Posted by: pa (190 posts)
January 30, 201010:09 PM

I've done some sketching around town during this break in the storms that have been pummeling California these past couple weeks (El Niño I salute you). The top sketch was done on the patio of Old Soul here in Midtown Sac and the second sketch was drawn in the Leland Stanford Park which surrounds the Capitol building and has a wide array of cool trees.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
January 26, 201012:08 AM

Just sent this image off to Modern Postcard to have a batch of 5x7's printed up. Been toiling away on this illo the last few weeks and I'm pretty happy with the final result. Lately I've made an efffort at getting my portfolio more geared towards the children's illustration market and I wanted to push this one further than I usually go. Thanks to InvisibleMan Keegan for some great suggestions and prodding.

And while the resemblance is not striking I did base the cat off of Maru. Click on the image to view larger.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
January 14, 2010 9:22 PM

Some new characters for this year's Wall Street Journal college bowl game rundown. We went the throwback theme of electronic football for the animation this year which was a fun way to go. And you can't go wrong illustrating a horned-toad either.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
December 8, 2009 9:39 PM

A few months ago I'd had started this drawing for my 'Cabinet of Curiosity' project and had completed about 75% of it. I was working on it right up until my wedding/honeymoon/move-to-California and had pretty much forgotten about it by the time we got set up and running out here. I had also given it a bland filename which wasn't helping jog the memory. But I stumbled across it the other day and put a polish on it.

I'd initially had a different object atop the pedestal (a wooly mammoth with a castle-saddle) but it wasn't really working for me. So instead I worked up this horse sculpture which I had sketched while viewing a show of ancient Chinese art within the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005:

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
November 28, 2009 2:31 PM

This article for Time Out Chicago by Jason A. Heidemann was part of a package looking back at the history of Chicago's Second City legendary comedy ensemble as it celebrates it's 50th anniversary this year. While many of the group's alumni have gone on to become legends of comedy, just as many went on to live less famous lives (This is a slightly different version than the one that ran in the magazine). Art direction by Mike Novak.

Click on the above image for a larger view.

You can see more of my work for Time Out Chicago here.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
November 22, 2009 7:09 PM

We're deep into autumn now so naturally my mind starts to linger on the ideas of Joseph Campbell, Hobbits, strong ales, falling leaves and the forest lairs of folkloric creatures. This drawing came out of the sketchbook and was finished off in photoshop and sorta captures my mood as of late.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
November 15, 2009 5:31 PM

I recently came along a 1972 Time-Life book entitled 'The High Sierra' while perusing a local junk shop. Among the many great images and graphics within is an amazing photo of Mount Whitney and the Alabama hills within Sequoia National Park. I did a quick pen drawing in my sketchbook and the illo's above were derived from that sketch.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
November 3, 2009 8:53 PM

The above illustration was for a Wall Street Journal interactive about how fan's of winning teams still have a tendency to weep about their fortunes. A fun illo, especially incorporating the team mascots.

After a few months of settling in here I'd like to announce the opening of the Sacramento Office of InvisibleMan. It's nice to be toiling away in the pleasant climes of northern California. Below is a photomerge of the InvisibleManCave:

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
October 25, 200911:29 PM

This illustration ran in The New York Times on October 25th on the cover of the Metro section (New York edition). The essay by Alana Joblin Ain describes her experience being suspended from shopping at the Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn, NY after falling behind on her required work requirement. The Co-op has a reputation for high quality local organic foods, at great prices. However the author of this essay highlights some of the difficulties in keeping up your end of the membership bargain, and the shameful consequences that follow.

Read on to see the accompanying spots and how it looked in print...

Continue reading "NYT: Flunking Out at the Food Co-op"
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Posted by: paulo (32 posts)
October 2, 2009 8:35 AM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
September 18, 2009 4:59 PM

From the Woodstock Artlodge, clockwise from top right: Stephen Antonson, Jon Keegan, Jeff Nash, Kerry O'neill, Paul Clark and James Antonson. That's a crazy talented crew right there. Really looking forward to hanging out with a bunch of these cats as we swoop into the city for Kerry and Corrie's wedding!

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
July 13, 200912:35 AM

Here's two more time-lapse sketches I created on my iPhone using the fabulous Brushes app. One more after the jump...

Continue reading "more iPhone sketch movies"
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Posted by: paulo (32 posts)
July 3, 2009 3:08 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
June 22, 200911:50 PM

A few pages from the sketchbook - drawn while my wife Kristina and I honeymooned in amazing Costa Rica. If you ever find yourself there, I highly recommend a visit to the MonteVerde Cloud Forest Preserve:

This crab was drawn on the beach in Mal Pais. If you ever find yourself there I'd recommend a stay at the very tranquil Beija Flor.

Some primary forest:

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
May 5, 200910:23 PM

Here's an illo for The New York Times that I busted out last week for their Sunday regional section. Since I recently became a huge fan of "Top Chef", I was excited to illustrate Jodi Rudoren's fun essay on how there ought to be a "Home Cooks" edition of the popular cooking show. Quickfire and elimination challenges that would make the TV contestants wither go on every day in a house full of hungry family members. Note the Dad playing the part of the poor-man's Tom Colicchio at the dinner table. Art direction by the always-pleasant Richard Weigand.

You can see more of my work for The New York Times here.

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Posted by: paulo (32 posts)
May 4, 2009 5:02 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
May 2, 2009 9:56 AM

Behold the illustration for this summer's Siren Music Festival and crazily enough, it's my ninth year creating the poster art for the Village Voice. For this years iteration I was really inspired by the new Cooper Union logo designed by Stephen Doyle and its primary palette. I also wanted the art to have a bright, positive vibe to it in this year of shaky confidence (it is after all a free, all-ages, rain-or-shine deal). Click on the image for a larger view.

I'd also like to give props to Diane Perini who is the brilliant mastermind behind the Siren Fest, picking the bands and overseeing the whole event. Also to Mike Gibson who's done the design work for this and last years festivals.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
April 24, 200910:00 AM

Two additional watercolor sketches from a recent Art Lodge.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
April 17, 200910:36 AM

Watercolor sketches from a recent Art Lodge.

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
April 1, 200911:00 AM

A few panels from a comic I recently completed. Look for it in a future issue of Mome!

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
March 20, 2009 8:00 AM

The moored boat "Jennie D" - Naples, Florida - March 9, 2009

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Posted by: jamie (116 posts)
March 13, 2009 8:34 AM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
March 3, 2009 8:55 PM

This was an illo for the Wall St Journal which was publishing an excerpt from Bryan Gruley's upcoming mystery novel Starvation Lake. The portion I read highlighted some hardscrabble hockey players in northern Michigan and from what I read seemed like a really good read. I only had about 6 hours to do the entire illustration so I kept it simple. For the final we cropped in close on his face since the excerpt dealt with the goalies need stay focused on the puck at all times and never look the opposing player in the eyes.

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Posted by: stuart (45 posts)
February 25, 2009 9:57 AM

A full page illo for the "Menu" cookery section in UK's House and Garden Magazine. I had to illustrate all the ingredients of one of the featured recipes.

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Posted by: jamie (116 posts)
February 6, 2009 7:47 AM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
February 5, 2009 9:24 PM

A recent illo for the Wall Street Journal economic forecast report, which is obviously not predicting a rosy scenario. Right after I finished the pencil drawing for this I came down with a stomach virus. It was a rough slog dragging myself back and forth from the couch to the computer trying to finish it in the few hours I had before it was due. All and all I was happy with the outcome.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
January 17, 2009 5:13 PM

Just finished this illo for the Wall St Journal economic forecast report. It was the first time I've ever drawn Barack Obama and it's thrilling to know his presidency is looming only hours away now. This inspiration for this illo probably came from all the 'Top Chef' viewings I've had as of late.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
January 15, 2009 1:28 AM

A fun illo for Newport Beach, CA based Orange Coast Magazine about how parents are trying new tactics when teaching their teenagers to drive. Some methods include advanced driving courses and GPS trackers that keep tabs on the young driver's speed and route driven. Art direction by Justin Long.

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Posted by: jamie (116 posts)
January 14, 2009 9:40 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
January 1, 2009 8:03 PM

Just finished an a interactive guide for wsj.com of these bowl game mascots facing off. We've been looking to do projects which could incorporate lots of illustration and the BCS match-ups seemed like a good candidate. Big props to my colleague Susan McGregor who did the animating and interactivity. Below is a look at the final layout which has a slight comic book cover composition going on.
Click on the images to view larger and here to view the guide.

Below is an early sketch done before match-up announcements were made.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
December 27, 200810:00 PM

Here's an illustration for The New York Times Sunday regional editions. As another new year begins, a grandmother reflects upon her past New Year's Eves and how they changed as her family grew. Art direction by the gracious Richard Weigand. Happy New Years everyone!

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Posted by: stuart (45 posts)
December 21, 2008 7:47 PM

Have a good 'un!

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Posted by: stuart (45 posts)
7:44 PM

An image for a short folksy xmas story that appeared in today's Seven Magazine, a supplement with The Sunday Telegraph.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
December 12, 2008 5:50 PM

More sketches from the same session I posted about below. This time the model posed for two minutes before changing position. These drawings were done at the Monday night figure drawing session at the Brooklyn Artist Gym, held each week from 6:30 to 9:30 pm. The sessions are open the public and only $10 for non BAG members. Stop by if you are interested. More info can be found here: http://www.brooklynartistsgym.com/events.html. There is also 3 hour long pose session on most Saturdays.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
December 5, 200811:46 AM

Recently I attended a few figure drawing sessions after having not done so in a while. I had forgotten how much fun can be had creating quick sketches while the model rotates through a series of short poses. They are like calisthenics for the hand and eye.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
December 3, 2008 9:05 PM

Josh Brown and Jeff Rooney operate the Capacitor Design Network, a very rad agency which works out of Burlington VT/Portland OR. They contacted me about illustrating my interpretation of a volcano for a Gordini magazine ad. I was stoked to have the opportunity to draw mountains, yetis, a volcano - stuff thats right in my wheelhouse. It was an interesting challenge incorporating this photo of Banks Gilberti jibbing in Colorado with my illo and ultimately a really fun project to work on. Click on the image for a larger view.

