Posted by: keegan (126 posts)
12:49 AM

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Posted by: kerry (55 posts)
May 5, 2008 2:00 PM

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Posted by: pa (146 posts)
April 30, 2008 7:12 PM

Recently broke out one of those watercolor sketchbooks that Moleskin make and did a few draintings (just made up that word) of Alaska using GoogleEarth as reference. Volcanoes in the Aleutian islands and the Kenai mountains, rendered with watercolor pencil.

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Posted by: stuart (18 posts)
April 28, 200811:29 AM

...and so here it finally is! The whole of Never Been, all nine and a bit meters worth, online, for the whole world to see! So if you couldn't make it to my solo show at Projekts MCR earlier this year, GO HERE NOW!!! I want to say a massive huge thank you to my genius graphic designer brother, Adam Kolakovic, for figuring out a way to get this all online for me! He's the most rippingest designer in town!

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Posted by: keegan (126 posts)
April 25, 2008 2:54 AM

This is one from the dusty depths of the archives...The blur on the boot is a bit too much, but I had just discovered Photoshop (version 2.5 if I am not mistaken), and it looked good enough to me on my grayscale PowerBook 165 at the time.

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Posted by: pa (146 posts)
April 23, 2008 8:39 PM

I made this pattern to use as texture and background for this year's siren illustration which I just completed. The sea hag of my dreams makes an appearance in up there. Congrats also to my fellow invisibleman and invisiblewomen as this marks our 600th post.

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Posted by: sara (16 posts)
April 18, 2008 3:00 PM

I’ve been working on this comic for an anthology—hopefully I’ll be done soon!

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Posted by: keegan (126 posts)
1:08 AM

I was psyched to get this super-fun job from Time Out Chicago to do a series of illos for their "Worst Case Scenarios" story in this week's issue (Thanks Mike!). The editors came up with a list of harrowing situations, and asked various Chicago-based experts their advice on how to keep your cool and survive these stressful calamities. The scenarios I illustrated are: "ATM eats your card", "Your car brakes fail", "Your boss asks you to take a drug test", "You lose your job", "The condom broke", "I got doored on my bike", "My apartment was burgled" and "A bat was trapped in my house". This is my first job for Time Out Chicago. Read on to see the full illos...

Continue reading "Worst Case Scenarios for Time Out"
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Posted by: kerry (55 posts)
April 14, 2008 2:54 PM

On Friday night I attended my first Pratt Draw-a-thon. This legendary event, held every year since 1988, consists if 12 straight hours of figure drawing in which 18 models circulate throughout 5 drawing studios posing for designated periods of time (20 second action poses, 5 and 10 minute poses, 1 hour poses, and two extended poses of 3 and 6 hours each.) Drawing and posing began at 7pm Friday night and continued through the night until 7am Saturday morning.

This years Draw-a-thon was more popular than even Pratt's planners expected. Myself and my drawing partner were there for a few hours and only able to squeeze into the hour long poses room. Despite the crowds the event was a very exciting and a very unique experience. These graphite drawings are the results of my evening. It was great night and I hope to attend for the whole 12 hours next next year.

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Posted by: stuart (18 posts)
9:53 AM

Here's one of the final images that was used by Barclay's Bank on a huge billboard outside a new branch in Manchester that celebrates the city's achievements.

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Posted by: pa (146 posts)
April 3, 200810:53 AM

I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts while working on illustrations lately. A great resource for this is LibriVox which features readings of works which are in the public domain. A great one I recently toiled to was The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells which was written in 1897 and is an absolute sci-fi classic.

The image above of The Invisible Man (who is also a co-founder of this website) was done in my sketchbook a while back and tweaked digitally.

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Posted by: kerry (55 posts)
March 31, 2008 2:00 PM

A sketchbook experiment with casein and pencil. The image originated from a New York Times T Magazine article entitled "São Paulo’s Concrete Jungle." Click on it to view the sketch even larger than its original size of 6.5" x 8.5".

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Posted by: keegan (126 posts)
March 28, 200812:43 AM

Another illo for the Publisher's Weekly "Soapbox" column. This installment was a funny editorial was written by Mike Reiss, who has been a writer for The Simpsons for nineteen years. In an effort to reach kids with a different message than he does on TV, Mike has published eight children's books, and enjoys the freedom of being the sole storyteller. But he doesn't do it for the money:

"To earn what I make as a TV writer, I'd have to publish a children's book every four hours."

Money isn't everything though...but Homer Simpson has weighed in on this:

“Bart, with $10,000, we'd be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things like...love!”

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Posted by: kerry (55 posts)
March 24, 2008 3:30 PM

Selected pages from an old sketchbook. Click on each to view an entire image.

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Posted by: pa (146 posts)
March 18, 200810:21 PM

A recent illustration for WSJ.com regarding economists current view of our economic standing. I usually have around 24 hours to turn these illo's around and in this case I wish I had a bit more time to work on the drawing.

