Illustration Friday-Moustache

Illustration Friday's subject for this week was/is mustache. I immediately thought of Salvador Dali. I like to think he might even like the surrealistic way I depicted his 'stache being drawn.

Illustration Friday-Wild

The word this week for Illustration Friday is "wild." Who embodied that word better than the recently passed Jonathan Winters? I decided to do a relatively quick illustration of Jonathan from his role as the crazed truck driver in Stanley Kramer's all-star comedy film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Every time this comic genius was on the screen he stole the scene. Nothing was funnier than when he singlehandedly destroyed the gas station.

Illustration Friday-Egg

Okay, I went for the obvious here. Several years ago I did an illustration for a business magazine where Humpty was wearing a 3 piece business suit. I had so much fun doing that I thought it'd be fun to revisit the character.

My second choice was to do Vincent Price as the TV Batman bad guy Egghead.

Animal Shelter Piece

For the last few years I have donated illustration work to a couple of different animal shelters: One here in Georgia and one down in Tallahassee, Florida. The piece below is a new cover for a brochure that won me an Addy Award a couple of years ago.

Speaking at The University of Georgia

This coming Tuesday, September 20th I will be speaking to a group of young people at The University of Georgia. The professor has asked me to talk about magazine cover and children's book illustration.

I have some portfolio material I'm bringing, including a great deal of my work on a CD. Having been a teacher several years ago at The Art Institute of Atlanta I'm really looking forward to this.

I illustrated and had printed a postcard that has the above image on the front of it. That card has all of my contact info on the back. I'm going to hand one out to each of the students. I think it's important and could be a good thing for these guys to have a link to a working professional in the business.

....and if any of you UGA kids are reading this now don't hesitate to leave a comment here or to contact me anytime.

Illustration Friday-Imperfect

The word for this week's Illustration Friday assignment is "imperfect." Now I ask you, who or what is more imperfect than the idiots (from both parties) who supposedly represent all of our interests in Washington?...So I decided to show my reptilian version of a typical U.S. political hack.

No sketch prep work on this. I just started sketching on an open top layer in Photoshop. Once I had a decent working sketch I set that layer's (named "linework") properties to "multiply." I then created a separate layer, named it "color" and put it underneath the linework layer. All the color work can be done on the color layer while preserving the sketch on the top layer.

I hope you like it.

Illustration Friday-Obsession

The word for this week's Illustration Friday assignment is "obsession." I thought about Imelda Marcos and her shoes and Howard Hughes with his OCD. I settled on what might be the greatest case of fictional obsession: Captain Ahab from Moby Dick. His obsession with this beast was all-encompassing and would make a potentially fun and interesting illustration. I had fun with this.