Here's a good interview with Josh and Jeff from the folks at Josh Spear.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
November 22, 2008 7:18 PM

This image started with the background in which I was going for a 'surface of the Death Star' type of look in photoshop. Then I thought to rework some sketchbook drawings of a Joel Shapiro sculpture and in the end they seemed to have a lumbering-robot feel about them which worked well with my Death Star theme.

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
November 18, 2008 9:00 AM

Panel from a two-page comic I just finished for Mome. The book will be out in the spring!

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
November 3, 2008 8:34 PM

In less than two weeks the snowboarding season opens for those of us who reside on the east-coast - and I am damn excited for it. The drawing above was initially just a quick drawing in the sketchbook which I then scanned, augmented with a sharpie-drawn background and gave it the whole photoshop treatment. More than ever I've enjoyed rendering our elusive Yeti brethren and for some reason they seemed an appropriate addition to the lone operator of the shred-sled.

If you are in need of some additional snow-stoke (and who isn't?) I would recommend downloading the very awesome and very free snowboarding film 'Pony Tale' by the fine folks of Actionhorse Films. It's quite good - especially the Utah backcountry section.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
October 31, 200811:00 AM

Happy Halloween!

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
October 24, 200810:27 PM

Recently I caught the WunderKammer exhibit at MOMA here in New York. It's akin to the chambre des merveilles or 'cabinet of curiosities' shows of 16th century Europe. It's a good show and I was sort of taken with the whole idea of a collection of strange objects and specimens. I absent-mindedly doodled this cabinet in my sketchbook, then sketched out an old musty room for it to sit in and quickly finished up the color and such in photoshop.
Next I want to see what's in the drawers.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
October 18, 200810:57 AM

Here's an illustration I recently completed for the cover of Library Journal's "netconnect" magazine. The issue discussed how libraries are taking advantage of the latest in mobile technology to extend their resources and services to their visitors. Art direction by Irving Cumberbatch (who handily wins in the "Best Sounding Name - Art Director" category).

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
10:27 AM

With the nervewracking state of the economy as of late, I was hesitant to go too overboard with this month's WSJ Economic forecast. I'd already done the whirlpool of doom a few months ago, so it felt right to show Hank and Ben working to fix the dire situation. By the way, that's the fed rate that Dr. Bernanke is about to snip.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
October 12, 2008 4:08 PM

Multiple views of Joel Shaprio's sculpture 'Untitled' drawn in the sketchbook and tweaked a bit in photoshop. I like the AT-AT Walker-like feel to the overall sketch.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
1:38 AM

Drawn in the sketchbook while enjoying the MOMA sculpture garden's warm autumn weather. Lamentably I neglected to write down the sculptor's name.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
October 10, 200810:44 AM

Street sketching in Herald Square.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
October 5, 2008 2:28 AM

This is an illo for The New York Times' "The City" section. Eric Anthamatten's essay is about the frequent and common disorientation than every New Yorker has felt when emerging from the subway, perhaps at an unfamiliar station, and not being able to situate themselves on the city grid. Art direction by Richard Weigand.

See more of my work for The New York Times.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
October 1, 2008 8:03 PM

I'm tying the knot in May to my sweet Kristina and am in the midst of some designs for the invites and other assorted design elements. These trees were some tests.

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Posted by: stuart (45 posts)
September 24, 200812:58 PM

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
September 23, 2008 1:17 AM

This illo ran in this week's Miami Herald on the cover of the Business Monday section. Apparently the usually brisk furniture market in Miami has been hit by the spate of home foreclosures, and is reeling from the downturn.

I always enjoy cramming a variety of colorful objects across a page. Art direction by Chris Melchiondo.
Click to see a larger version

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Posted by: paulo (32 posts)
September 16, 200812:51 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
September 6, 200812:08 AM

The art director at the Riverfront Times (Sarah Norwood) gave me this assignment last week and the brief I was given was 'goth cruise'. That was all the information I wanted to know. My favorite detail is that the fellow in the lower right corner appears to be wearing a Dracula-style cape. Click on the image for a larger view.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
September 5, 200810:53 AM

From the sketchbook

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Posted by: paulo (32 posts)
August 26, 200811:06 AM

Illustration for Prana Yoga Journal

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
August 24, 2008 9:35 PM

An illustration for the Wall Street Journal Economic Survey.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
August 23, 200810:33 AM

This is a piece I did for The New York Times this week. It is running in Sunday's "The City" section (of the New York edition). The author Thomas R. Pryor waxes nostalgic about a day in 1961 when his father and uncles took him to see the Yankees play the Red Sox. One of his uncles knew Luis Arroyo, the pitcher, and the author got lifted over the fence to hang out in the bullpen, and was awestruck by the pinstriped giants. Art direction by the always agreeable Richard Weigand.

Click for a larger view

Read the Essay

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
August 17, 2008 8:43 PM

It's fun to draw other peoples sculptures. These were drawn in my sketchbook and tweaked in Photoshop. To the left is a piece by Herbert Ferber titled 'Homage to Piranesi' and on the right is an untitled sculpture by Joel Shapiro.

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
August 15, 2008 2:00 PM

I’m finally done with my latest comic for Mome, thank goodness! The book won’t be out for several months; however, the last issue was just released, and it, too, contains a story by moi. It’s available at classy bookstores or on the Fantagraphics site.

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Posted by: paulo (32 posts)
August 12, 2008 1:09 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
August 11, 2008 9:34 PM

the central park variety

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
August 8, 200811:35 PM

Illo for wsj.com regarding fantasy sports and if/when parents should allow their kids to get involved. I think the kid in the stroller here may be headed for trouble.

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Posted by: stuart (45 posts)
August 6, 2008 5:51 AM

An image to accompany an article on Psych-Folk for Plan B music magzine.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
August 5, 2008 1:05 AM

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
August 1, 2008 2:30 PM

I’m working away on a comic for Mome and Great Gulliver’s Goose, am I pooped!

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
July 25, 2008 2:00 PM

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
July 21, 2008 8:54 PM

From an old sketchbook, Venice in March of 1997.

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
July 18, 2008 2:00 PM

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
8:00 AM

Last Friday I was fortunate to see the Antonio López García exhibition at the MFA Boston. Having long admired his work, I was thrilled to see so many of his paintings, drawings, and sculptures in person. If you have the time and the inclination, I highly recommend seeing it before it closes July 27th.

While all of Antonio López García's works are incredible, his drawings are especially stunning. Their attention to detail and their incredible depiction of light is astounding. One can stare at these for hours. Although my egg drawing above pales in comparison, I kept Antonio's graphite gradations of tone in mind while I worked on it.

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Posted by: paulo (32 posts)
July 15, 2008 2:49 PM

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
10:25 AM

An old sketch from a visit to the amazing town of Èze, France.

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
July 11, 2008 5:40 PM

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Posted by: paulo (32 posts)
July 8, 2008 1:28 PM

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
July 7, 200810:43 PM

Sketching in Millennium Park, from my trip to Chicago back in April.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
July 5, 200812:47 AM

Click to grow trees

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
July 4, 2008 2:00 PM

Some sketchbook buggies to honor our nation's birthing!

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
12:00 AM

Happy Fourth of July!

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Posted by: stuart (45 posts)
July 2, 2008 2:50 PM

A quick full pager to accompany an interview with Carl Shipman, one of the first British skaters to ever make it big in America. If I got to draw "RAD" stickers for every illo job, I'd be much happier. This one was a bit of a challenge to draw; the editor wanted a straight up portrait of Shipman, but didn't have any sample shots for me to draw from. We both spent far too long trawling the internet searching for any photo portraits of him, but to no avail. In the end I had to resort to climbing up into my Dad's attic to rummage through my extensive childhood sk8rat mags until I found a few snaps of him. Elusive.
And if you really want to know more about what it's like to be a pencil pusher, go to the July issue of Australian based readersvoice.com for an interview with me.

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Posted by: paulo (32 posts)
July 1, 2008 2:14 PM

Illustration for Prana Yoga Journal

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
10:04 AM

Last week I was lucky enough to attend the inspiring "An Event Apart" conference up in Boston. If you are a web designer / coder and don't read the invaluable A List Apart website (which created the annual multi-city conference), start today. Lots of great talk about CSS, Javascript and web design issues.

Luckily for me, this means two days of near-motionless models to draw in my sketchbook from a row in the back of the room. The models did a great job, holding their hour-long poses with a minimum of fidgeting. Thank you An Event Apart attendees, for allowing me to draw your bald heads and wrinkled shirts.

Believe it or not, the act of sketching lets me focus more on what is being said, and I do believe the ideas 'take' better than if I was just sitting staring at a tiny person on a stage.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
June 29, 200811:22 PM

Sketching subway passengers and trees will never grow old for me.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
June 28, 2008 9:00 AM

Graphite drawing, Ocean City, NJ, June 22, 2008.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
June 22, 2008 8:28 PM

This past Saturday while strolling through Central Park I stopped to draw the rocks and tree above. Later in the weekend a great idea for a children's book dawned on me and I added the elusive creature as a nod to the inspiration.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
June 20, 200810:22 AM

Graphite drawing, Southold, New York, June 8, 2008.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
June 16, 200811:52 PM

The lower part of this fella's beard is inspired by Eric's bushy mane.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
June 15, 200810:20 PM

I created this illustration for this past week's Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Report. It's been a long bout but according to a bunch of economists, Bernanke has the bear on the ropes. If I were that bear I'd lose the gloves and start utilizing a strategy of claws, paws and fangs.