Just found out that the great Arthur C. Clarke has passed away. This past fall I came across a dusty and yellowed pile of his books in The Stone Soup Bookstore of Camden Maine. I began to quickly digest his amazing stories and man were they in my wheelhouse. The Times has a great obit. I'd recommend Rendezvous with Rama, Childhood's End or Against the Fall of Night if your interested in a bit of grand sci-fi.

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Posted by: kerry (55 posts)
March 17, 2008 2:42 PM

This Celtic Cross was created some years back as a speculative Irish tourism poster. Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

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Posted by: keegan (126 posts)
March 14, 200812:07 AM

While working on a recent illustration I started using the lasso tool in Photoshop to draw some quick and spontaneous character silhouettes, which I really enjoyed. I was playing around some more with that this week in the lab...Also playing with the custom brushes a bit.

After a chat with P.A. this week about custom brushes (typical graphics nerds that we are), and in the spirit of openness and sharing that has energized the online illustration community, I am giving away the farm and offering up my most frequently used custom brushes for anyone to download...these were exported from CS3, so hopefully you can use 'em...

Download: Keegan's Custom Brush Collection #1

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Posted by: pa (146 posts)
March 11, 2008 9:46 PM

Here are a couple characters for the Anteism road trip I whuped up. And a couple others.

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Posted by: pa (146 posts)
March 5, 2008 7:54 PM

Recent illo for WSJ.com. There's something rather timid looking about that googly-eyed congress.

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Posted by: keegan (126 posts)
February 22, 200812:20 AM

Another drawing from the "One Fell Swoop" album artwork I posted about last week. This regal bird is printed on the CD.

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Posted by: pa (146 posts)
February 19, 2008 9:44 PM

The NY Press is doing a story about a city labor leader who's proposing that vehicles pay double the current rates to enter the city and mass transit made free. So for the cover illustration I created this image of the NYC subway under some Mumbai-esque crowding conditions. Click the image or here for a larger version.

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Posted by: keegan (126 posts)
February 15, 200811:30 AM

I recently had the pleasure of collaborating with the musical duo Rara Avis(Terri Hron and Robbert van Hulzen) on the illustration and design for their new album, One Fell Swoop. They are based in Amsterdam, and make strange, mysterious music that spans many centuries and many cultures. You will hear dissonant medieval sounds coming from a hand-carved recorder, traditional South Indian passages, a home made toobophone and electronic rhythms to complete the collage.

The title of their album is from a great line in MacBeth:

"All the pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? What, all my pretty chickens and their dam At one fell swoop?"

So I ran with that dark imagery for the cover. I also had the fun task of designing the whole package for the CD case. I enjoy deign projects like this from time to time, and I had secretly always wanted to design someone's album. Unfortunately I don't have the final package in my hands yet, but I will post some photos in a few weeks when I get my mitts on one.

Click on the image for a larger view.

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Posted by: pa (146 posts)
February 13, 2008 6:22 PM

Last weekend I created this illustration for The Riverfront Times of St. Louis highlighting an article they did about The Clowder House, a local cat retirement home (for when the owner gets too old to care for the kitty). It was fun showing the details like the cat meds, the pajamas, the rubik's cube and the Wii. Click the image to see a larger version.

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Posted by: pa (146 posts)
February 7, 2008 8:50 PM

I've been keeping a small moleskin sketchbook in my pocket to augment my bigger, badder sketchbook. This group was sketched on the NYC subway in recent weeks.

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Posted by: pa (146 posts)
February 2, 2008 3:04 AM

This is second in a series of pattern-like illustrations I've been working on. This one is based on New York City. The first in the series was based off a ghost story.

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Posted by: pa (146 posts)
January 29, 2008 9:22 PM

This was a quick Wall Street Journal Online illo for an economic forecast survey. Whether our intrepid donkey and doofus elephant are merely navigating some rapids or careening towards a deadly waterfall is the question I guess. I do like that the pachyderm has carelessly lost his paddle.

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Posted by: keegan (126 posts)
January 25, 2008 1:42 AM

This is a poster I did just last week for the band Your Vegas. They originally hail from Leeds, UK and recently settled in NYC. Universal Records (their label) sent them out for their first gig in L.A. this week. To commemorate the show, the sharp marketing folks at Uni (thanks Frank!) decided to commission a limited edition poster. I had a crazy busy schedule last week while working on this, as I had the only other music project that I have ever worked on underway (more on that soon!). All in all it was a fun frenzied project, and I had a blast with the silhouettes, using only the mighty lasso tool to draw the loose shapes. Anytime I get to go nuts with glowing lights and a dusky sky, counts as a fun project.

Some detail shots after the jump...

Continue reading "Your Vegas Poster"
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Posted by: jamie (90 posts)
January 23, 2008 5:24 PM

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Posted by: pa (146 posts)
January 17, 2008 7:25 PM

It had been a while since my last figure drawing session and thus it was invigorating to draw and paint these images at the Society of Illustrator's Jazz & Sketch this past tuesday. One fellow in front of me was drawing on butcher paper with charcoal and white pencil and I couldn't believe how good he was... humbling.

