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: 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: keegan (155 posts)
September 26, 2009 8:36 PM

Here's a sample image from my Muggmaker poster generator which I'm currently developing.

I'm randomly generating thousands of high-resolution Muggs, which are first passed through a Photoshop action to silhouette them against an alpha channel. Then an PHP script generates a high-resolution file of the Muggs composed in an overlapping crowd, according to the size of the print you want.

I plan on offering unique prints for sale that have your Mugg hidden in the crowd somewhere. No two prints will be alike!

I think I will also have to make some repeating patterns of a crowd like this to make some custom fabric at Spoonflower.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
August 18, 2009 1:01 AM

Been staring at this for a long, long time...Have you checked out Muggmaker yet?

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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: keegan (155 posts)
July 7, 200912:10 AM

This post has been a long time coming! In fact, part of the reason I have been neglecting this fine website has been to focus on finishing the project about which I write.

I'm proud to announce the release of Muggmaker. I have been working on Muggmaker for over two years on and off. It started as a little Flash file in my "flash lab" folder on my computer and has grown into something much bigger.

Continue reading "Introducing Muggmaker"
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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
June 6, 2009 4:15 PM

I often find myself out and about without any of my promo postcards in my man-purse, so I decided to finally get some business cards made. I have been really fond of all that U.K. & Rhode Island based printing company Moo is doing in the print on-demand area, so I tried them out. For $22 (before shipping) I got 50 of these slick cards packed up tight in a downright Jobsian carrying case. The best part of their service is the image upload process. For your 50 cards, you can pick 50 images, so each card will be unique. You can also just pick a few images, and have them repeat. Their cropping interface is great (as some of you may know, I happen to know a thing or two about cropping), and you can rotate the images as well. Assembling the back is just as easy, with a very tasteful set of type and layouts to choose from, and the ability to add an image as well. Moo also has really cool sticker books, mini-cards, postcards and greeting cards you can make as well.

Click for a larger view

Link: Moo business cards

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

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

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
May 9, 200812:49 AM

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Posted by: keegan (155 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 (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: keegan (155 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 (155 posts)
April 17, 200810:17 AM

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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: keegan (155 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 (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: keegan (155 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 (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: 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: 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: 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: keegan (155 posts)
December 11, 200712:00 AM

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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: 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: 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: keegan (155 posts)
October 24, 2007 9:19 AM

If you didn't figure it out already, a disproportionate share of the Invisibleman crew met each other at Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts, back in the early 90's. In my last year in the illustration program, I was lucky enough to land in Roger DeMuth's class, which set me on the course I am now traveling.

Roger is a man who has abundant shares of talent, craft and shrewd promotional savvy. These of course are the skills a freelance illustrator needs to be successful, and they have served Roger well.

This summer my wife and I dropped in for a visit at Roger's house in Cazenovia, NY where you'll find his enviable art-filled studio attached to a beautiful home nestled in a lush garden of his own design.

Roger binds his own miniature sketchbooks (painted with equally small watercolor sets, usually using a bottle cap with a little orange juice as the medium). He also builds precision custom drawing travel kits that tuck away all the required implements for drawing in a handsome case, replete with handsome stamped leather detailing. Tucked into shelves you'll see hilariously cheap chinese novelty toys, frog popup books (lots of frogs), a sizeable stash of antique pen nibs collected from ebay, and dozens of clever mockups for toys and such delights as the Kitty Condom.

Read on to see a slideshow of our visit.

Continue reading "Roger DeMuth"
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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: 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: 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: 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: keegan (155 posts)
August 26, 2007 3:03 AM

Seafaring geezer seen aboard the S.S. John W. Brown in Boston. There was also a dogfight.

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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: keegan (155 posts)
August 11, 2007 1:00 AM

Working to generate thumbnails of all the posts...this is a screengrab of the first experimental batch out of the script...Looking forward to playing with these...

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
August 7, 2007 1:00 AM

Here are some images from when Paul, Kerry and I camped out at Watch Hill on the Fire Island National Seashore a few weeks ago. It's an incredible stretch of nature, and refreshingly isolated from the more popular beaches on the western end of the island. There were close encounters with a huge snake (a Black Racer), countless nocturnal toads, rabbits and of course, the voracious mosquitoes. We managed to beat the odds on the gloomy weather forecast, and were able to do some painting (see my landscape above), drawing and night photography.