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
June 12, 200811:16 AM

An illustration that I recently did for the Wall Street Journal

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Posted by: paulo (32 posts)
June 10, 2008 2:14 PM

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
June 9, 200810:24 PM

It has been just shy of a year since the intrepid members of the Invisibleman Exploration Committee first surveyed the wilds of the magnificent Escarpment Trail in the Catskills. After a thorough examination of the flora and fauna, we declared it safe enough to bring our significant others along, and this past weekend we had a delightful (but HOT) weekend of hiking and camping, based at the North South Lake Campgrounds.

These are two small 'thumbscapes' I did while being consumed by gnats and black flies.

Posts from last year's trip:

http://invisibleman.com/archives/travels/000467.html
http://invisibleman.com/archives/photos/000465.html
http://invisibleman.com/archives/travels/000468.html
http://invisibleman.com/archives/drawings/000483.html

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
June 8, 200810:52 PM

A couple sketchbook pages made while wandering the grounds of Rockefeller University.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
10:36 PM

With Washington Square park mostly under construction the array of musicians have been squeezed into a denser area. This makes for some quality sketching and as well as some outstanding musicianship. The older gentleman with the saxophone wore a Members Only jacket and operated his instrument with amazing fluidity.

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
June 6, 2008 2:00 PM

Sorry, guys! I’ve been taking a little vacation! I do have some exciting news, however—my Black Spot comic will be in the next issue of Mome. It debuts at ComicCon in San Diego!

However, if you need some nerd-out stat, do check out MoCCA this weekend in at the Puck Building in New York. There will be an array of fascinating speakers (including my fav Lynda Barry!) as well as fine publishers and mini-comics folks.

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Posted by: paulo (32 posts)
June 3, 2008 2:00 PM

A Circle Pit is a type of mosh pit. It is a type of strenuous dancing associated with certain subgenres of music such as ska, punk rock, thrash, heavy metal, and even some harder rock music and is usually started by members of the crowd running wildly in a circle slamming into each other in response to the speed of the music and the beat (...)

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
June 2, 200811:09 PM

The lonely yeti surveys his kingdom. These were separate drawings compiled and colored in photoshop. I thought the near-empty sky (with the exception of some owls) would be a good location to place some text at some point.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
May 23, 2008 2:44 AM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
May 21, 200810:37 PM

A few recent pages from the sketchbook.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
May 19, 2008 4:00 PM

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Posted by: stuart (45 posts)
9:58 AM

A full page advert for Document Skateboard magazine's "Big Push" competition, this year in association with Sony Cybershot. I love it when I get the chance to do my own typography- there's nothing worse than spending ages on an image only to see it destroyed by some clueless graphic designer a week later in print.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
May 15, 2008 9:19 PM

Recently I was perusing the website of illustrator & mad-genius Roger DeMuth whom I was lucky enough to have as a professor at Syracuse University. There's a great video interview of Roger on his site as well as a ton of his drawings, paintings, pop-ups, sketchbooks, boxes, plantlife etc and I immediately set about some creative output of my own. After I finished the drawing above it slowly dawned on me the DeMuthesque nature of what I'd done and I realized: I was under the influence of Roger.

I recall he gave me some of the best and most frank advice I ever received as I was preparing to graduate. He said "Paul... just go out there and fail." Roger has graciously accepted our offer to do a bit of guest posting on InvisibleMan so you'll see some of his amazing works here soon.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
May 12, 2008 7:21 PM

Quick sketch of the Horton Point Lighthouse in Southold, Long Island.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
May 9, 200810:32 AM

This is the eighth year of illustrating for the Siren Music Festival and I went with a half land/half sea composition. Props to Jon Keegan for encouraging me to go aquatic. The Creature from the Black Lagoon makes a strong showing this year but then again he does have centuries of passion pent up in his savage heart - so it sort of makes sense. Click on the image for a larger view.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
12:49 AM

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
May 5, 2008 2:00 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 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 (45 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 (155 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 (190 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 (25 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 (155 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 (81 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 (45 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 (190 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 (81 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 (155 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 (81 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 (190 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: keegan (155 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 (190 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 (190 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 (155 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 (190 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 (155 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 (190 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 (190 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 (190 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 (190 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 (155 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 (116 posts)
January 23, 2008 5:24 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 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 (54 posts)
January 14, 2008 3:18 PM

i scanned some sketches of shirts...

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Posted by: jamie (116 posts)
January 11, 2008 9:04 AM

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Posted by: sara (25 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 (25 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 (155 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 (190 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 (155 posts)
December 11, 200712:00 AM

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
December 6, 200710:39 AM

watercolor and graphic on paper

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Posted by: pa (190 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: keegan (155 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 (190 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 (25 posts)
9:00 AM

Illustration for a holiday card

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Posted by: keegan (155 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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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
November 10, 200712:29 AM

"Merry Second-To-Last Christmas" is written on the inside of the card above. It's fun illustrating for the likes of The Onion. Both Christmas cards can be bought here.

I can imagine the kid crying and breaking crayons.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
November 7, 200712:26 PM

Several weeks ago I began taking a lithography class at the Manhattan Graphics Center. This image is my first lithograph ever. I am pleased with it. I consider it an experiment in which I got to know the materials, the crayons, the pencils, the metal plates involved with the process. My next experiment? Liquid Tusche.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
November 6, 2007 9:40 PM

The story for this month's Soapbox in Publisher's Weekly was a pretty fascinating one. Ben Cheever (son of John Cheever) writes about two seemingly unrelated topics: running and seeking the truth. Yet they come together in a most interesting way in his life.

Having just written a book about running ("Strides"), Cheever talks about how in his family of runners, running together lead to moments of surprising honesty because "the brain doesn't get enough oxygen to support a falsehood".

I was struck by the mention of his family's deepest secret, his father's bisexuality (thus the closet imagery) which lead to the idea for the illustration.

You can see more of my work for Publisher's Weekly here.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
October 28, 2007 8:06 PM

This is another illo created for the Stowe Guide, a magazine in Stowe Vermont. The humorous article deals with the phenomenon referred to as the 'Dude Patch' in which a group of snowboarders move about a mountain in a tightly packed posse. Click the image to view a larger version.

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
October 24, 2007 5:49 PM

This is the invite i quickly designed for my nieces upcoming 4th birthday party. Unfortunately the invites never made it to her friends school mailboxes, as her school was closed on Monday (and has been ever since) as the school is located near where the fires are burning in San Diego, and all the roads are closed. I am supposed to fly out there next friday... I guess we'll see how it goes. She was so excited to see herself on an invite. (Her actual quote: "I AM SO EXCITED!") Btw, she really is that cute and sweet and blonde. :)

Also - this weekend (and last weekend) was POST (Philadelphia Open Studios). Brian and I participated from 12-6 on Satuday. It was busy and fun. (So busy and fun that i didnt get to take any photographs!) Anyway we got some great feedback and I even got a lovely mention on a local design blog: design-phan. Thanks Caroline!

Also - i have 2 pieces in this toy art show at philadelphia's city hall. The opening reception is next Thursday from 5-7pm. I'm not sure if NY has something like this, but in Philly, it's a great opportunity for artists. (Especially since Philadelphia closed it's Office of Arts and Culture in 2004!) How crazy is that?!?

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
October 12, 200711:41 PM

About 10 years ago I did an illustration for the Vermont weekly 'Seven Days' about a couple getting caught in a blizzard while hiking up to the Stone Hut which sits atop Stowe. The hut was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1936 and is a special place; perched as it is atop the famous Nose Dive trail. Recently the Stowe Guide contacted me about reusing the art though I recalled having sold the original (pre-computer days: no scan). But I had a few sketches and drawings stored away and thus did a Dr. Frankenstein and stitched, spackled and redrew the drawing above. The original story by David Healy is a great tale and can be read here.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
October 11, 200710:12 PM

This is another illo for the "Soapbox" column in Publisher's Weekly.

Author Steve Weinberg laments the fact that once you are a bona fide published writer, you immediately become besieged by people looking to get their manuscripts (of varying degrees of quality) published.

He writes:

"When my telephone rings, I almost always check the caller ID before I answer. If the number and name look unfamiliar, I assume that the caller probably is (a) a prison inmate, or (b) a would-be author seeking advice about publishing a book."

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
October 2, 2007 8:00 AM

This illo for Publisher's Weekly was for a story about a book with a tricky title. Robert I. Sutton's "The No Asshole Rule" proved difficult to discuss on public airwaves, and the way the interviewers approached the title varied greatly. An NPR producer killed the interview after a producer got squeamish, and anything-goes satellite radio actually asked him to mention the title frequently as they figured their audience would enjoy hearing it on their radios.

I was listening to the audio book of Frank Herbert's Dune while working on this. Nothing like an epic story to keep you glued to your desk while working on a deadline.

You can see more of my work for Publisher's Weekly here.

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
October 1, 200710:43 PM

started out as a simple birthday card...

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
September 25, 2007 6:49 PM

A drawing in the sketchbook made of the mountains of northwest Montana as seen through Google Earth.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
September 20, 200712:06 AM

One of my favorite things about this website, is that when it's my day to post, and I don't have anything lying around that's obviously post-worthy, it forces me into the lab to play around and experiment...I don't do it enough, but it always leads to interesting things (though not necessarily this piece).

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
September 19, 2007 7:55 PM

so i recently got engaged (yay!) and am slowly entering into the crazy/bizarre world of planning a wedding. so, that being said... anyone want some wedding cake?

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
September 12, 200710:19 PM

I completed this illo of Ben Bernanke earlier today for a Wall Street Journal economic forecast interactive. The spooky atmosphere may be influenced by the Algernon Blackwood book I've been reading as of late.

