The Year in Pictures 2011

This collage represents my illustration output in 2011. Each thumbnail is taken from a different project. Some projects were small and personal, others professional and far-flung. Third row, fourth square is an experiment with a new medium (new for me): gouache.  First row, second square represents a six-book series of of Bible parables.

I do this exercise mostly for myself – a way of  assessing my progress as an artist. I have a variety of thoughts and emotions as I see a year's work in chronological order.  Here are some of the thoughts that crossed my mind:

I rock!

I suck!

I'm my own worst critic (and best cheerleader), and as I saw these illustrations again, I was judging each of them with "fresh" eyes. They're all successful illustrations – but I find some more appealing than others… Suffice to say – this exercise helps me track my strengths, my weakness and the evolution of my style.


Now on to 2012!

Holiday Catastrophe Averted!

Wishing you and your loved ones a smashing good Holiday Season!

Leave That Thing Alone

Last night, when I really should have been working on an illustration gig, I did this… this… THING.

John Carpenter's 1982 classic, The Thing, centers around a shape-shifting alien that can perfectly mimic other life forms. When the alien infiltrates an isolated Antarctica outpost, the human inhabitants are discreetly taken over one by one. The remaining humans don't know who amongst them is human... or a THING. And hilarity ensues.

The movie blew my mind as a kid. The creature design was demented, horrifying and totally original – and I LOVED it. The wild creativity I saw unleashed on the screen was profoundly inspiring. Yeah, I was weird kid…

Tomorrow a prequel to The Thing, entitled The Thing, is being released. My expectations for the film are low–but I'm looking forward to revisiting that world. Both the world of The Thing and the world of my youth.

So rather than working last night I played. I drew The Thing and I had a blast. I suspect I'll soon be visiting more creatures from my youth: Godzilla, Alien, Evil from Time Bandits, The Creature from the Black Lagoon… hey, I'm feeling kinda inspired. I guess looking back can do that for a person.

Ramona Quimby Show Poster

Initial, ugly sketch.

In case you're not familiar with Ramona Quimby, she's a pugnacious and imaginative girl featured in a series of books by Beverly Cleary. The character has appeared in movies, on television and a stage play. My illustration of Ramona is for the Los Altos Youth Theater production of Ramona Quimby.

The theater needed a poster and a t-shirt design. The poster would be printed in color. The t-shirt needed to be line art only.

Digital sketch done in Photoshop.

Effective posters are eye-catching and make a clear and concise pitch. After mulling over several ideas, I settled on this simple and fun approach. The show's title, a big selling point, is big and bold. Ramona is wide eyed and grinning as she mischievously pushes the show's title out of her way. I think it quickly conveys the essence of the character and the show: fun and kid-centric.

Once I had a sketch, I started the line art for the t-shirt. In the past, I'd do this type of work with a brush and ink, but I've gotten more comfortable "inking" on the computer. The Ramona illustration was "inked" in Photoshop. I traced my hand drawn lettering in Adobe Illustrator. Eventually, both elements (Ramona illustration and lettering) were combined in Illustrator and converted into a vector file for the t-shirt printer.

Line art version of the image for screen-printing  t-shirts.

Unlike the t-shirt, the poster art had no limitations. I based Ramona's color scheme on a production photo. I chose the yellow because it's a warm, eye-catching color – and the dark teal because it compliments the other colors while providing enough contrast to pop.

Hidden Picture Cover

Hidden Pictures are a beloved and enduring staple of Highlights Magazine. Kids of all ages love searching for hidden objects within an illustrated scene. I say all ages, because my optometrist's staff  is addicted to Hidden Pictures;  they even compete against one another to see who can find the objects the fastest!

Showing off at my
local supermarket.

My friend, Chuck Dillon, is a Hidden Picture guru and has illustrated dozens of these puzzles. On several occasions he encouraged me to try one but I never got around to tackling such a challenge until I got assigned a cover for Hidden Pictures Magazine.

I was given a list of objects to hide, a rough sketch and the cover layout. Initially, I expected the challenge would be hiding the objects, but that was actually fun. The real challenge was working around the layout  (masthead, headlines and barcode). Eventually, after lots of experimentation, everything fell into place.

Seeing my art on a magazine cover, on a newsstand, right alongside Highlights, High Five and, gasp, MAD, is a real treat and honor.

An unexpected treat has been watching friends and family try to find the hidden objects. I'm always surprised and amused by the order that people find objects. The ones that I think are obvious are often the last objects found. My dad was really stumped looking for the "bat." He was looking for a baseball bat – not a winged bat!

The issue is on newsstand now through October 18, 2011. FYI: there are six objects hidden on the cover…

Pencil sketch with some digital edits.

Evolution of the digital painting process.

From the Archive: Soho Pub T-shirt

I created this t-shirt illustration for a bar in Old Orchard Beach, Maine – many, many years ago. I don't think I was even old enough to drink at the time.

I did the original line art on tracing paper with a brush and ink. I added the color digitally, and those files are lost, most likely on a hard drive in a landfill somewhere. And even if I had the files, I probably couldn't open them. I was using Photoshop 3 and "painting" with the Paint Bucket tool.

I was just learning Photoshop and the Paint Bucket tool was the greatest thing. Soon I discovered its limitations, including the white "jaggies" it left behind on anti-aliased lines.

Both Photoshop and I have come a long way...

Highlights: Bear Rides!

These bears at a fair are in the July 2011 issue of Highlights magazine. This drawing illustrates a story entitled "Bear Rides!" by Maggie Murphy. The story is also a rebus. And for the folks scratching their fur thinking, "what's a rebus?" – a rebus is type of puzzle where certain words are replaced with a drawing that represents that word. Here's an example:

This is NOT, I repeat NOT how it was used in the magazine.

The folks Highlights wanted a dynamic composition, with the rocket ride high in the air and the fairgrounds far below. After trying to create this scene in my head, I decided I needed some reference. So I put on my engineering hat and engineered this:

I've got MAD engineering skills.

This silly contraption helped me visualize the rockets in relation to each other and to the arms of the ride.

And here are close-ups of the different characters:

And some more of the icons I created for the rebus.

And an early, ugly sketch:

These bears look like they're about to hurl.