See more pictures on Flickr here and here

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
July 26, 2007 2:24 AM

For an illustrator or designer, redesinging one's web portfolio can be one of the most gut-wrenching projects to work on, as you are often your own worst client to work for. I have probably dozens of photoshop files of various versions of 'new' designs for my website that never got built. Meanwhile, my site was growing some cobwebs, and my long-overdue overhaul was dead in the water.

So last fall, I made a deal with myself: You can keep the general design of the site in tact for the time being, but for god's sake, make the site dynamic -- SOMEHOW...and do it fast!

Continue reading "How I built my dynamic portfolio website"
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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
July 22, 2007 6:22 PM

Whoa. This was the first year I had the pleasure of attending the Village Voice Siren Music Festival. Yeah, that was my big bald held up there hob-nobbing with the rest of the VIP's...Invisibleman Paul Antonson of course was responsible for getting us on the guest list as he has created the amazing poster art for the show for the past seven years, though I'd say this year's was a standout.

This shot above is The Noisettes' amazing Shingai Shoniwa who electrified the crowd early on with a fun and rockin' set. MIA who I have been waiting a long time to check out in person was also a treat, and The Black Lips put on a cool performance, though they shoudn't have blown up Popcorn the chicken. I didn't get over to the other stage, and I missed the New York Dolls, but still a pretty incredible fun day. Thanks for the access PA!

My Siren pictures on flickr
Paul's Siren pictures on flickr

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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: keegan (155 posts)
July 4, 200712:00 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: keegan (155 posts)
June 21, 200712:00 AM

This is a small gouache landscape I did in my sketchbook, looking down onto the Hudson Valley from the top of North Point on the Escarpment Trail in the Catskill Mountains. A small sketch to remember a fun excursion into the woods.

Having not done any backpacking in a few years, Kerry, Paul and I were determined to do a trip early in the summer to get our mojo back. Kerry picked this amazing hike, which was a perfect way to break us back in. And we needed it.

This was such a spectacular geological area, with a whole range of mountains and lakes perched high above the Hudson River valley on steep rocky cliffs. Thomas Cole painted these very views years ago. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it, and it made for a beautiful hike, the way the trail hugs the cliff's edge, constantly rewarding you with sprawling views, each more splendid than the one before.

We camped out near a peaceful meadow, in a shaded grove of pines, and had a hearty campfire to eat our dinner by.

We also saw a huge snake on the trail, which was quickly identified by the flickr community as an Eastern Milk Snake.

Pictures from the hike can be seen here.

Of course my fellow Google Earth nerds, you may look at the placemark of our hike here.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
June 19, 2007 8:49 AM

Picasso's old trick of painting with light never grows tired...especially with the addition of the digital camera...These were 15 second exposures 'drawn' with a bare mini-mag light bulb at 400 ISO. One person stands very still, and behind them, another person draws the outlines really quickly, and since they are moving so fast, they don't really show up.

These were taken in the woods, where Invisiblefellows Paul, Kerry and I hiked the amazing Escarpment Trail in the Catskills (more to come on that). You can see the full images of these light-paintings here: Jon, Kerry and Paul

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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: 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: keegan (155 posts)
April 12, 2007 9:54 AM

Here's a smaller subset of the pictures I took on our recent trip to Morocco. We spent time in Casablanca, Fez, Marrakesh, Merzouga and Ilmil in the High Atlas. It is one of the most fascinating places I've traveled to, and I'm still reeling from all that we took in and experienced in the time we were there.

Fellow Google Earth nerds can check out the path we took around the country by downloading this placemark.

You can see the full set of pictures here (with descriptions).

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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: keegan (155 posts)
April 6, 2007 9:13 AM

This was painted on the roof of the wonderful Casa Lalla riad in Marrakesh, Morocco on March 29th. The large minaret in the upper left is the Koutoubia mosque, next to the famous Jemaa el Fna Square. I had done another version of this in gouache, which I thoroughly screwed up. Pictures from the trip coming soon...

Continue reading below to hear the call to prayer being called out over the entire city by loudpseaker...it's a haunting, droning cacophony.