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
9:00 AM

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
September 11, 200712:00 AM

Sketch drawn on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade days after September 11th, 2001.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
September 10, 2007 8:30 AM

If you pick up a copy of this week's U.S. News & World Report you'll find a few of my drawings inside. The illos are for the annual 'Paying for College' package, and the team at the magazine picked a fun "Texas Hold 'em" theme for this year's section. Lots of great visuals to work from!

The image above is the opener for the package.

Click to see a larger version with the rest of the illos.

You can see more of my work for U.S. News & World Report here.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
September 3, 200712:57 PM

Growing up my family did lots of camping and the highlight of every trip was always the ghost story told by my father once the fire grew low. He was a master practitioner of the art. I made his always bone-chilling stories the theme of this pattern drawing I just completed. Click the image above for a larger version.

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
August 31, 2007 9:00 AM

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
August 29, 200712:00 AM

A pretty simple Illo for Publisher's Weekly. A writer (Pete Croatto) working at a bookstore tells how he found peace in the simple job of selling books:

"I’ve been snapped at, lectured to and dismissed, all of which could happen in an hour".

Even after being threatened with violence, and talked down to, he found helping readers rewarding.

I am doing more opaque color on my digital paintings now. I used to give color a much more watercolor type treatment, but I am feeling nostalgic for the satisfying opacity of oils. Time to go back into the lab with my neglected copy of Painter and see what develops.

You can see more of my work for Publisher's Weekly here.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
August 21, 2007 9:12 PM

This is an illustration for the Riverfront Times in St. Louis which highlights three upcoming events: a viewing of Troll 2 (rated worst movie ever by IMDB), a charity foodball game and a sumo and sake event. Click image for a larger version.

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
11:23 AM

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
August 20, 200712:00 AM

Two watercolor sketches done recently. The first is from Watch Hill and the second from Pimlico Pond in Sandwich, MA. Click on either image for larger versions of each.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
August 19, 200712:00 PM

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
August 17, 200712:00 AM

I spent last week up in Bluff Point, NY on Keuka Lake in the magnificent Finger Lakes region. I am always amazed at the amount of amazing geography in New York State. The Finger Lakes region is a particularly stunning area, with it's incredible gorges, and steep bluffs nestled between the majestic lakes.

This is a small gouache sketch I did looking east across the vineyards on John Hall Road, just off Skyline Drive.

Click on the above image for a larger version.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
August 12, 2007 1:08 PM

A drawing from the sketchbook. Further analysis can be found here.

Continue reading "Chu-Chu-Chupacabra"
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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
August 9, 2007 9:00 AM

Doodling in notorious cursed sketchbook I only ever use at work...

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
August 4, 2007 9:58 PM

Astro-Gato and Sharky McBeast are two of the six characters I drew for the rad folks at Anteism and their iMyGrate project. For this project Ryan Thompson and friends put out a call for character submissions and are now in the midst of a roadtrip from the Pacific to the Atlantic dispursing these characters along the way. They're going to track the character's destinations and are hoping some will migrate their ways back to their home base of Pender Island B.C. Good luck Astro-Gato and Sharky McBeast, I hope you make some friends along the way.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
August 1, 2007 9:31 PM

Some of the lakes and mountains of southern Chile sketched from Google Earth.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
July 27, 200712:00 AM

Graphite sketches of the Brooklyn Bridge.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
July 21, 200710:30 AM

I had a really fun time working up these Harry Potter illustrations for a The Wall Street Journal Online interactive. Click here to see the infographic, complete with floating scrolls (ala the Marauder Map) and animated owls. I haven't read the books but I really dig the films and was very enthused to illustrate within that universe. The entire time I worked on these the Harry Potter theme music was swirling through my head.

And really, I'd be remiss if I didn't address the best feline actor we have today and the true star of the entire Harry Potter series: Crookshanks the Cat. (As you can see from the illustration he is first in line to get his paws on 'The Deathly Hallows'). When I saw the new film 'Order of the Phoenix' and saw the work that Crookshanks had done, the type of cat actor he's become... well, I wept openly.

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
July 18, 2007 9:00 AM

Today’s my dad’s birthday. Happy birthday, Pops!

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
July 16, 200712:00 AM

Last year, I worked on this illustration for a regional magazine which I was really happy with. Unfortunately, as often happens in the magazine world, the story got held and the art never ran.

I recently got the OK to use the art for my promo purposes since it was languishing in editorial limbo for so long, so I though I'd pub this step-by-step slideshow that I put together while working on the piece, but never posted.

My process has changed a bit since I did this piece (I now use a lightbox to transfer the sketch to real paper rather than vellum), but I still think it's a good peek into my process. I'll try to document some more of these in the future, as I loved reading Step-by-Step Graphics magazine, and I think the simple tutorial can by one of the great ways to learn.

You can see the full pictures here and see a nice large version of the art on my site here.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
July 15, 2007 3:45 PM

A drawings that came out of the sketchbook and then was digitally reworked of various sculptures at MOMA and Rockefeller University, including 'The River' by Aristide Maillol and Herbert Ferber's 'Homage to Piranesi' among others. Click here or on the image to see a larger version.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
July 14, 200710:45 PM

More sketching done on the New York subway - the ever fruitful place to draw people who are staring down or sleeping. Click here or on the image to see a larger version.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
July 9, 200712:08 AM

Drawings in the sketchbook made over a few days riding various subway lines.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
July 8, 2007 7:02 PM

My moon globe on a wooden pedestal and yet another back-of-the-head drawing.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
July 4, 2007 5:53 PM

Drawn in the sketchbook while there was still light.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
12:00 PM

Well, it is the 4th of July, and one of my favorite things about America is the National Park Service. Utah has an unfair amount of natural physical beauty, and Canyonlands National Park spills over with majestic scenery at every turn.

I did this tiny thumbnail landscape in the Needles District of the park on a spectacular day last October. If you haven't taken advantage of the U.S. National Park system, you should, for it truly is one of the greatest gifts the government has given its people.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
July 3, 2007 2:27 AM

Here are a few doodles from my current s-l-o-w-l-y progressing sketchbook. I worked up the values in photoshop...

I find that drawing in low light can really help make for a more interesting drawing. Often if I'm drawing while watching TV, the lights in the room are pretty dim, and it keeps the sketching loose and very fast. It can be a nice exercise to help disengage your brain when you are thinking about things too much. The guy in the lower left hand corner could be Darth Maul's pudgy, out-of-shape, underachieving older brother.

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
July 2, 2007 9:25 PM

chirp. chirp. here's my illustration friday "twist."

as previously mentioned, i am taking an off-loom fibers class. last week we were shown netting. i decided to draw the loops and knots and what i remembered of the demonstration, and somehow the drawing turned into twisty, funny looking birds. (note: i then used the "live paint" feature of illustrator. if you've never used live paint before, you should try it. it's fun to use and much easier than the traditional way of coloring up art in illustrator. it was a new feature introduced in cs2.)

also, if you want to make your own net, check out this page.

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
June 25, 200711:17 AM

Doodling in my sketchbook...

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
June 24, 2007 8:57 PM

The Queensboro Bridge is undergoing some rehabilitation lately and is partially wearing a Christo-like shroud. The sketch above I drew from York ave and the photo below nearby.

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
June 19, 200711:43 PM

is there a difference between failure and rejection? i was thinking of that... and willy wonka. (good eggs and bad eggs) "rejection" was created for illustration friday. go & participate!

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Posted by: jamie (116 posts)
June 18, 200710:50 PM

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
9:16 AM

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
June 10, 2007 8:33 PM

This is an illo I just did for Publisher's Weekly. This installment of the Soapbox column was penned by author Harriet Rubin who sums her rallying cry for more old-fashioned editing as follows:

"Builders of ancient temples in Asia typically carved two huge statues at the temple gate. One holds a book, the other a sword. The book symbolizes knowledge. The sword is there to remind people to cut things off: to edit. Knowledge is not wisdom until you slice through the words you hear, judge them and are moved to silence."

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
June 7, 200710:24 AM

Drawing from my sketchbook...

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
June 1, 200711:17 AM

This is an illustration I did a few months ago for Publisher's Weekly "Soapbox" column. This is a regular feature where authors, editors and other publishing figures get a chance to rant, rave or tell a personal anecdote about the industry.

This installment of the column was a particularly painful (yet funny) account by the author Liam Callanan who had just published his book "The Cloud Atlas". Thinking he had coined a clever and unique title, he was more than disappointed when he found that his own publisher had just released David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" (one of my favorite books in the past few years by the way). Worse yet, Mitchell's "Atlas" went on to receive heaps of praise and critical acclaim (even a breathless mention on a soap opera). This all lead to confusion at the book store, and misguided letters to the author. He took it all in good spirits though, and had a good sense of humor about the whole affair, noting how this has happened to many authors in the past.

So for the illustration, I imagined Callanan engaging on a guerrilla street campaign to alter the promotional campaign for Mitchell's book, and co-opting it for his own title.

See more of my work for Publisher's Weekly here

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Posted by: sara (25 posts)
May 24, 200711:45 AM

Excerpt from a story about my earliest memories

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
May 5, 200712:00 AM

I came across these eight guys playing some incredibly tight New Olreans jazz in Washington Sq park a few hours ago. The tuba especially was blowing out.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
May 3, 200710:17 PM

The artwork for this summer's Siren Music Festival put on by the Voice. I tried to capture the insanity and culturally brackish waters that is Coney Island while keeping the color palette limited to the reds and blues I've liked working with lately. Last summer I took a photo on the boardwalk of a man feeding seagulls frenchfries. He'd just hold them up in the air and the seagull would float down and gulp 'em right out of his fingers. That was partial inspiration for this illo and the moment is recreated right above the siren. Click here or on the image to see a larger version. The date is Sat. July 21st.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
April 10, 2007 9:37 AM

I drew this while staying at the warm and friendly Kasbah du Toubkal in the town of Ilmil in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco. The peak in the distance is Jebel Toubkal, the 2nd highest peak in Africa at 13,671 feet above sea level.

