printed a little bit off-registration. Fun effect!

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My Sketchbook

A page of fun little sketches in my sketchbook. I did some of these while watching TV (I get hairstyle inspiration) and others while watching my son play (and between putting together puzzles and playing with him).

The Amazing L Boy!

My 4 1/2 year old son has been drawing superheroes non-stop for the last month. It's pretty amazing considering up until 5 weeks ago he never tried to draw a person and the strides he's made have been wonderful to watch.

We were sitting on the sofa watching his one cartoon of the day and I just started drawing Leo as a hero. Leo decided he wanted to color it in. And then the show ended and he was hungry for breakfast so he didn't color much but I really liked what he did:

And here are a few of Leo's original drawings:

 Batman

 Hulk

Not bad!

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Toulouse Lautrec visit

As President of the Boston Chapter of the Graphic Artists Guild, I get to create some of the titles for our events and social gatherings. For this Trip to the MFA (Museum of Fine Arts) image, I literally had about 30 minutes before I needed to send out an email announcing the event.

I started with a block similar in color to the MFA Boston's logo:

Added some text:

Next, I wanted to get some background going. I love texture, as long as it doesn't take away from the message. The most appropriate thing to use would be a Toulouse Lautrec image but, last time I checked my art vault, I don't own any and I didn't want to steal anybody else's photo of one of T.L.'s paintings.

Toulouse Lautrec created so much of his work in MontMartre (an area of Paris). Fortunately, I visited France in 2002 and a quick peak through my photos later, I had two iconic images: Moulin Rouge and Sacre Coeur:

Play with the opacity of the photos a bit, put it all together and you get:

 

And the email went out right on time!

More about the Graphic Artists Guild

More about the Boston Chapter of the Graphic Artists Guild

More about the Toulouse Lautrec exhibit at the MFA Boston

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Hey- That's me!

*clicking the above image will take you to the Tech Therapy website to view the (short) video.

I was at the New England Business Expo last month and I met Jennifer Shaheen, The Technology Therapist from the Technology Therapy Group.

Because of all the concerns with Facebook's policies towards what you post on Facebook, I asked Jennifer: What is an Illustrator/Designer to do? How do we post our work and NOT give Facebook the rights to use it?

Her answer is very interesting:
http://techtherapy.tv/video/questions-how-to-protect-intellectual-properties-online/

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Children's book scenes

Below is a copy of the email newsletter I just sent out to my list of book editors and publishers showing off some of my illustrations of kids doing activities in various parts of Israel.

Climbing Mt. Masada; Visiting the Western Wall, Walking along the wall surrounding the Old City; Floating and getting muddy at the Dead Sea.

What I'm working on

A sketch from my sketchbook of Zach Galifianakis in "The Hangover", a logo I delivered this week and another sketch to finish for a book for Sterling Publishing.

What I'm working on

I thought I'd show some snippets of what I'm working on right now. Today it's mostly illustrations:

Above are a couple of illustrations from a book I'm working on for Sterling Publishing, and then a couple of illustrations I'm working on for fun (like the Hulk, drawn with just one line).

Here's another illustration for that book I'm working on. I started with a scanned sketch over which I drew my black line in Illustrator and then added the tones.

And that's been my day so far- how are you?

Cowboy Cactus packaging illustration

This was one of those really cool jobs that I love to do. It was sort of like illustrating a Flow Bee ad!

 

I recently illustrated the label for a cactus dressed as a cowboy that goes on your car's antenna. What a crazy product but apparently this thing sells like hotcakes and it was time to update the antiquated packaging (see below).

And, before you ask, no I didn't get a free Cowboy Cactus so don't expect to be able to spot my car in the mall parking lot.

This is how the old packaging looked. How hard is it to read the text printed over the cactus? And what's up with that guy's mustache? My version makes it easier to understand where the cactus goes and although I offered an option with a less silly guy the art director chose to go without him.

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Faces 6

More faces and a whole tiger. OK, so I didn't draw the tiger- my son put a sticker on my drawing and I thought it was cute...

Campaign logo in orange and blue

I recently designed the logo for candidate Jim Henderson for Secretary of the Commonwealth for Massachusetts.

