Posted by: keegan (148 posts)
May 27, 200910:49 PM

In honor of the mindblowingly cool move The New Yorker made this week by running one of Jorge Colombo's awesome iPhone paintings on this week's cover, I decided to delve back into the Brushes app, which Jorge used to paint his cover illustration.

One of the coolest features of Brushes is the ability to download ".brushes" files from your iPhone via wifi and load them into the companion Brushes viewer program on the Mac. The .brushes file isn't just a flat image, it's a data 'recording' of all the strokes you made AND it's resolution independent, so you can render the image out at up to 6x the iphone's 480x320 resolution. And you can render out movies of your painting coming to life.

Jorge now has a regular weekly spot on The New Yorker's website to post his Brushes movies. Pretty damn cool...

So here's a movie of a painting I did of some bearded dude (sorta 300 Leonidas I suppose)..Enjoy!

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Posted by: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 posts)
April 24, 200910:46 AM

Spoonflower is a pretty amazing website / service that prints up custom made fabric from your designs (and for a very reasonable price). Earlier this year, Julie and I collaborated on a fabric design, using elements she drew for use on her re-designed website. I designed the pattern from the shapes, and took cues for the palette from her work.

Spoonflower has a cool weekly contest for the community, where they pick six designs that have been submitted and have an online vote open to the public to vote for the "Fabric of the Week". Well this week, our design is in the running! We need your vote to win! You don't need to register, just visit this link and vote for "Fortuna" by Jon Keegan & Julie Kirkpatrick.

Thanks for your support!

VOTE FOR OUR DEISGN HERE!: http://bit.ly/EXYs

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Posted by: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 posts)
November 2, 200811:09 PM

I'm teaching my first illustration class at Pratt Institute's Associate Degree Program this fall, and I'm having a fun time trying to get my students excited about the illustration biz.

One of the things I knew I wanted to do right away, was to arrange some video chat interviews with illustrators in their studios. Our own Stuart Kolakovic was my first willing guinea pig, and agreed to be interviewed over Skype.

I was able to record the audio of the interview on my iPhone, but I do apologize for the crummy quality. I cleaned it up some, so it's decent enough to hear everything. Please ignore my honking guffaws, which are way too loud. I pledge to use higher production quality next time.

Thanks for helping me out Stu!

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Posted by: keegan (148 posts)
October 22, 200811:50 AM

I just got my copy of Patrick McNeil's excellent new book The Web Designer's Idea Book. Patrick runs designmeltdown.com which if you haven't checked it out is a deep, rich vein of design ideas from websites around the world. Patrick has categorized hundreds of sites based on theme, style and function on his site, which he has translated into print for his book.

I am lucky enough to have a screenshot of my humble, aging portfolio website jonkeegan.com featured on page 36 (itty-bitty, tucked away into the corner).

Thanks Patrick for including my site in your book, and for creating such an excellent design resource!

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Posted by: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 posts)
August 12, 2008 9:23 AM

A quick sketch from my recent vacation at Keuka Lake in the Finger Lakes region in upstate New York.

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Posted by: keegan (148 posts)
August 5, 2008 1:05 AM

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Posted by: keegan (148 posts)
July 21, 2008 8:54 PM

From an old sketchbook, Venice in March of 1997.

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Posted by: keegan (148 posts)
July 15, 200810:25 AM

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

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Posted by: keegan (148 posts)
July 7, 200810:43 PM

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

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Posted by: keegan (148 posts)
July 1, 200810:04 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: keegan (148 posts)
June 24, 200812:00 AM

A few years ago while visiting friends up in Phoenicia, NY we stopped in an amazing antique shop, where I came across this stack of 4"x5" black and white negatives. They seem to have come from a firehouse's collection or something. One packet was labeled "GAS EXPLOSIAN JAMAICA N.Y. 11/25/46" and the other indicated that it was firemen in London, England, though no date was given. You gotta love the British firemen's roman helmets. I am always excited to find such cool visual remnants. There are so many amazing glimpses into the past tucked in people's attics and basements.

I just placed the negatives on my lightbox, and shot them at different angles with my digital camera, then inverted them (and restored the proper coppery tint).

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Posted by: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 posts)
May 23, 2008 2:44 AM

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Posted by: keegan (148 posts)
May 9, 200812:49 AM

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Posted by: keegan (148 posts)
May 2, 200812:00 AM

To the best of my knowledge, these are the last pictures I shot on 35mm film. When we were living in Los Angeles back in 2003, I grabbed my trusty Yashica T* loaded up with black and white film, and Julie and I set off to explore the haunting Salton Sea area, about 60 miles to the south-east of Palm Springs.

We had heard it was an interesting place to visit, but we weren't prepared for the things we would see: An artificial mountain built of mud, paint and car tires as a monument to God's love (Salvation Mountain), entire neighborhoods, buildings and vehicles devoured by pink alkaline slurry, sulfurous boiling mudpots, defunct hotels from the 1950's heydays and a dead, smelly sea.

If you are ever in the area, be sure to make time for a visit.

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Posted by: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 posts)
April 18, 2008 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: keegan (148 posts)
April 17, 200810:17 AM

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Posted by: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 posts)
March 20, 2008 8:51 PM

This is a photo of a Ndebele traditional healer from the National Archives of Zimbabwe. When I was visiting there back in 1998 we visited the archives and were able to order reprints of old photos from their amazing catalog of images. We paid a small fee, filled out some paperwork and several months later this and a few other pictures surprised me when they showed up in my mailbox.

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Posted by: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 posts)
February 28, 2008 9:13 PM

Here are some photos of the One Fell Swoop CD I've been posting about (by the Amsterdam based duo Rara Avis). It's nice to see the finished product, and for a change, it's an object people will keep around rather than something someone will throw out after they are done reading the article...Thanks to Terri for bringing me the CD's, and hope you get well soon!

Click to see a larger version.

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Posted by: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 posts)
December 11, 200712:00 AM

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Posted by: keegan (148 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: keegan (148 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 Stev