We were all pretty worked over with various maladies when we got up to this beautiful spot, and here Julie is wrapped up in a scarf, hoodie and sunglasses taking a nap.

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
April 7, 200711:20 PM

i often draw onto of magazines photos for inspiration and character development; a form of coffee table graffiti, i guess

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
April 5, 200712:18 AM

Kurt and I attended our first Dorkbot NYC get-together tonight. Having been told from trusted sources that it was in my "wheelhouse", I was finally lured to attend when I saw the list of projects being presented. The one that caught my eye was RepRap. On their website, RepRap is described as follows: "RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is a practical self-copying 3D printer." My mind jumped to images of self-assembling nano-machines from Neil Stephenson's The Diamond Age The concept they have working is far less fantastical, but just as exciting.

Basically, they are attempting to make a very simple, CHEAP, open-design rapid prototyping machine (all designs and software open-source).The killer feature: the parts which it will be made of can be made using the machine itself.

So if I have a working RepRap, and you come over, and see it working, and say you want one, I can print up all the parts of the machine for you to make your own. All you need are a few extra components that cannot currently be "printed" by the machine, some raw material (plastic, resin or metal) and you can assemble your own RepRap.

My mind was spinning thinking of the possibilities.

Dorkbot NYC meets on the first Wednesday in every month.

LINK: http://reprap.org

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
April 3, 200711:38 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
April 2, 200711:03 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
March 22, 2007 8:09 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
March 2, 2007 9:54 PM

A glacier in the Patagonia region of Argentina. Drawn and painted in the sketchbook.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
February 18, 2007 1:37 PM

Illustration for economic survey which suggested the US Gov pursue alternative energies.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
February 15, 2007 6:55 PM

Having monsterous webbed claws makes it difficult to operate spacecraft.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
February 4, 2007 1:52 PM

One of my favorite themes of The Creature from the Black Lagoon is how the gill-man evolved through time in a lost corner of the Amazon. This savage fellow of the Devonian Age is also utterly girl-crazy and spends much of the film chasing after Julia Adams. So it only made sense to me that given a little time, the Creature would evolve to reach outer-space and continue his lustful pursuits to the far reaches of the galaxy. As a result I created the illustration above and mocked it up to appear as if it were an old sci-fi book cover. I think Michael Chabon should write this book and a subsequent screenplan which could be the sequel to the remake which may or may not come out in 2008.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
February 1, 2007 2:55 AM

I've been absent for a while working in the shadows on a time-consuming project for many weeks now (no excuse for not posting!), but I was happy to get two fun jobs within 10 minutes of each other a few weeks ago, so I feel they should be posted together.

The detail on the left is from an illo for Retail Traffic magazine, and is about how big box retailers like Home Depot are expanding into new, unfamiliar territory selling plasma TV's and videogames in a quest for profits.

The detail on the right is from a piece for the Soapbox column in Publisher's Weekly. A veteran children's book editor wrote a funny essay where her agent interviews both herself, and her over-eager naïve alter-ego; the first-time children's book author.

Visit my site to see the full images:

LINK: Big Box Retailers Expand
LINK: The Editor's Alter-Ego

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
January 16, 2007 8:24 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
January 8, 2007 9:01 PM

A sketchbook drawing of the fireplace in my apartment (within which a TV sits). Color and textures were done in photoshop.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
January 3, 2007 8:23 PM

A couple recent illustrations done for WSJ.com's economic forecast survey.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
December 27, 200610:53 PM

I made these sketches during the Christmas Eve service at my Dad's church. He's delivered Christmas sermons there for twenty-two years and he'll be retiring in January.
I've done a lot of sketching in church.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
December 19, 2006 9:27 PM

I just finished this for Barron's Online for a package titled '007: The Year Ahead. You can almost imagine Richard Keil aka Jaws lurking in the background.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
December 16, 2006 5:21 PM

This article for The New York Times was about a family's unusual encounter with a bike thief. The kid in the story had his bike stolen, and he had a prime suspect in mind. When the victim's father showed up at the suspect's house to confront his family with the accusation, they denied it, and the family was forced to give up (a similar thing happened to me as a kid!).

Amazingly, more than a year later, the suspected thief shows up at their door with an older man an envelope full of money, and the kid apologizes for stealing the bike. It's a pretty awkward moment for both adults and certainly for the kids themselves. I felt this was a moment where both kids lose some degree of their innocence, and deal with some tough stuff for the first time.

You can see more of my work for The New York Times here.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
December 3, 2006 9:12 PM

Above is a watercolor-pencil drawing done in my sketchbook of the Brandberg Massif; a fascinating circular monolith located in eastern Namibia. This Middle-earth like place is known for its ancient rock paintings such as The White Lady, which according to wikipedia is located deep within the mountain. I discovered this place while skiming above Google Earth and have recently realized what a treasure trove of reference material is located within that program. Stay tuned for more from other Invisiblemen/Invisiblewomen.
Download the Google Earth bookmark here:

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
November 15, 2006 7:16 PM

I hit the Spring Studio for some long overdue figure drawing today. The only thing I ended up liking is this drawing from the very first 2 minute pose, when Minerva (the owner) stood in for the tardy model (who wasn't very good). I need to log some more time there, as I feel a bit rusty, and it takes some time to get your drawing mojo back, I find.

While drawing, I've been listening to the excellent new album
"The Crane Wife" from The Decemberists. The track that will stay in your head and keep you humming all day long is the duet Colin Meloy sings with with Laura Veirs "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)".

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
November 12, 200612:21 AM

Down to the last few pages.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
November 7, 200611:03 PM

I was watching the incredible film Das Boot for the first time while drawing this in my sketchbook.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
November 6, 2006 8:34 PM

I'd lightly drawn the figures in this drawing a few months back and just recently realized there was more work to be done. I like the idea that little is sacred and one should feel free to rework or cannabalize past efforts when the time comes.
Click here or the image above to view a larger version.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
8:02 PM

Citizens reading or sleeping; thats what 75% of my sketchbook drawings are.
On another musical tip, the new Califone album is a damn fine piece of work. You can stream their new album "Roots & Crowns" here. Check the tunes like '3 Legged Animals' and 'The Orchids'... quality.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
October 31, 2006 8:50 PM

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
October 30, 2006 6:51 PM

yes. i'm still here... i've been busy freelancing, teaching and looking for studio space in philly. all quite time consuming. here's an illo i just did for my own homework assignment (from the illustrator class i am teaching). each student got a month to design... and was to be inspired by its birthstone. november is kind of interesting, as it has two. citrine and topaz - depending on if you are modern or traditional... after much internal debate, i decided to go mod. and cute. (see the whole thing here)

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
October 23, 2006 7:26 PM

As Halloween nears we must all be vigilant against the horrible, fang-laden Chupacabra. Watch the Chup's 3rd cousin the Werewolf cavort in this video by TV on the Radio (and my favorite tune of the year so far).

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
October 15, 200611:19 PM

This past week was my Dad's 78th birthday. We met up in Columbus, OH and drove over to Dayton to visit the United States Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Airforce Base. My Dad was a private pilot for many years, and had wanted to visit for a while. This place was incredible, with three gargantuan hangars spanning the mere 100 years of military aviation, from the first Wright Brothers' planes purchased by the Army to the latest drones and stealth aircraft. It was a dizzying display of planes, and I was excited to draw them. I basically just focused on the silhouettes, not caring too much about detail. You can some photos of our trip here. If you are even near Dayton, check it out...It's an amazing display.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
1:57 AM

Twelve recent pages from the sketchbook. Many of these drawings were culled from the subway as well as Tomkins Sq. Park. In non-illustrative news the new Bonnie 'Prince' Billy album "The Letting Go" is really something... it comes highly recommended out the the InvisibleMan West Village Bureau.

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Posted by: jamie (116 posts)
October 7, 2006 9:48 PM

Cats have been involuntarily involved in my art as long as I can remember.
Mysterious and loyal, they move complete but unsatisfied.

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
October 2, 200612:50 PM

while procrastinating, i did some illustration friday sketches. this weeks topic is QUIET. i used watercolor to create the original drawings and then scanned, reordered and soup'd them up in pshop. i'm not sure how i feel about these... but i am posting as to relieve some "not posting in a while" guilt. it was fun to break out the winsor & newtons and my japanese waterbrush.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
September 27, 2006 8:08 PM

A birthday drawing for my girlfriend Kristina.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
September 22, 2006 4:03 PM

This illo will be in this Sunday's New York Times on September 24th, 2006. The story is about how most people's garages are dark, scary places full of the tools of yard work and labor, rarely resembling the brightly light neat workspaces shown in catalogs.

See more of my work for the Times here.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
September 17, 200611:11 PM

Congratulations to our good friends Susannah and Mike Italiano who got married up Lake Placid, NY this weekend. My wife and I spent an amazing weekend with them up at the fabulous Lake Placid Lodge with the above jaw-dropping view out of our lakeside cabin window. The weather was perfect and the leaves were just starting to change, and it reminded me of how much I love this part of the Adirondacks. Click below for another sketch of a cool birch tree on the lake.

Continue reading "Whiteface Over Lake Placid"
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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
September 16, 2006 2:01 AM

A collection of some of the recent economic forecast illustrations I've done for wsj.com - note the recurring housing theme.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
September 10, 2006 1:14 AM

Sights from the #1 and F trains.

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
September 8, 200612:05 AM

wow - 5 minutes past midnight... that's cutting it close! here is my illustration for "SAFE" - this (past) weeks illustration friday. i wanted to work in b/w, and for obvious reasons, i have new york on my mind this week. five years went by so quickly... i miss you nyc.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
September 5, 2006 2:43 AM

Spent some more time in the Lab this weekend beefing up my texture library. I painted with acrylic and gouache on acetate, gessoed illustration board, butcher paper and cardboard. The coolest results were painting right onto acetate with gouache. Always fun to get messy and experimental. I scanned these in at 600dpi @ 100%. Having a bunch of these files lying around has been invaluable to me as I strive to add more texture to my digitally painted illustrations. Nothing worse than a flat, paint-bucketed expanse.