Continue reading "Rooftop in Marrakesh"
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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: 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 naĂ¯ve 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: 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: keegan (155 posts)
December 8, 2006 9:45 AM

The kind folks at Risen Magazine came across my work, and were nice enough to interview me about my work a few months ago for their November / December Issue. You can check out a PDF of the interview and spread below.

LINK: Jon Keegan Interview in Risen Magazine (PDF 1.2mb)

You can see more of my work at jonkeegan.com.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
December 6, 200612:38 AM

I totally forgot to do this post!

Back in October, Julie and I returned to one of our favorite places we have visited together, the mysterious and majestic state of Utah. Having visted Bryce and Zion a few years ago, we promised to return for Arches and Canyonlands. Utah has such raw natural beauty and varied terrain, it's hard to believe it's all in one state.

A big thanks to fellow invisibleman Jamie for the use of his amazing Nikon D70. An amazing piece of hardware...

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
November 19, 2006 9:31 PM

This is an old animation I did for the Outdoor Life Network a few years ago. They used it as a little animated bug that ran across the bottom of the screen during Thanksgiving week programming promoting some turkey shoot show.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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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: 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: keegan (155 posts)
November 5, 200612:28 AM

On a hot tip from well-informed invisibleman Kurt, today I went up to check out the two-day Prints Gone Wild! show in Williamsburg. Every print was priced at $50 or less, and there was a great assortment of posters, prints, cards and t-shirts on display. I was immediately drawn to the amazing work of Knoxville, Tennesee's own Yee-Haw Industries. I picked up the above poster celebrating Buford Pusser, the Tennesee lawman who was the inspiration for the 1973 film "Walking Tall" (just added to the top of my Netflix queue).

Check out the goods at http://www.yeehawindustries.com

Other cool print shops worth checking out are Pittsburgh's Triangle Poster, Atlanta's Methane Studios and the grandaddy of them all Nashville's Hatch Show Print.

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

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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: keegan (155 posts)
October 11, 2006 3:18 AM

I'm happy to announce that our merch page is finally up and stocked with our first batch of Invisibleman T-shirts. They are printed on 100% cotton American Apparel tees. $15 a pop. You can pay securely with a debit or credit card via PayPal (which you don't have to be signed up for).

The shirts are just the first items we're offering, but we will be adding some limited edition books, prints and original artwork (as well as more shirts) in the near future.

LINK: the invisibleman MERCH page

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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: 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: 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: keegan (155 posts)
August 2, 200611:00 PM

Our invisiblepal Leejone Wong has collected all the pieces, hunkered down and completed the re-animation process of her amazing Show & Tell sessions...and they are back, and badder than ever.

Moving on from the fabled 184 Kent in Williamsburg, Leejone has moved Show & Tell to the super-cool Monkeytown. This is a very cool performance space, in the back of a great restaurant...Truly a cozy and intimate place to hear about people's cool projects. For your modest $10 ticket, you get a delicious appetizer to munch on and a free drink to enjoy while taking in some fascinating creative people share their work and stories (make sure to call ahead and book a reservation).

Leejone has been running Show & Tell's for quite some time now, and they are fascinating, fun and inspiring sessions you won't soon forget. Read on to see this week's line-up...

Continue reading "Show & Tell @ Monkeytown in Brooklyn"
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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: 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: keegan (155 posts)
June 25, 200611:57 PM

I had a nice art-filled weekend, despite the torrential rains. I logged some serious time welded to my drafting table just playing around with some different materials that I don't often work with in my normal course of business. Really felt a nice loose freedom with a super-fat graphite pencil on vellum, which produced the above image, among many, many others...

Also, I saw some amazing art...

Continue reading "Piercing Gaze / Art Highlights"
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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: 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: 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: keegan (155 posts)
3:49 AM

One of the items on my to-do list recently has been to expand my 'texture library'. Since I have moved over to doing all of my color on the computer, texture is more important than ever. If there is a large area of flat color, and it is just 'paint-bucketed' in Photoshop, the flatness screams "Computer!". The look I am trying to achieve is one that is more hand-made. I try to use custom brushes with my Wacom tablet as much as possible, but sometimes an area needs a bit of real-world texture to break the flatness...