The fellow on the right is an 89 year old illustrator who was also making some great sketches. I chatted with him briefly as we walked out and he told me how last winter he got a pair of the new fat ski's and how they were really fast. He also lamented that he was just a bit too old to start snowboarding.

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Posted by: bz (51 posts)
January 14, 2008 3:18 PM

i scanned some sketches of shirts...

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Posted by: jamie (90 posts)
January 11, 2008 9:04 AM

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Posted by: sara (16 posts)
January 7, 2008 1:11 PM

I just started drawing in pencil again, after only using ink for years. It was pretty fun, and I was interested to see how it changed my process.

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Posted by: sara (16 posts)
December 26, 2007 9:00 AM

I’ve been a posting slacker, everyone, I know! I’ve been holed up in my apartment being sick and working on drawings for a group show in Portland. More on that to follow!

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Posted by: keegan (126 posts)
December 21, 200712:00 AM

This is another illo for Publisher's Weekly 'Soapbox' column (thanks for the steady work Clive!). The author, Mary Murphy writes about Jessica Seinfeld's book, "Deceptively Delicious". Seinfeld's book gives tips for busy parents on how to sneak pureed veggies into kid-friendly dishes, without them detecting the spinach you've surreptitiously included in the brownies. Murphy writes about how the culinary deception wasn't so successful with her kids.

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Posted by: pa (146 posts)
December 13, 2007 9:43 PM

This past weekend I created this illustration for The Riverfront Times of St. Louis. The paper was highlighting an upcoming lecture by one of the scientists who discovered a diminutive, fossilized skeleton in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores which was dubbed 'The Hobbit'. As for the scientist I was going for the academic version of Indiana Jones. This was a particularly fun job as I'm a bit of a Lord of the Rings nerd. Click the image to see a larger version.

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Posted by: keegan (126 posts)
December 11, 200712:00 AM

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Posted by: kurt (60 posts)
December 6, 200710:39 AM

watercolor and graphic on paper

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Posted by: pa (146 posts)
December 3, 2007 9:47 PM

The easiest subway sketching situation tends to be when commuters are either sleeping or reading. The downside is that your sketchbook fills up with renderings of people with their eyes closed or at best, downcast. Though I find more often then not people get off the train before you complete a sketch and I've got many disembodied ears, eyeglasses and hands floating around the sketchbook to prove it.

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Posted by: kerry (55 posts)
November 30, 200712:00 AM

This holiday season I have been selected to take part in the New York Academy of Art
Alumni Association Holiday 2007 Exhibition. The small painting above, along with another, will be on display at Merge 360 through December 23rd.

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Posted by: keegan (126 posts)
November 29, 2007 7:00 AM

The timing of this illustration was uncanny. This fun story story was about Blackberry etiquette, for Las Vegas Life magazine. I had just become a proud iPhone owner a few days before receiving the job, and I was very much under the influence of the glowing little computer in my pocket. Having never had any kind of Blackberry-like device, it took a little getting used to the idea that I was so connected all of a sudden. As chance would have it, I received the email for this job on my shiny new gadget, and was able to reply and accept the assignment immediately. This was all while stuck in traffic on the F.D.R. (though I suppose this is a violation not just of etiquette but several laws as well).

It's fair to say I have been gushing about this thing for weeks now, but it's worth noting that the iPhone isn't just helpful in GETTING the jobs, but also in executing them. The camera makes quick reference shots very easy, and the screen is big enough to hold in your hand while you draw...much better than running over to the computer, importing the image, printing it out, etc. And having a hand-held Google image search in your hand is only a good thing for the busy illustrator! One of the first things I did was load up all of my illustrations form my website into the photo viewing app, and now I have a bright, crisp, flickable, pinchable, zoomable portfolio of my work with me wherever I go. Sweet!

Now if it only had a drawing program...

(Click on the image for a larger version)

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Posted by: pa (146 posts)
November 20, 200711:42 PM

Third in a series of fed-chairman Ben Bernanke drawings for the Wall Street Journal Online. Below is one of the quick sketches which precede the final illo.

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Posted by: sara (16 posts)
9:00 AM

Illustration for a holiday card

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Posted by: keegan (126 posts)
November 15, 200710:06 PM

Here's a bunch of drawings that I had fun doing for a new client, Read Magazine (published by Reader's Digest). The story, titled "Twist of Fate" by Steven Frank is about a teenage girl that ends up spending a weekend in the library's rare books room reading a dusty old first edition of Dickens' "Oliver Twist", to avoid flunking a class. She snoozes off and finds herself magically transported into the story, and interacting with all of the characters. The only way home is to write herself out of the story, Dickens himself tells her. The sequence of the drawings is clockwise from the top left image.

Click on the image for a larger version.

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