One illustrator who has really mastered the art of balancing the real paint texture look with crisp digital illustration is Linzie Hunter of the UK. She also started the fabulous On My Desk blog, full of photographs of illustrators and designers' workspaces. Check it out!

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
September 1, 200612:39 AM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
August 26, 2006 9:37 PM

I've been trying out some watercolor-pencils in the sketchbook lately which has been pretty satisfying; especially when augmented with some Old Holland watercolor paint. The sketch above is of my brother Steve lounging in Maine.

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
August 22, 2006 9:48 AM

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
August 21, 200611:11 PM

so, in prep for a class i am teaching in the fall, i was playing around with the gradient mesh tool today in illustrator... and as i promised, i was... i mean am... going to try and do illustration friday every week from now on. so here is my "killing 2 birds with one stone." (which upon reflection really is a terrible expression!) this weeks topic was "Match."

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
August 20, 2006 9:49 PM

Sketches from the Red Cottage of mid-coastal Maine, an ensorcelled world of hidden beavers, lonely loons, vain turtles and buoys; all lurking in the shadows of the Ragged Mountain.

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
August 18, 200611:16 AM

that's alot of barb! i'm in the process of moving (my apartment and my studio)... so i havent been able to do much recently, but i was just perusing my files from the workshop i took in june and i definitely want to start using the techniques i learned. oy - where did the summer go???

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
August 8, 200610:52 PM

This illustration for Tennis Magazine's "The Complete Player" column continues the story of the author of this piece which I illustrated for them back in August of 2005. Recalling the tennis-filled days of his youth, the author describes how he ultimately lost a cherished friendship, thanks to his hubris and his gossiping about winning a friendly practice match. This of course, is totally based on Norman Rockwell's classic "Gossips" Saturday Evening Post cover from 1948. Apologies to Mr. Rockwell!

I was reading a good Rockwell book while researching this illo, and I'm convinced that he would have embraced the advent of the computer and digital photography with open arms.

Continue reading " Tennis Magazine: Game, Set, Friendship"
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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
11:07 AM

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
August 5, 200611:37 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
July 30, 200612:57 PM

My InvisibleBrother James and I recently did some camping/drawing/hiking/wave-riding in the Watch Hill area of Fire Island. Located on the western edge of the Otis Pike High Dune Wilderness it's an amazing and uncrowded spot within 2 hours of New York City.

Continue reading "Watch Hill/ Otis Pike High Dune Wilderness"
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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
July 26, 200611:44 PM

This ran in the Thursday Styles section of The New York Times. The story is about how today's young singles are finding frustration in their endless searches for a mate online, and turning to the age-old tradition of letting their parents help find them a match. You can view some of my other illustrations for The New York Times here on my site.

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
7:23 PM

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
6:53 PM

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
5:48 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
July 24, 2006 9:42 PM

The above rendering is for this week's Village Voice illustrating an upcoming screening of Jaws at Pier 54 on Manhattan's west side. For a shark enthusiast like myself, this sort of illo job is akin to your Alma Mater winning the NCAA basketball championship or perhaps bearing witness to a the elusive Yeti; something you hope for but don't necessarily expect.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
July 19, 200610:34 AM

.

I just completed two illustrations for The American Society for Engineering Education which will be running in their flagship magazine PRISM. Above are details of the cover image (left) and the accompanying interior full-page illo. The story is about how Texas is using an innovative partnership between the state and the high tech industry to lure (and better retain) college students into engineering studies. Continue reading to see the full drawings....

Continue reading "Electric Cowboy"
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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
July 8, 2006 2:36 AM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
July 6, 2006 8:59 PM

In a previous post I'd mentioned how I had a dream about a decrepit old shark, covered in plants and moss. I thought I'd turn that into an illustration while also applying more watercolor to the drawing before doing the photoshop compilation.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
July 2, 2006 2:01 PM

The folks at The Art Bureau have been kind enough to show some of my work in their online gallery: www.theartbureau.org. I created the piece above for a black and white numeric calendar they're putting together, which by the way has a few available spots if any illustrators or designers out there are interested.

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
June 29, 2006 5:19 PM

(crops from the poster - click above to see full image)

i'm back. here's a poster i created at anderson workshop. various (dynamic) flash components were used to create and distribute the top background patterns. i created a ton during this fun/intense week long workshop at anderson ranch.

(the type is backwards as when youre inside the ranch the type is cut out from the entrance sign and you can see the mountains through it. also, those birds are magpies. they're fun looking. kind of like flying penguins.)

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
June 27, 2006 2:35 AM

day 1. here i am in lovely aspen. here's an image (still) from some randomly generated art (dynamically via action script) which i did today. the color palette resulted from this ink drawing/image (previously shown on invisibleman a few months ago) and then refined in photoshop.

PS i saw the milky way tonight. awesome. highly recommend it.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
June 19, 2006 8:20 PM

After a great, steep hike down into the aforementioned Grand Canyon of PA I sketched these mossy banks of the Pine Creek.

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
June 13, 2006 9:56 PM

it's been too long since i've drawn. "the real world" has taken over. here are some peeps i drew last week. (click the image to enlarge.) since getting my mfa (yay!) a a few weeks ago, i am quickly learning action script as i am going to anderson ranch in colorado (near aspen) in less than 2 weeks for a joshua davis flash 8 workshop. hopefully i will make some kickin' good art work to post upon my return from aspen (and san diego).

when i return i am planning to continue making books, work on my illustration portfolio (and make a regular habit of doing illustration friday each week), and begin to pay off grad school by freelance designing here in philadelphia... oh - hold on... i have a funny photo to post too...

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
June 12, 2006 3:13 AM

Amazing full moon tonight...While out walking the dog very late, I was inspired to record a rough little nocturnal cityscape...this is (very) loosely based on my view looking out over Dean Street onto Bergen. I have been wanting to do some paintings of the city at night...this has whet my appetite.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
June 7, 2006 9:27 PM

(Click above to see the full image)

Just finished this drawing for The New York Times' Thursday Styles Section (June 8, 2006). The story was about how younger workers in their 20's and 30's are often passing on the standard two week vacations, in favor of longer vacations, in-between their frequent job-hopping.

Read on to see my sketch and my reference photo.

Continue reading "Illo for The New York Times"
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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
June 5, 2006 2:23 PM

While feeling under the weather the last few days I made this Glowing Moose Head illustration combining pencil, sepia ink, and photoshop. It's inspired by a photo I took last summer in Maine.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
May 29, 2006 3:08 PM

Today was a perfect steamy summer day to take a stroll in Prospect Park. The pooch and I went for a nice long walk, with a few stops for some sketching. You first walk out onto the open lawn, and the wave of moist grassy air laced with sweet barbecue washes over you. EVERYONE is out enjoying the best spot in Brooklyn. I am still finding cool little paths to walk through. You can actually get lost in there. Since I am still obsessed with Google Earth ( Click here to download ), here are the placemarks of exactly where these sketches were drawn:

Top Sketch: ProsParkSketch1.kmz - Google Earth Placemark
Bottom Sketch: ProsParkSketch2.kmz - Google Earth Placemark

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Posted by: jamie (116 posts)
May 26, 200611:23 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
May 23, 2006 9:25 PM

Central Park dairy house, Wash Sq Park fountain and the boathouse in Prospect Park.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
May 22, 200611:01 PM

About a month back my bro Jamie and I were sitting in the dining car of an Amtrak train on route to Pittsburgh. There was a handlebar-mustachioed Amtrak employee (right) doing some paperwork across the way and I took the opportunity to do a quick sketch and watercolor.

Right as I was finishing up, a second Amtrak employee asked me if I'd gotten permission to draw him. I told him no, I never asked people if I could sketch them. He said if I were in south Philly and someone caught me sketching them, a beat-down would ensue.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
May 19, 2006 7:52 PM

Here's a few faces from my latest sketchbook...been slacking on the posts.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
May 8, 2006 9:36 PM

Talking about the 1, 4, 6 and F trains... Washington Square, respectively.

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
May 5, 200610:13 PM

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
May 4, 2006 5:36 PM

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
April 27, 2006 6:36 PM

Yesterday I had the opportunity to sketch at the American Museum of Natural History. Here is the result. Click the link and explore the diorama this was sketched from online.

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
April 26, 200610:43 AM

sketch of one of three musicians i'm working on

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
April 18, 200610:58 PM

Yet more for the Flavorpill folks. The woods were drawn in Prospect Park and the horn player in Washington Sq. Park.

This is a portrait of George Orwell - and an example of taking a previous sketch and doing more with color.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
8:31 PM

More work for Flavorpill. Tourists and trees.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
7:27 PM

I've recently created some graphic works for Flavorpill. I took it as an opportunity to play around with different stlyes and take older projects and sketches and breathe new life into them. The city vs nature theme has crept in there as the image above can attest.

For this illo I wanted to give the feel of a graffiti wall of the sort you might find in Soho, with layers of paint, paste-ups and stickers. Also wanted to make it very cropable.

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
April 16, 200611:21 AM

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
April 14, 2006 7:20 PM

taken from my sketchbook... story about an old geezer waylayed in california who seeks to bring some good old fashion law and order in a lawless, coconut-sipping, shark-bitten world...

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
April 11, 2006 9:39 AM

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
April 2, 200611:43 PM

Sneak peak of a character that i've been working on.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
March 21, 2006 3:44 AM

These are my first illustrations for The Hartford Courant. They ran a series of stories this week covering the college application process. The drawing on the top ran with a pair of stories that dealt with how both the students and the parents deal with the anxious waiting period in different ways.