The swatches above are from a few of the textures I worked up this week. They will be much more subtle when included in my work, sometimes only a tiny corner of one, but having a variety on hand is a valuable part of the illustrator's tool-belt.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
April 19, 2006 5:00 PM

I just completed this illustration for The New York Times (Thurs. April 20th, Style section), dealing with women and A.C.L. (anterior cruciate ligament) knee injuries.

The reference came from Eadweard Muybridge's classic "The Human Figure in Motion", which is an invaluable resource for how the body moves.

I couldn't resist whipping up a quick animation of these nine frames from the illo.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
April 10, 200611:04 PM

My wife Julie Kirkpatrick is having her first solo show at Black Dragon Society on Chung King Road in Los Angeles. The show opens Saturday April 15th and runs through May 20th.

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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: keegan (155 posts)
March 14, 2006 2:23 AM

Here's my Dad surfing at York Beach in Maine, back in the late seventies. Any more pictures of parents in water?

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
March 2, 2006 6:22 PM

If you are in the Washington D.C. area, be sure to check out our pal Nate Peek's band DoS (like the spanish number two, not the operating system).

I whipped up this Land of the Lost flyer for the show. Totally had a blast doing this, as I have been meaning to do a LOTL illo for a while now...

This show had a real impact on me as a kid, and I recently bought the DVDs, which were a treat to revisit. One listen to the awesome banjo-filled theme song, and you'll fall in love with young Holly all over again...

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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: keegan (155 posts)
February 5, 200611:18 PM

Living in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, one of the biggest issues hanging over our community is the specter of Bruce Ratner's planned "Atlantic Yards" development. By dangling the prospect of a glitzy new Frank Gehry-designed stadium (to be occupied by Ratner's own New Jersey Nets), the pro-stadium minions have largely succeeded at convincing Brooklynites that it will be nothing but good for the community, and everyone should rally behind it. However, the stadium is just a small part of the whole plan, and this brings me to why you are seeing a post about this on invisibleman.

As a resident who will directly feel the impact of the development surrounding my home, I haven't felt that I have seen an accurate portrayal of the sheer scale of this project, in the context of the existing neighborhood. Enter Google Earth.

I have been majorly geeking out over this amazing program for a few weeks now (as has my brother) , since they released a beta of the Mac version. One of the things you can do is place image overlays on top of the satellite imagery (like the PDF I used), and then draw polygons to extrude your own 3D buildings, knowing their heights (requires the use of the 'Plus' version, which is now available for both Mac and PC).

So I set up a placemark that will allow people to see this proposed development, to approximate scale (using the developers' own figures), in context with the existing buildings. Also, make sure you check the "Buildings" checkbox below the viewer to see the heights of the existing buildings in grey.

So if you haven't downloaded Google Earth yet you can do so here (both PC and Mac): DOWNLOAD GOOGLE EARTH.

Once you have that set up, you can download my Atlantic Yards placemark below...NOTE: if you click on the following link and get a garble of letters, just go back and right-click (control-click on the Mac) on the link, and save the file to your Desktop, then just double-click on the downloaded file.

DOWNLOAD THE ATLANTIC YARDS PLACEMARK

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
January 20, 200610:30 PM

Whoa. PA and I walked out of the Pixar exhibit at MoMa today (Thanks Susannah!) fully humbled, delighted and inspired. There was so much to take in...I'm at a bit of a loss. All I can say is MAKE SURE YOU SEE THIS SHOW! It goes untill Feb. 6, so you still have some time to catch it.

Some of the highlights: The gorgeous, glowing pastels by Dominique Louis; Lou Romano's unbelievably luminous / slick / tight gouache paintings; the flawless grey resin macquettes of all your favorite Pixar charcters (especially Violet and Mr. Incredible's different expressions)....and then there's the zoetrope.

There aren't many words that I could use to convey to you the sheer delightful joy you will experience when you lay your eyes on the spectacular Pixar 3D zoetrope. Once it starts to spin, and the strobes turn on, you will giggle with joy and you won't believe your eyes. It is a miracle of illusion, motion and animation. Possibly the highlight of the show. Go now. And by all means get there early. This show gets mobbed and you should really see this with as small a crowd as possible.

Pix by : mnemo, fudj and hseikaly .

