Lots of Work - Jason Raish

spot for the Washington Post about snow shoveling related injuries



spot for MotorTrend Classic about the author's visit to the 1989 LA Auto show when he came face to face with two dream cars.



spot for MotorTrend Classic about how taking a 12 cyliner engine out of a Lamborghini and replacing it with an 8 cylinder is like removing its soul.



spot for the NY Times about how the NY Giants aren't that good, they win by some kind of magical fairy dust or something





Wedding board for my old roommate Naoki in Tokyo.  In Japan they put up a "wedding board" at the entrance of the wedding reception and its usually a big head little body caricature of the couple so they were happy to get this instead.



Wedding board for another one of my old roommates in Tokyo.  they wanted pink because the wedding was in april when it's cherry blossom season.  after Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss"





spot for golf magazine about golf rules.  this one is about a ball coming to rest on a frog.



spot for golf magazine about golf rules.  this one is about an eagle grabbing a ball mid-air.



spot for the final issue of UTNE about how Neanderthals mated with humans way back in the day.  the title of the story is "Stone Age Sex".  AD'd by the wonderful Stephanie Glaros.

It's Been a While

cover for march 2012 discover magazine.  my first nationally circulated magazine cover.  Albert Einstein's rules of space, time, and gravity my be overturned.







private commission.  Maifun, a Spanish Harlem born Shar Pei.



utne magazine about using old diapers to grow food like mushrooms.  kind of gross right?



Emory alumni magazine about embracing the great unknown.



spot for gold magazine's rules guy column about removing debris from the ball.



motortrend classic magazine about pebble beach judges choosing this one car as the winner.  can't remember what it was but the hood ornament was an art deco eagle.



motortrend classic magazine about the current ferrari head and the old original Ferrari head.  whose name of course is something Ferrari.



full page for westchester magazine about Westchester being diverse.  this was my attempt at a black and white leave it to beaver style multi-ethnic family.  it's supposed to be an african american mom, indian son, asian dad, and hispanic son.  

Lords of Chaos and other news!!

Apologies for the lengthy gap in posts.  I recently moved down to Olympia, WA but I am back in action now.  Here are a couple recent pieces I did for Dungeon Magazine.  These two are the Lords of Chaos: Olhydra, Evil Prince of Elemental Water and Yan-C-Bin, Evil Prince of Elemental Air.  I certainly had a lot of fun with these, especially the water scene.  

Also here is this fun market scene I completely for this months Dragon Magazine. 

 I got to work again with Kate Irwin on both these projects which is always a pleasure.

In related news, two more pieces I completed for Kate have been nominated for a Spectrum Medal!  I am certainly very honored to be considered among such amazing artists.  Fingers crossed.  It sure would be great to get a medal.  I plan to make it out to Kansas City for Spectrum Live in May.  Here are those two pieces again you missed them.

Cheers everyone!

Aung San Suu Kyi

Here's a quick portrait I did for my rep of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Bit of a new approach for me, but it was fun to jump into.

Speaking of new approaches, Night Shade Books's AD, Dave Palumbo, asked me to do a handful of comic strip interiors a while back. I had my qualms about taking the gig since I've never really worked that way. I love Dave and the work itself was so bizarre, I went for it.

The only copy I have with finished lettering. And probably my favorite. 

Oddly enough, this isn't the first time I've worked outside my comfort zone for sci-fi/fantasy work. A while back, I pinch hit for an interior artist for Tor.  This time doing a couple ink drawings for chapter heads. Irene Gallo had seen some ink drawings in my sketchbook and must have figured I could handle it.

Work from a sketchbook. Who knew?

Thanks for reading!

PS. It should be noted that the comic strip interiors were for a book Sam Wolfe Connelly did the cover for. It's gorgeous and his first book cover. He's the star of that show.
    It should also be noted that Dave Palumbo is a badass painter as well as Night Shade's art director.

Year of the Dragon 2012

Happy 2012! Here is my take on a Japanese new year's card (nengajo, 年賀状). Traditionally they feature the Asian zodiac animal of that year, 2012 is the year of the Dragon. Basically the bottom says Happy New Year and the top says 2011 and the final box below that is the character for dragon.





have i learned nothing? i am a fool and spent 4 hours working on that first color sketch and didn't explore the other compositions i had thumbnailed out. after thinking maybe i hadn't explored enough i fleshed out this 2nd color sketch. I spent like 7 hrs total on these 2 sketches. I forgot to mention that the dragon is probably the one card i was least excited to illustrate because it is so cliche and has been done by so many people and is kind of a symbol of bad taste and bros that love awesome dragons and yin yangs and nunchucks and have posters of scarface on their wall. We've all seen millions of images and tatoos of asian dragons twisting and looking awesome so i wanted to do a crop of a river dragon zooming along his river in a straight line instead of in the sky all twisty and turny. I wanted the feeling of if someone were to look out the window of the boat they would catch a split second of a huge dragon eye ball and scales zoom past the window basically at water level height. In japan dragons usually live in bodies of water like the ocean or rivers. i thought this was cool and interesting. Like that Miyazaki movie spirited away, that dragon was the spirit of some river in Japan. A huge dragon zooms by a japanese party boat, the kind i frequently saw on the sumida river in Tokyo. He is looking ahead (maybe to the new year?) and doesn't look like he is going to harm the boat at all. In fact they are the guardians of rivers and stuff. Dragons are also associated with spring in japan. What i wanted to achieve was to make it look like he is flying fast-ish, really close to the surface of the water. The shadow had to be created perfectly and the water movement had to be perfect too. I hate doing water movement and suck at it so badly, i can never get it right. The problem is that there was no proper reference for this kind of water movement. I know i've seen it before in some anime or movie where a missle is cruising 2 inces above the water or something. I even watched the scenes in a few Harry Potter movies where they fly close to the water but the special effects team always copped out and didn't show the water being effected by these wizards flying super close to the water. I even enlisted in the help of my fellow illustration collective to find reference but couldn't find any.



the shadow was super hard to get right and i never got it right. i even used google sketch up and taped together paper and a lamp.





had to cut this paper cuz I couldn't find the same weird size i found in china to match the other previous paintings.

gesso borrowed from Angel. you'll get it back some day.

background



i'll spare you the tedium of painting all the cherry blossom petals and transferring the drawing to the painting, so here it is after all that and inked in.

Here the colors are all blocked in and then i had to fly to NYC to accept an award at the Society of illustrators. hopefully i will paint all 12 asian zodiac animal cards through the coming years. So far this yearly card has been the 1 time a year i get to paint something and not use photoshop. I had this half painted and then due to some extenuating circumstances was unable to finish the painting in time so i had to clean up my sketch and use this all digital version. The momentum is gone, will i ever finish the painting? I have to i guess.