The story that the bottom drawing ran with was about a new breed of private consultants who promise to help get your kid into the best school, starting very early on.

You can see larger versions here and here.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
March 15, 200611:25 PM

I'm working on the second drawing of a two-part newspaper illustration series tonight (due tomorrow morning!)...Just wanted to share how much I enjoy the underpainting part of my process...Working out the values alone can be very satisfying. Then, you must wade into the unknown currents of the color. Exciting, but can be scary. At this stage, I try to stick to the burnt sienna hues, just liked I used to in 'traditional' paintings. Texture is key at this point...Gonna be a long night!

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
March 4, 2006 1:57 PM

Here's the poster/ad art I've come with for this year's Siren Festival in Coney Island. Click here or on the image to see a larger version. I'd initially come up with a blue/red/purple color scheme but after I began the color temperature felt too cool for this setting, so I added lots of yellow. Because Dave Bias designs a variety of ads and posters for the Voice at different sizes I gave him the final art with the Siren and her magic swirl on separate layers. The big open space to the left of the Siren will facilitate the names of the bands playing the fest. And yes, that is John "Stumpy" Pepys (Ed Begley Jr.) from Spinal Tap playing the drums by the big wave.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
12:29 AM

Some recent bits from the sketchbook; subway riders, post-snowboarding doodling and a rendering of InvisibleMan's founding father.

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
February 23, 200610:56 AM

it's been too long since a post. i've gotten into my acrylics this week. (thanks again "drawing methods" class.) it was somewhat liberating, though the other side of me wants to keep learning actionscript... there's never enough time to do it all. anyway, thought i'd share this lovely pollockyesque image.

enjoy!

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
February 15, 2006 6:57 PM

Last week I created this illo for The Wall Street Journal Online of the new Fed chairman Ben Bernanke trying to impress upon reporters and economist's what kind of tough chairman he'll be.

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
February 14, 200612:54 AM

as i sit here thinking about my thesis show and the ideas of games and play... i decided to draw the long lost toys of my youth.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
February 13, 200611:33 PM

I have an illustration in Tuesday's Science section of The New York Times (2/13/06). The story was written by a Parkinson's patient, who suffers from "audio illusions" as a side effect of his medication (or perhaps just because of the Parkinson's). A woman laughing too loud in a restaurant is transformed into a neighing horse, and a man with a booming voice becomes a circus ringleader with a megaphone.

This was strange, fascinating story to draw. I chose not to feature the primary 'illusion' of the story, Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday Mr. President", though it probably would have gone with the headline more. The author experiences illusions that his brain creates after hearing real sounds, which I felt was best represented by the more surreal laughing horse-lady and ringleader in the restaurant. I'm most satisfied with the composition, as I really wanted the shape of the room to appear as 'sound waves' focusing in on his ear...

Also, my palette for this was fully inspired by the electric gouache paintings of the master Lou Romano.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
February 10, 2006 6:16 PM

I've just finished up a pair of sketchbooks, and I've posted them on my sketchbooks gallery on my website. These books are roughly from 2005 to present, and I felt very good wrapping them up. I am now moved into my new handmade book, and the paper is so much better than these Moleskines. I love the form of the Moleskines, but the paper is just crap. Watercolor fights to be absorbed, and ultimately fails. That is why there is such a lack of color in these books.

LINK: Jon Keegan's Sketchbook Gallery

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
February 4, 2006 9:45 AM

i am taking a class called drawing methods. the assignment was to "have an idea. start the idea. forget the idea. change the idea. alter the idea." um. ok.

this started out as pencil drawing, then i scanned it and vectored it in illustrator, then printed it out and used pencil on the printout - responding to and drawing on the shapes... it was fun. i am thinking of silkscreening the first guy in on the second line. i like him. he is little billy and the giraffe...

ps i tried the custom photoshop brush thing with little billy and yes i agree - its pretty cool.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
February 3, 200611:13 PM

Making custom photoshop brushes has become habit forming.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
6:51 PM

Here's some sketches and color studies done in my awesome new sketchbook which Keegan constructed for me. The paper is not too thin, yet takes pencil, ink and watercolor really well.

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
January 24, 200610:59 AM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
January 16, 200610:14 PM

A color study and sketch for the upcoming Siren Festival art.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
December 30, 2005 3:12 AM

I just finished these silkscreened octopus shirts for my adorable nieces for our post-Christmas get-together. I did a few silkscreens in college, and have always been meaning to do more, and beef up on my silkscreening skills. These came out alright, but I have much work to do...I went through three sets of screens before getting the exposure just right for the photo-emulsion / transparency transfer process.

If you have any interest in doing any silkscreening, be sure to nab the very helpful "Re" guide to reproduction. More silkscreens to come in the new year!

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
December 13, 2005 2:11 PM

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
December 4, 200511:19 PM

Just finsihed up a series of drawings for U.S. News & World Report, which will be on newsstands on Monday, Dec. 5th, in a special section titled "Teaching Your Kids About Money". The above drawing is from an article in that section about when kids graduate college, then move back home, avoiding financial independence.

You can see the other drawings on my website here.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
November 30, 2005 2:25 AM

I'm working on a series of illustrations this week for US News & World Report. Here's one of them in progress as seen from a Keegan's-eye-view. I'm always amazed at the sensation of working on a high-resolution image at 100% on my 23" Cinema Display. Based on this 300dpi piece of artwork, the size on my screen is the equivalent of working on a detail of a drawing that is 5 1/2" feet tall! I cannot wait until we have drafting table-sized displays, that we can lean on...and draw directly upon...and spill our coffee upon...

Click to see a detail at 100%.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
November 28, 2005 7:56 PM

I drew President Jackson upside-down. Click above for a larger view.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
November 26, 200511:36 PM

On the left is a detail of a drawing I slapdashedly made while crossing Pennsylvania on a train this past week; just quickly sketching whatever I caught a glimpse of. To the right is a drawing/watercolor of a nice geezer who was sitting ahead of me. For anyone whose sketched much on trains, this over-the-shoulder pose should look familiar.

Click the picture for the full version of the ink drawing.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
November 21, 2005 9:36 PM

It's always nice fleeing the city to break bird with the family; crossing the Pennsylvania landscape along the train tracks.

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
November 19, 2005 8:07 PM

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
8:04 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
November 18, 200512:24 AM

I've been playing around with tree-hugger imagery such as this; emphasizing textures and silhousettes.

A couple nights ago I caught Jeff Tweedy perform in Tribeca with my brother/invisibleman/superpal Jamie. Percussionist and wilco drummer Glenn Kotche opened the show and joined Mr. Tweedy and Jim O'Rourke for a short encore set (those 3 form the band/sideproject Loose Fur). They played a tune about a crack-smoking, sidewalk-surfing messiah and it was an all around amazing show.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
November 16, 200510:25 PM

A follow up here to Keegan's post... it was beers, bongos and bohemia on east 63rd st. Being the mecca for illustrators, its an inspiring place to hang out.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
12:34 AM

Tonight fellow Invisibleman PA and I hoofed it up to East 63rd and Lexington to the Society of Illustrators to attend one of their storied Tuesday night drawing sessions. It's quite a cool scene there, though it may be a bit shocking for those used to more serene drawing environments. Grab a cold beer or a glass of wine from the raucous bar, then grab a chair and start drawing. There is always live music, and we've read reports of burlesque dancers as life models. One red feather boa was about as burlesque as it got, but both models were excellent and looked quite nice posing against the original artworks of some of the greatest illustrators in American history (NC Wyeth, LC Leyendecker, Norman Rockwell, et al). Drawing is every Tuesday night from 6:30 - 9:30, $15 at the door. There is also a session on the third Thursday of every month as well.

So on the right, I've posted a small sketch, done in the last 2 minutes of the evening, which I kind of like the most. And on the left, we have a rotund and jolly police officer, which is a sketch from my moleskine (further work done in the Lab), drawn from a picture i snagged somewhere on the web.

Why are they together? What's the story between them? Is she whispering something in his ear that's making him smile?

Click on the photo for a larger image of the cop. Sorry, no more of the lady to see.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
November 13, 200512:34 AM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
12:25 AM

Break out the black light for optimal viewing.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
November 9, 2005 1:47 PM

'nuff said.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
November 8, 200511:29 PM

Here are some sketches of some women from my current mini-moleskine. This is mainly full of drawings done while riding on the subway (though not always people on the subway). Every once and a while I start a page with a thought like "I need to draw more women" and you get some stuff like this. The red across the scared woman's eyes was bleed from the scanner light. Works perfect!

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
10:42 PM

Via kottke.org I came across a video in which a small group of Hornets attack and destroy a colony of honeybees. An amazing scene which stuck in my head and caused the drawing above. View the video here.

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Posted by: jamie (116 posts)
November 7, 2005 9:03 PM

An image as familiar as hamburgers. Many childhoods hovered around guns and fake killing friends.
Mine did. This was drawn from a decal for your car.

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Posted by: jamie (116 posts)
November 5, 200512:08 AM

I would put one of these on my lawn.

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Posted by: bz (54 posts)
November 1, 2005 1:43 PM

these are images from my "i believe in coffee" book and this is my first gif animation :)

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
11:56 AM

Above is a detail of another graphite drawing I 've been working on. Click above in order to see a pop-up of the entire image (thus far.)

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
9:10 AM

I did the text for this in PowerPoint and brought in into Flash. Everyone rips on the PowerPoint, but actually it's one of the best one's out there for doing 3D text. Easy to use too.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
October 30, 2005 7:25 PM

Just finished this image, which will be my new promo postcard. This image is somewhat inspired by my gadget-filled life, and I often marvel at how people use and interact with their array of gadgets. I try as hard as I can to keep things simple and accessible on the gadget front, yet some people I see on the street do come close to this kind of bandolier of technology. I look forward to the day when I can have some little media brick sitting in my bag wirelessly transmitting my music to my ears, no wires please.

