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Friday, April 30, 2010

Topps' The Empire Strikes Back 30th Anniversary- Doug Cowan

I recently completed a number of drawings for Topps' The Empire Strikes Back 30th Anniversary card set. I will post more of this work closer to their release in May.

Thanks,
Doug

Sketch Exploration 4- Andrew R. Wright

More sketchbook pages:



American Illustration 29- Jason Raish

I had 2 illustrations selected for the American Illustration 29 book. Here they are. You know what stings? the 95$ publication fee for each illustration selected! I guess that is the real price of recognition :(


This is for Yahoo! its part of this Yahoo! PurpleScape project with other artists. this will be shown in exhibitions in southeast asian countries. They also used mine on limited edition PS3's, postcards, t-shirts, and other products. They said I could do anything i wanted so i thought now is my chance to do all the Japanese themed stuff i have been wanting to do. Japanese design is crazy and detailed so this of course meant major work for me. this beast took me a whole 7 days working on it at least 8 hrs a day. Here is my rational:
This piece is Japanese inspired. The concept makes a spin on the processions that Daimyo warlords had to make every year to the capital of Edo. I tried to make this a little more fun and less serious that the shows of power and wealth that they really were. Instead of flying the Clan flag they are flying Koi fish windsocks, which are used for Children's day in Japan. Instead of Ninjas blowing poison darts for assasinations they are blowing bubbles. Fun bubbles! Instead of a Daimyo Warlord being carried they are carrying a Tanuki, which is a mischevious mythical Racoon-like creature. I thought it would be fun to reverse the scale of things like the mini sumo wrestlers and the giant rabbits and giant trees.


too bad you can't see this in person. he has a gold chain with a "T", T for Tanuki


samurais take super long to draw. if you tried to be true to all the detail it would take you a month to draw one.


This is for Tiger Beer for their Tiger Translate artist project. I was paired with a photographer and had to "remix" the photo and illustrate ontop of it. The photographer was Sin Kok Wai from Singapore. clothes are hanging from poles outside the apartment complexes. straight and uniform buildings didnt give me a lot to work. Here is my rationale:
The scale of the laundry and everything in the photo is so small so I created this huge gentle giant to contrast the tiny clothes hanging out to dry. The photo is of a modern apartment complex made of concrete and steel so I tried to show something living and organic. I wanted it to look like he meant well and was helping out with the laundry, but the whole story of this beast is up the viewer. This piece is also pretty big, probably 2.5'x1.5'. I like this guy. he kind of just showed up on my napkin when i put my pen down on it when i was at dinner one night.

-Jason

News & Awards- Andrew R. Wright

I received word that THIS PIECE was chosen for American Illustration 29. THIS PIECE was a runner-up for Creative Quarterly 19. THESE TWO PIECES were selected to be in The Illustrators Club of DC, MD, and VA and THIS ONE received a silver medal for the same show.

Below are some drawings for a current series I am working on based on the Northwest Coast Indian tribe the Kwakwaka'wakw.







TMI- Scott Brundage



So I hit the century mark on my Photobooth library and figured I should pay a lil tribute to the beautiful convenience of Mac's built-in webcam application. I recently learned I'm not entirely alone in exploiting this for reference sake, as my buddy, Marc Scheff, recently covered the same topic. And while I don't go to the extremes of posing and lighting as he does, Paolo Rivera dedicates his wednesday blogposts to showing how limber he is in his reference.

So, in the interest of solidarity, here is how I spend a good chunk of my average day... posing spastically, alone in a dark room.





I've learned a couple things about myself in the process.
-I rarely adjust the light for any of these pictures to relate to what I'm painting. This usually is more from deadline constraints than laziness, but I should probably give a little more thought to it.
-when I'm trying to get a single hand just right... I pose my entire torso and face.
-if its over 65 degrees, I tend to forego a shirt.
-my hair is ridiculous

Sketch Exploration 10- Edward Kinsella






Risk & Utne Magazine- Jason Raish


A full page illustration for Risk Magazine in the UK about banking of some sort


2 Illustrations for Utne Magazine about Weathermen and their views on global warming. It gets into how they discredit global warming are able to impose their views easily to the public, which they are not qualified as scientists to do. Basically they don't believe in global warming, hence this guy trying to wish away this sad sun guy. What's going on with this color scheme, its very un-Jason Raish-like. I am glad the art director went with my crazy weird idea with the sun guy. I hope she didn't catch too much flak from the editors for this one.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Sketch Pages 4- Tin Salamunic

A few life drawings and sketching from movies:




To see more, check out Tin's personal blog here.