Jim (an Independent) chose to keep away from the usual red white and blue and go for something a little less usual for a color scheme. Beyond that I was left alone to create a few different concepts from which Jim chose and requested revisions with the final version being the image at the top.
(BTW- in order to create this stylized version of the state of Massachusetts, I first drew an exact profile of the state, and let me tell you, it's a very wavy, inlet-y state! See all the way below)

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Since there would be occasion to print the logo on orange shirts I was asked to create a (nearly) reversed version.

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Jim's business card includes a number of bar codes (on the front and back) to allow people to scan the card to learn more, make a contribution, join the team or get a reminder to vote. Very cool.

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And then the sticker design for his campaign:

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Finally, the detailed version of the Mass. Map I mentioned above:

 

Let me know what you think!

(and if you're interested in learning more about Jim, here's his website: http://jimforsoc.com/)

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Eddie Spaghetti with the Meatball Eyes

My submission to theydrawandcook.com was accepted! You can find mine here or go to the main page to check out all the other recipes.

If you haven't see this site yet, it's a blog where artists submit a recipe they illustrated and already they've had submissions from all around the world. My friend, Lisa, turned me on to it and now I check in a few times a week to see what's new! BTW- Check out Lisa's Girls Rule prints. They're really beautifully designed.

The style of my illustration is a little different from my usual stuff- I was paying homage to a wonderful illustrator, Bob Staake, who uses very bold shapes to form his characters. So the chef is either made up of or cut out of a lot of different ovals. then everything was layered and shadows were added sparingly. Check out Bob's illustrations- I think you'll realize that you've seen him around (most notably on covers of the New Yorker).

Oh, and yeah- those are real meatballs. I defrosted a bunch that I had made, photographed them and then ate the evidence.

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Ella's Thank You Card

My niece's thank-you (folding) card.

Springsteen poster

I found this old Springsteen poster at a home I was visiting and just had to take a picture of it. From what I can tell, it's from 1975 and what I love about it is that it looks like it was used to line some cat's litter box before it was framed. The wrinkles and tears really give the poster character. Last summer I found a great Frank Zappa poster that was in even worse shape!

In case you're a Springsteen memorabilia fan, I found this site that gives you what seems to be quite a complete Springsteen history with images of posters and tickets.

 

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What I Did On My Vacation

Recently, I was in Texas and New Mexico for a 5 day vacation. Just before I left I got a call from a senior manager at Scholastic who asked me if I would do some sketches for an internal presentation. They liked the quality of the sketches I had done for previous jobs (which I then went on to finish and color) and requested that these be done as sketches. Great! I knew I could fit in some work while I was away; what I didn't realize was just how many sketches there would be! It turned out that there were 4 pages of progressions (which they had sketched out very basically with stick figures) which illustrated how a certain segment offers important benefits to Scholastic.

So I started out with simple sketches with a ballpoint pen in my sketchbook (usually in the hotel room while my son napped) like this:

Which I then redrew with a nicer drawing pen:

When I returned to Boston I arranged the separate illustrations on the page and added halftones:

Another page:

A detail from the page above:

I was very happy with how they turned out.

Just before I got on the plane to Texas, I was asked if I could work on a sketched-out logo (same style) for their segment as well. The concept was Entrepreneurial ideas/Innovation and to include the words and phrases you see below. My client's wish was to avoid using the lightbulb cliche as a symbol of innovation, so I  created a futuristic-looking device that is (pardon the pun) light years ahead of the bulb.

Well, I can't even tell you how much I enjoyed creating these illustrations and logo. The fun of my job is finding creative ways to express ideas and I got to do just that! And Scholastic was very happy with the work. I even got to draw an Ed version of Clifford for one of the pages!

 

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Eviction cartoon

3 Scarves, a Neck Tie and a Drawstring walk into a train...

The T (trolley) is a great place to sketch. New people are always coming on and best of all, a lot of riders tend to stand or sit relatively still so I can get a decent chance at doing a drawing I'm happy with.

Looking over these sketches right now, I just realized each person is wearing something around their neck... I guess it's not so unusual for a Boston winter.

5 Faces: One Liners

I have a section of my website I call one-liners (you'll find it as a category in the "ed" section) where each illustration is made up of, you guessed it, one line. These were some illustrations I sketched in my sketchbook before I transposed them to my computer and redid them with cleaner lines.

