Valentine's Day - Part 1

While it's a bit early to think of Valentines Day for most, for me it's getting close to being too late. A great deal of my pin-up work is available through CILM.com. They represent my work to signature groups. I try to have new pieces on a regular basis but when it comes down to it, I have to keep my main clients happy and the pin-ups come after everything else. But I am working on 6 new images that I hope to be done with by Sunday. This is the first one. The final image will be in color but I thought the line art would be fun to show. This piece was inked with a brush on 11" x 17" Canson Vellum Bristol Board.

McCandless & Company

McCANDLESS & CO. is the brain child of writer J.C. Vaughn. The series of stories follow a two women detective agency and their male assistant. While other artists have worked on the characters with J.C., I have actually drawn more pages. One 48 page story we did is INSECURITIES. Though we did a cover for it a while back, we decided a new cover was needed for a pitch to a publisher. I started with some quick sketches. The above are the three final roughs.The middle one (#2) was chosen and I went about doing a few color comps. All this involved was taking the pencil rough and adding color to it in Photoshop. After a few tries, the above is what we agreed on.The next stage is doing a complete underdrawing. This is where I will establish the lights and darks of the piece. This is done on Strathmore illustration board using a 2b pencil. When I was happy with the values I established, I scanned it and colored in Photoshop. I tried not to make it too "slick", wanting the pencils to show through. I was inspired by movie posters of the 1930s and 1940s.
Afterwards I added the copy to add to the movie poster/teaser effect. And there you go. The pitch went well and the publisher picked it up. I will post more information when the publisher makes the official announcement.

Galaxy Girl and Typhoon Girl save the day!

Galaxy Girl and Typhoon Girl are the creations of two very talented young ladies. Both are well on their way to becoming top comic book creators. They both write and draw. A double threat in comics!
These two pages were written by their uncle, an acclaimed comic book writer who I have worked with on a number of projects and who happens to be a close friend of mine. He asked me to do these for the girls for a Christmas present and I was more than happy to do it. I worked from the character designs the girls had created. They loved the gifts and last I heard they are both working on new adventures of Galaxy Girl and Typhoon Girl. I know I am looking forward to it. I wonder if they would consider me for the series artist?

Performance Art

As a freelance commercial artist, I get to be involved in a wide variety of jobs. And I find new business avenues all the time. For example, one of the jobs I get contracted to do a few times a month is that of a live business illustrator.
This is how it works: A company that is interested in creating or refining a plan gets all the principle stakeholders together in a collaborative venture with a facilitator, a documenter and me. My job is to sit in on this meeting and create artwork based on the live discussions and planning. Sounds easy right?
Wrong. The group can be 10 to 300 or more people. While they are working on various exercises I am listening and drawing on a giant rolling white board. It is about 6' x 4' of drawing surface. I will fill up 5-7 of these in an 8 hour session. And every event brings in a different set of goals. Sometimes it is a large corporation, or a small company, or a college or university, sometimes it is a non-profit. Each group needing something different. This work is created for state and local government, local and national businesses, non-profits and back in October of 2007, I was flown to Washington DC to work a 3 day Job Corps event with over 800 people participating from all over the U.S. That was exhausting.
As the artist, I have to draw quick. White boards are not the best medium and there is no time to rough out something and not one piece can be precious. When I am drawing one thing I am already thinking about the next thing I hear and the one after it. It's challenging and fun too. I do this in a state of the art facility. When I am not working on the rolling boards, I can work on the boards surrounding the meeting room. There are three large rooms. At the end of the day, I have to present my work to the clients. I try to make the whole thing fun and amusing because these people are tired from working hard all day on their end of the project. I usually create one big piece that fills up a 6' x 4' board at the end. They have seen everything I have done during the course of the day, so I try to keep this one under wraps until the big reveal at the end. The piece will encompass the entire day, both the work and some of the silly jokes and things said. This is usually the piece that gets everyone excited. Most of the time they request posters of it, which the facilitator does provide. The artwork shown here was created today at a half day event for a local college and university who are putting together a partnership to supply international help. The top people from both schools were there. About 20 people total. This is only a small sample of what I completed. These pictures were taken with my iPhone, no flash, and to get an idea of size, the top image with the boat is 6' wide.

Wonder Girl

Here is a later, more grown up version of Wonder Girl. This costume was introduced in 1969, shortly before I started reading the Teen Titans in 1971. I have always liked this costume. This piece was done for the fun of it and was inked with a brush on 11" x 17" Canson Smooth Bristol Board.

Teen Titan

Here's another recent piece for fun, Wonder Girl in a slight variation of her original costume. This piece is inked on 11" x 17" Canson Smooth Bristol Board.

The Girl of Steel

The first official art for 2008. Supergirl has always been one of my favorite characters. Really the whole line of Superman family books were my favorite when I was younger. The Legion of Super-Heroes being at the top. This image was done for fun. It was inked with a brush on 11" x 17" Canson Smooth Bristol Board.