Golf Magazine- Jason Raish

These are all separate projects over the months. Good Ol' Golf Magazine has been my bestest client with a monthly column and occasional extra assignments too. Cheers to the fellas over there.

golftreeFINAL
for the golf rules column about how to rule a ball stuck in a tree.

kickball

this one is about cheating in golf. kicking the ball from behind something and rationalizing with yourself that its ok is apparently one of the top cheats.

dogsbarking

about how even with a cart you still log lots of miles walking around and and the end of the day your dogs can still be barking and swollen and red. I love doing ugly run down 5 oclock shadow havin' guys.

-Jason

Gesture Drawings- Francis Vallejo




After getting back into figure drawing while in Austin a while ago, and seeing how helpful gestures are, I realized I needed to step my figure game up. My solution was saving a folder of "artistic nudes" off of DeviantArt (there's literally thousands of great photos, although you'll have to sift through some odd ones) and playing them in timed increments through my computer's slideshow function. I love it! It's not quite drawing from life, but I am able to draw from poses that a live model would not be able to hold.

The top row is 4 minutes gestures, with the next row 3 minutes, the next 2, etc. I've been looking a lot at Mucha's drawings lately. Speaking of Mucha, his popular "design-based watercolor" pieces are cool and all, but his drawings and oil paintings are where it's at!

take care,
-fv

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Military Officer: Tin Salamunic

For Military Officer Magazine:
Part of the bi-Monthly Super Hero Series, this time focusing on Tax returns. The article talks about the many different things one can do with the extra tax returns, such as donating animals to third world countries, taking a trip and so on. The illustration is focusing on the hero donating the animals, as well as hinting a trip to Italy and one of the other sketches showing the possibility of taking flying lessons.
The text was thrown in by me and is not part of the initial illustration (The one below shows the approved piece), but I suggested to have the title article written in comic book letters to give the section of the magazine a more unified look. So, from now on I will be doing both the text as well as the image for this section of MOAA.




-Tin

Sketch Exploration 3- Andrew R. Wright






To see more, check out Andrew's BLOG.
-Illostop

Sketch Exploration 9- Edward Kinsella









To see more, check out Ted's BLOG.
-Illostop

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Seven Degrees of Stephen Egerton- Peter Wonsowski

i just got to work with renaissance man Stephen Egerton, known especially for his influential guitar work in The Descendents and ALL ! In addition to being one of the nicest guys on the planet, he recently wrote and recorded a record at his own Armstrong Recording studios, and he has a real 'whos-who' of punk rock all stars doing guest vocals (we're talking The Descendents, ALL, Alkaline Trio, MXPX, Less Than Jake, Big Drill Car, Rise Against, Ultimate Fakebook, Lagwagon, Shades Apart, Drag The River, and way more! phew!)

The album will be out proudly on Paper+Plastick Records May 11th, with what i can only imagine will be one of the coolest record release shows ever (with vocalists confirmed) May 14th & 15th. The LP will feature Stephen's logo, designed by the awesome Eli Atkins, as a die-cut window !)

i don't think i have to tell you how excited i was to be working with Stephen here. legendary!


(all type done by hand)

Thank you!
-Peter

Sketchbook Pages 3- Chris Whetzel

Hi! Here are some bits from the first half of the latest sketchbook:







Enjoy the Day,
Chris

More Tor.com Rollovers- Scott Brundage

So March was a very full month. Somehow between packing, moving from Queens to CT and unpacking, I completed a handful of paintings and still had enough energy to celebrate my birthday in style.*

First up was Ada Lovelace Day which praises women in technology. Ada was the first computer programmer back when a calculator would have been considered magic. The holiday is typically celebrated by blogging. My contribution was my first three-part rollover showing the past, present and future of women in technology. Click here to see it in motion.




Following that, I packed up and moved to beautiful Danbury, CT for my temporary summer digs and immediately got crackin on an Easter rollover. Irene Gallo at Tor.com had some specific requests which I was happy to comply with... "Bunny + easter egg : fade : Astronaut + 'Alien' egg and face-hugger." I think I can find the will to do that.


And in between all of these, I continued with what has become a nice break between rollovers. These images for the quilting lady are already fun, but after trying to make multiple image work with each other, its nice to have a single image answer only to itself.


-Scott

*Authors note: "celebrating a birthday in style" entails imbibing girlie drinks including, but not limited to, Smirnoff Ice and dessert wine, and staging a spectacularly unskilled game of Bocce on a sunny day.

Hokkaido Tengu- Edward Kinsella


This is the first image in a series of self-generated illustrations based on folklore/masks. This one is my interpretation of a Tengu, a Japanese demon and protector of the forest.

Thanks for stopping by,
-Ted

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Comic Commission- Francis Vallejo



Man what a good time this piece was! It was originally began for a comic pitch. Unfortunately halfway through drawing it out, the project was cancelled. So on my free time I wrapped it up.

I hope to throw some color on it in the future. Speaking of that...would folks be interested in a limited run screen-print release of this piece? I've always wanted to release a print like that and work with a printer. Let me know in the comments.