Recent Book Illustrations

I recently completed illustrations for a new book by a local (to Boston) author, Nancy Finn. The name of the book is e-Patients Live Longer and it is a book that describes how to be an e-Patient who uses the tools available in today's wired world to become empowered and knowledgeable about your health issues and take the proper actions and precautions that protect you from making critical mistakes. Yes, that's a long sentence but it describes the book so well!

I really enjoyed working directly with the author to work out what images would best describe the chapter and we went through a few rounds of sketches so I could refine the details before I created the final art.

Leo Monster

My son started Kindergarten last week and a few nights ago we had curriculum night. The teacher left out paper and crayons for parents to leave their child a note and this is what I left Leo in his cubby.

Tan Lines

I feel a little awkward telling you I went on vacation after I've already returned, but I guess it's better than announcing to the world that our home is unoccupied and available for plundering. We had a wonderful time and I was actually able to do some work between visits to the pool, the beach and, most importantly, the bed.

I did a number of sketches while away but I really wanted to show off the tan lines from my thongs first:

That's hot. I know.

And below is a drawing I did in my sketchbook (in a sketchier style than my usual) and then colored in Adobe Illustrator and finished in Photoshop.

It's good to be back!

Plaid Boy

Plaid Boy! Able to match his shirt to the background!

Actually, this is me playing with some of the new tools in Adobe Illustrator CS5.

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Float Around

From the sketchbook.

Changing the World- Tikkun Olam

This is a t-shirt design I created for a summer camp in New York. The concept is based on Tikkun Olam which means 'repairing the world' in Hebrew. The idea behind Tikkun Olam is that we are all responsible for the world and society and must work to improve the lives of everyone around us.

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Some other designs before the client chose the final version:

I like this one because it's very straight-forward. There's the Israeli flag with the bottom (stylized) stripe doubling as the soil which is giving way to seedlings.

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 This is a fun one and might make a nice poster with additional colors.

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Maybe too straight-forward? I like the figurative meaning of the earlier designs and this one requires no interpretation- it's a little too obvious. I included this concept because I like the symmetry of the design.

Icarus/Octopus

My homage to Matisse's Icarus paper cut. A poster, print or postcard is available at DeviantArt.

Characters: Doodle Roll

I received a call from Jan at Big Blue Dot (a branding company for kids I've wanted to work with for years) to create characters for a new product called Doodle Roll. I was given a lot of room to be creative with these characters and I hope you agree that they turned out fun and friendly! In fact, if you go to the Doodle Roll website (see below) you can watch them move (a bit)!

 

Below is a page of second round sketches from which the client chose the top 6 characters for me to create a final illustration.

Final illustrations were created in Adobe Freehand and Adobe Illustrator (I was in the middle of completing a switch to Illustrator at the time of this project).

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

French Fries

Supersized fries may be gone from McDonalds but there's still an expanding (pun intended!) need for supersized pants.

(And for a funny extra-large anecdote, check out this article on how a pair of over-sized pant(ie)s actually prevented a house fire. I guess there's some good in the bad.)

Buff's Pub's New Shirt

Buff's Pub in Newton, MA is selling a new t-shirt I designed. For those not from the area, the font is the same one used by the Boston Red Sox baseball team. The Pub is something of a mini sports bar so it just made sense to connect the two images (and in the interest of full disclosure, Dave M. from Buff's came up with the concept).

Now, I'm not suggesting you should go to Buff's just to buy the t-shirt, but considering Buff's has (in my humble opinion) THE BEST buffalo wings, it's certainly worth a trip.

And here are some long-sleeved shirts I designed late last year. Most of these shirts have sold out.

Update: The day after I posted this blog update, I got a call from Buff's to reorder the Sox shirts- the shirts are hot!

Business of Art

Header illustration and modified design for an event I helped produce for the Boston Chapter of the Graphic Artists Guild. I was highly influenced by Bob Staake who I mentioned before as an influence on my Eddie Spaghetti illustration. If you click Bob's link, turn off your sound. (People- please don't force visitors to your website to listen to music!)

The idea here is that creative people in general don't like to deal with the 'business' part of their business and that will only hurt them. So here's a guy deeply entrenched in being creative, who is worried about having to do the business stuff...

Character: 3-eyed Purple Jumping Monster

Adobe Illustrator CS5 has some great new tools and I thought I'd try them out with this monster dude. While this guy's body looks painted, all of the color is actually vector! If you know the difference between vector and raster art, you'll realize just how cool this really is. To watch a tutorial on 5 of the new features, click here.

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Step Carefully

When walking behind a slimy monster, be sure to carefully step over the tail. Don't do what Han Solo did to Jabba (54 second mark).

Groundhog Day 2011

It's that time of the year again when the Groundhog comes out of his den and looks for his shadow. That is, unless he can't get out of his home because the exit is plugged with icicles and covered with 4 feet of snow...

I live in Boston and we've been inundated with snow to the point where I'm running out of places to put the white (and sometimes yellow) stuff. And that's why I created this particular Groundhog Day cartoon this year. Enjoy!

*You can check out a bunch more Groundhog Day illustrations on this blog by clicking HERE.

By the way, you can check out the official website of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club here.

Characters: Monster with Top Hat

Here's a charming fellow I sketched up the other day. I was interested in creating a bit of texture on his skin which I continued when I added color.