Sometimes I like to trace the lines with my eyes just to make me dizzy = )

Value vs Growth Investing

Out this month in Black Enterprise magazine is a great article that I had the privilege to illustrate. It discusses the merits of both types of investing, Value and Growth, to help enable the reader to make better decisions.

I was asked by the editor to come up with a couple of sketch ideas that would depict the two investing options and this is the one that was chosen. I couldn't possibly convey how many poses I went through before deciding on the two in the illustration- I didn't want this to be too testosterone-driven or make it look like either figure has the advantage- so both men are depicted as if they had just been going about their usual day at the office when someone gave them some armor and a sword and told them to fight.

 

The article together with the illustration.

To read this article, check out the March 2010 issue of Black Enterprise Magazine or go here (my illustration doesn't appear on the online version).

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On the Train

Last night I went to see the Boston premiere of the movie: American Artifact The Rise of American Rock Poster Art. It was a good, not great, movie but the visuals were entrancing and the history of the posters was very interesting. If the topic interests you even slightly then it's worth seeing this movie.

I took the train to the screening at Emerson College in Boston and got to sketch people getting on and off the T. I love this time of year- there are always great hats and scarves that really accentuate angles and add flair to a drawing.

After the movie, the director, Merle Becker, did a question and answer session (and with the lights finally up I was able to do some sketching. See my sketches of the director, above).

Then it was time to get back on the train to sketch and go home where I'm now thinking about how and where to set up my own silk screening studio...

Faces5

Another page of faces from my sketchbook.

Drawing on the Table

I just found this sketch I did a few years ago.

I was teaching a cartooning class at a local museum school and some of the kids were interested in drawing and others (despite some valiant attempts on my part!) were just there to eat candy and do some doodling.

This particular student suddenly got really into what he was doing to the point where he got up on the table while still drawing and remained there for another 5 minutes finishing up a landscape to go with whatever creature he had done. I grabbed my sketchbook and recorded this quick sketch of him.

That was a good drawing day (for me and for him).

@CommunicateGood

This is the stripped down view of the background

 I recently designed this Twitter background for @CommunicateGood.

CommunicateGood is the Twitter page for Rich Polt which coincides with his blog, Communicate Good to talk about "...communications, doing good in the world and the intersection of the two."

Rich is the owner of the PR Agency Louder Than Words, a PR consulting firm, and a good guy doing great work. Or is he a great guy doing good work?

 

This is the view you get when going through Twitter 

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Happy Groundhog Day 2010!

Welcome to another Groundhog Day. I'll just bet it's felt like so much more than 365 days since the last Groundhog's Day and I appreciate you coming by to check out my yearly GH card.

I've been creating a card for this rodentastic holiday since 1992 (To be honest, I've skipped a few along the way) and I'm happy to come back to it in 2010 despite the crushing deadlines, a sick 4 year old and lack of enough sleep. But enough about me...

See you again next year!
You can check out a bunch more Groundhog Day illustrations on this blog by clicking HERE.

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Jaws

I had a night of insomnia recently and found myself on the sofa watching old movies. One of those movies was JAWS and I couldn't help reaching for my sketchbook. This is a (quick) sketch of the shark hunter guy who became lunch at the end of the movie. Behind him is easily the worst shark drawing I've ever created but it certainly needed to be included.

So I got to thinking about an artist I was led to by an instructor at RISD. I was beginning to experiment with a cross hatching style (you can see my more recent cross hatch illustrations in the FRED portfolio on my website) and my teacher sent me to the library to check out Murray Tinkelman. It seems he was plagued with insomnia (if memory serves) and did much of his work late at night while watching TV.

Check out Murray's stuff. It's so much better than my (quick) sketch above and he certainly would have drawn a better shark. http://tinkelmanstudio.com/portfolio.html

(I'll draw a new shark soon for a future post)

Optimism

An illustration I recently completed about thinking positive. It's a new year, and despite tragedies occurring all around the world (Haiti immediately springs to mind), we all do our best work when there's hope/positive thinking. I read recently that approximately 50% of American households donated to the earthquake relief effort in Haiti- that kind of outpouring goes a long way to OFFER hope.

The quote I used in the illustration is a little pedestrian when considered with what I wrote above, but I just love the message it sends to us as individuals:

"The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser- in case you thought optimism was dead." -Robert Brault