I'm getting 3,000 cards printed up at Modern Postcard, using 2,185 contacts from my Adbase mailing list (focusing on magazines / newspapers, book publishers and graphic design houses all over the country). Works out to about $.31 cents per card, which is a very good deal, though not always easy to lay out the cash for. But you gotta spend money to make money...

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
6:23 PM

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
October 29, 200511:18 AM

Continue reading "Detroit #2"
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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
11:16 AM

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
October 28, 2005 3:45 PM

A graphite drawing I have been working on.

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
10:37 AM

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
10:31 AM

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
10:29 AM

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
10:23 AM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
October 27, 200511:27 PM

A drawing from the last page of my moleskin sketchbook - influenced by a Johnny Cash song and a so-so Polanski film with Johnny Depp as a rare book dealer who's chummy with ~gulp~ Satan.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
October 24, 2005 3:18 AM

This is a detail of a new drawing I'm working up for a promo postcard. I've been saving screenshots of it in-progress for a good step-by-step after I'm finished. I have really enjoyed working on this one bit, after Julie, my wise invisiblewoman correctly concluded that the head I had previously drawn on there wasn't up to snuff. Much could change between now and the finish...More later!

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
October 23, 2005 8:05 PM

Woman reading a magazine article entitled 'Celebrity Feuds'/Jazz musician in Washington Sq. Park

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
October 20, 2005 1:04 AM

Last Sunday (October 16th) 83% of the Invisibleman team got together for our first "art lodge" (Sorry Barb...maybe when you're up in NYC next!).

We brewed about a full pound of dark, oily Gorilla coffee, scarfed many hearty Bergen Bagels and busted out 25 pieces of artwork which we all had our hands in.

Kurt was the task master, setting the majority of the sessions to 5 minutes per artist, then the artwork was passed to the artist sitting next to you, and you picked up where they left off...or completely obliterated thier planned masterpiece. We did a few speed rounds of a minute per artist at the end. After a full rotation, we grab some new paper, forage for some new supplies and start again.

It was a fascinating, liberating exercise, with many guffaws and strange marks being laid on paper. Unusual materials were passed among artists, and bizzarre images emerged as we listened to WFMU's terrifying Horror Compilation as a soundtrack.

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Posted by: jamie (116 posts)
October 13, 200510:58 PM

These drawings were inspired by necessary items we never think about. Like wine glasses and knives. Familiar and banal, they can be fun things to draw. Also, it's hard not to be shaken by our energy crisis. Maybe in the future we'll all have a personal gas can/energy account to look after.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
October 11, 2005 8:26 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
October 9, 2005 7:38 PM

This is the kind of drawing/painting one does after looking at Pieter Bruegel the Elder
drawings for a few days. I'm really hoping this is the week Rove gets frog-marched out of the White House... maybe he'll be forced to hop if the authorities supplement his departure with ankle-cuffs.

This image isn't as dynamic as the sketch in which the horses were galloping. Here they're doing more of a mosey. After seeing it scanned in I realize I still need to improve some of the line work and shadows.

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Posted by: jamie (116 posts)
12:27 AM

Images of dead sharks always shake me.
It's as if someone cut off one of my legs.

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Posted by: jamie (116 posts)
September 26, 200511:21 PM

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Posted by: jamie (116 posts)
September 25, 2005 1:13 AM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
September 19, 2005 9:59 PM

Here's a quick color study of a drawing I may work up of Bush and his cronies riding the Four Horses of the Apocalypse. There would be Rove in prison stipes, skeletor-Rumsfeld, a cardiac-arresting Cheney and the naked idiot-emperor.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
September 15, 2005 9:16 PM

I'm nearing the end of my current moleskin sketchbook. I'm hoping my next sketchbook will be of finer paper quality and larger - but the moleskin's not a bad way to go if I can't find something better.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
August 30, 200512:16 AM

a drawing of my brother Jamie from the sketchbook... I need to log more time in the laboratory, more varied use of media and its application. The lab is covered in dust right now.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
August 24, 2005 3:35 AM

I was trolling around the web and stumbled upon Nate Williams' fabulous IllustrationMundo (Where illustration gets all the love!). Great site, and it got me inspired to freshed up my own site. I've been spending a lot of time at invisibleman, and I've been neglecting my poor old jonkeegan.com.

So I have posted a new spread of pages from my latest mini-moleskine sketchbook, added some new work onto the site and placed my most recent work in my featured illo section.

The days are numbered for my stogy old site, and I'm looking forward to ripping it's guts out and blogifying it's innards. Big fall project, ready to be tackled upon my return from our imminent vacation in Old Europe.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
August 19, 2005 6:08 PM

I'll keep the step-by-step ball rolling with a few frames of an illo that I just finished. This is part of a series I'm doing for a magazine. I will post the finals and the details shortly.

I have been trying to keep my process as much like traditional paint-on-paper as possible. Keeping the "underpainting" is an important step I did not want to abandon. I'm still tweaking the formula a bit, as I do more of these with the pencil drawing on top of color in photoshop. The thing I'm happiest about, is that my drawing gets preserved, and doesn't get buried under a layer of opaque gouache.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
3:56 PM

On August 10th I posted some of my sketches of The Prison Ships Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park. This is an animation of the location, and thus sketch selected, along with the painting in progress.

The sketch is about 3x5" and the painting is 9x12" (oil on board.)

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
August 16, 2005 6:43 PM

This weekend I traveled Cape Cod to run the Falmouth Road Race. Prior to running I managed steal some time and sketch the Mullaney's cabin on the shore of Pimlico Pond in Sandwich, MA.

The race was hot, humid but enjoyable. If it wasn't always in August I would recommend it. Race results and info can be found here: SBLI Falmouth Road Race

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
August 13, 2005 4:04 PM

I've justed turned in this illo which will be promoting the Village Voice's 'Best of New York' issue which comes out in October. My main concern at the moment is whether the lower portion of the art is printing too dark - darker and more saturated than on my monitor anyway... I may have to tweak that. The architecture is mostly a blend of Chinatown, Soho, Lower east side, the East and West Village. Here's a few details:

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
August 10, 200512:58 PM

Recently I took my mini-Moleskin sketchbook on a sketching "expedition" to Fort Greene Park. My goal was to hunt out potential locations or views for future paintings. Not too much time was spent on any of these, just enough to get layout ideas and general composition possibilities. No color notes were taken.

Outta the bunch I have already selected one and begun a painting. I will post progress on that soon.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
July 29, 2005 2:48 AM

I'm working on this illustration right now, and I though I'd show a few frames of how it is evolving. I always loved reading Step by Step Graphics magazine, and I feel that tutorials are really one of the best ways to learn. I plan on doing some more in-depth tutorial stuff in the near future....I'll update this animated gif with a new frame when I complete it, which should be very soon...

In other news, The Lambkins, (my first book cover) is now on store shelves.

UPDATE: I have added the final frame.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
July 24, 2005 8:21 PM

Recent sketching from the subway, on an airplane, east river park and robert moses beach.

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
July 18, 200511:50 PM

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
July 7, 2005 1:55 AM

A few icons whupped up for the Gelf Magazine gang. Gelf contributor Keith Huang recently had a good write-up about the comedy troupe The Hollow Men.

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
July 3, 200510:44 AM

Continue reading "Sharky"
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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
July 1, 200512:08 AM

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Posted by: kurt (67 posts)
June 30, 200511:50 PM

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
June 20, 2005 3:29 AM

Another page from my small Moleskine which I have been using recently to loosen up and relax while listening to The Magnetic Fields on the subway...

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
June 7, 200512:58 AM

I've proposed these designs to the folks at the Voice for this year's SirenFest t-shirt art. I'm not sure if they'll end up going with these colors but it would be cool to see something along these lines. They'll be sold at the festival and on the Voice's site afterward.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
May 10, 200512:33 AM

The subway is still one of my favorite spots to draw people. Though as Kerry O'Neil has mentioned - you often end up with images of people sleeping and reading. Also pictured is an acrylic fingerpainting from the moleskine sketchbook - which reminds me of similarly colored painting my brother Stephen did when he was 3.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
May 1, 200511:10 PM

I made these drawing/paintings for my niece and nephew (Ella and Jack) who live in Pittsburgh. The poses are from characters in the siren drawing.

Also viewed some great work at the Greater New York 2005 show at PS1 this weekend.

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Posted by: kerry (81 posts)
April 26, 2005 8:37 PM

As you can see, these sketches were produced a year ago this week. I like them quite a bit and enjoyed making them. To honor the anniversary of their creation I am posting them here hoping they will serve as motivational and graphical kick in the ass to create more.

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
April 18, 200511:13 PM

I made this illo for my cousin Ethan's wedding invitation. The reflection in the water is drawn from a photo they'd sent me of them as snuggling 5 year olds. They live in Colorado and Libby is related to Mark Hamill -- you read that right - Luke Skywalker himself. It's high time an Antonson wed into intergalactic royalty.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
April 14, 200512:00 AM

PA, you have beat me to the blog...Not for long old friend...Well I spent a lot of time on this, but now it's done. I'm eager to send this out, as it has been a while since I carpet-bombed all ofthe Art Directors of this fair city. INCOMING! Now I have to shoot this file off to good old Modern Postcard, where they will print, label AND stamp my cards for me (using my Adbase maling list of course), saving me much hassle!

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Posted by: pa (190 posts)
April 13, 200512:14 AM

Yes! I've beaten Jon Keegan to the post (I've garnered information that he's finished an illo and will also be posting). Anyway - here's the illo for this years Siren Music Festival. click the image for a larger view.

I was full of dread the whole time I worked on this... never felt like it was going to work out. Luckily the radio program 'This American Life' kept me going - truly an outstanding show... Check it:

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