I picture him saying: "Thank you for inviting me over. Your cat was delicious..."

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Dr. Brown's Cream Soda

Mmmmm...

Monster Coffee

Pieces of my new promo postcard highlighting 

the character development and kid's book sections of my website. 

You have to look closely, but there's a tiny little monster 

licking up the spilled sugar in the last drawing.

And here's the final postcard.

Not Fake Poop

Just having some cartoon fun...

Characters postcard

I created some creature characters recently for Big Blue Dot (they do branding for kids) and it really lit a fire under me to create more characters/monsters/creatures. So I have a series of postcards in queue for printing and I just got this first one back:

This postcard is meant to reflect the "ED" section on my website's homepage and to also let clients know that I love (love love!) to create characters- be they humans, monsters, aliens or something new altogether (I'm picturing Scooby Doo saying "Ru-ro!" at that last part).

If you're not on my mailing list and you want one of these cards when I start sending them out, please message me and I'll add you on.

Snow Walking

It's getting cold outside here in the Northeast and I'm starting to look forward to the snow... stay tuned for beach scenes after the first time I have to shovel out the driveway.

Illustration from my sketchbook, colored in Adobe Illustrator.

Detail from holiday card

At the printer! 
I just finished up a holiday card for a client and although it wouldn't be fair to show it before my client's friends and family get to see it, I thought it would be ok to show some details.

Here is some script hand-lettering I did for the panels of the tri-fold which incorporated some little playful icons describing the text. All the colors match the envelope liners I will be creating out of a beautiful hand-printed paper.

I have to say, I really got hung up on the script 'p'. I couldn't remember how to write it so I had to look it up online. The letter 'h' was my fave though. I could do that letter forever with all its wavy, intersecting lines! I'm looking for a client named harry h. hohner...

I'll post the actual card (and custom liners and envelopes and Zazzle stamps) sometime in December when my client (who is wonderful to work with!) says it's ok.

Dr. Sketchy

I went to the Boston Dr. Sketchy's on Sunday to do some figure drawing and I brought my dad who has been getting into drawing again. Dr. Sketchy in Boston (Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School was started by Molly Crabapple and is now in 16 countries and 100 cities) gets its models from local drag, burlesque and performance art and it really makes all the difference!

The model, who goes by the name Madame Lapin (french for rabbit- get it?), posed in a variety of costumes: a pirate, a secretary, a bunny, and a couple other costumes that made me glance over at my dad a few times to make sure he was ok (he was).

The drawing above was done in brush pen and then when I decided it was too boring, I added charcoal which I think really adds an interesting texture. I did a lot more but this was the only drawing small enough to scan. Once I've photographed 1 or 2 I like I'll post those as well.

Dr. Sketchy’s Boston is every Second Sunday of the month from 2:30 to 5:30 at Great Scott: 1222 Commonwealth Ave. Allston, MA at the corner of Harvard St.

Sketchbook 11-4-10

Gaffe

My take on the GAP logo debacle.

Flying Cars are Here

I attended an event tonight presented by Social Media Club Boston at Hill Holliday called Flying Cars are Here: The Futuristic Present of Marketing which was a part of FutureM in Boston. There were 4 terrific speakers/panelists and the presentations centered around social networking (of course) and the Recommendation model.
I brought my sketchbook/notebook and as usual did a few drawings/cartoons.

The first is self-explanatory. People make themselves crazy over whether they have enough followers (I was going to say "whether they're being followed" but that's a different topic) and the goal of getting comments.

 

The next was about Smart Objects technology and a case study in Israel where marketing agencies created a Coca Cola Village to bring 'Likes' into the real world by using an RFID-enabled wristband which held attendees' Facebook logins and passwords (you can read a little more about it and watch a video here) and allowed them to 'swipe' what they were doing. I thought this was very cool (and so did the teenagers who took part).

I also drew a couple of the presenters while I scrawled notes. The one on the bottom talks about the fact that although a lot of companies are gathering data they receive/find about their brand, only 1% of those companies actually do anything with that info. That's really going to start to change! Another thing mentioned was that there's an enormous amount of info being put out there by us all and going through it can be like going through trash in a dump.

It was a very interesting event, topped off by amazing infographics pooled during the event detailing stats on all the social stuff in the room, including, for example, the number of posts generated at the event (over 1300!). Nice job @djcap!

And finally, here's a photo I took during the panel discussion with my iphone.

Colored sketches

Just for a change I thought I would color this page of sketches from my sketchbook. I'm particularly fond of the guy on the bottom (he looks so hopeful on this, my son's first day back to school), and the robot who seems to be discovering something.

Volunteer image

This is an image I illustrated and designed as a header for a piece about volunteering. The background incorporates a close-up photo I took of a section of a very old painting. I wanted the brush strokes to add a texture to the piece to give it a more hands-on feel (which is just what volunteering is!).

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What I've been working on

It's been a while since my last update because I've been working on finishing a vocabulary book for Flash Kids/Sterling. I thought I'd show off pieces of some of the illustrations for this very interesting book.

There's a dragon, Dubai's tallest building in the world (the Burj Khalifa), shoes, a sunset, the U.S. Capitol Building, Minnesota, a BLT sandwich, Albert Einstein and 134 other illustrations!

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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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