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
January 17, 200611:57 PM

I did this little test image based on a sketch of NYT reporter James Risen when he appeared on Meet The Press recently (side note, make sure you catch MTP every week, and if you miss it, you can nab the audio from the whole show in their handy podcast here). Anyway, I've been trying to refine my 'formula' for coloring drawings in Photoshop, by keeping my dozens of unnamed layers down to a minimum, and all of my 'Mulitply", 'Normal" and 'Screen' layers all neatly labeled and grouped in folders. It;s amazing how quickly I can forget a step, so I'm taking care to document it in my sketchbook. So I guess that's my nugget: Be sure to always document all of your processes and tricks. It can come in handy later.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
January 7, 2006 4:34 PM

A little late on this, but I vowed to do a post on my favorite music from 2005. Here are my favorite albums from 2005:

Laura Veirs - "Year of Meteors"
Aimee Mann- "The Forgotten Arm"
Calexico & Iron and Wine - "In the Reins - EP"
The Decemberists - "Picaresque"
The Frames - "Burn the Maps"
M.I.A. - "Arular"
Mary Timony - "Ex Hex"
The New Pornographers - "Twin Cinema"
Rogue Wave - "Descended Like Vultures"
Stephen Malkmus - "Face The Truth"
Sufjan Stevens - "Illinois"

Some other music NOT from 2005, that I listened to nearly constantly:

Arcade Fire - "Funeral"
The Magnetic Fields - "The Charm of the Highway Strip"
Tilly & The Wall - "Wild Like Children"
Luna - "Rendezvous"

Here's a link to an iTunes mix I made of some of the best songs from these albums I have mentioned in this post: iTunes: Favorite Songs from 2005

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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: 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: keegan (155 posts)
November 20, 2005 1:38 AM

One of the things on my to do list the past few weeks (umm...years?) has been to make some of my own sketchbooks with all of the nice paper I had imported from London's Faulkiner Fine Papers. They used to sell the BEST sketchbooks, the "Rivoli", when I studied in London back in the early 90's. At some point, the fellow who made them went out of business, and they haven't been seen since.

My efforts to recreate the glory of these sketchbooks have been mocked for years...But now that I have been schooled in the foundations of flatback case bookbinding (Thanks Nancy Loeber & CBA!), and I am in possession of a large stock of Rives' "Artist" paper (the successor to the famed Rivoli paper used in Falkiner's sketchbooks), the moment is soon approaching.

I am making a batch of these sketchbooks, as kind of a "beta" release to see how they hold up in the field. I'm reasonably sure that I screwed all of these up to a certain degree by gauging the paper grain's direction wrong. Any errors in these sketchbooks will be corrected in future versions!

These books currently consist of a series of signatures of paper stitched togerther (Herringbone stitch), with the endpapers and book-cloth hinges sewn on. The next crucial step is a meeting with the mighty and unforgiving guillotine at CBA, where they will all be chopped into neat, flush proto-books. Then I need to build their cases with binder's board and cover them with bookcloth. Then these neatly chopped text blocks will then be glued into their cases, ready for finishing.

I was quite delighted to see so many posts late on a Saturday night, that I had to post a shot of these books in their naked, pre-case state. When importing the photos, I thought it wise to make an alternating "poor-man's-3D" view of the books, as I am fairly drunk after returning from a neighbor's fun party. Enjoy.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
November 16, 200512:34 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: 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: 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: keegan (155 posts)
October 26, 200512:08 AM

Tropical Sea Flowers, 2005. collage (screenprint, fabric, acrylic on paper), 17x22"

The sassy ladies over at rose-coloredglasses.com have posted the first of their "Artists interviewing Artists" series of articles. Julie Kirkpatrick (full disclosure: my invisiblewoman) interviews fellow Brooklyn artist Melissa Barrett Lundquist about her work (shown above), which will be shown at the AAF Contemporary Art Fair in New York City this weekend (October 27-30).

LINK: Interview with Melissa Barrett Lundquist

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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: keegan (155 posts)
October 20, 2005 2:17 AM

Alas, the stars have aligned and a confluence of fantastical events have led to this glorious post. Halloween is nearly upon us, Apple has spawned millions of video iPods, and nobody has anything to watch on them. Today we are releasing our baby, "Bighead"- neatly encoded for your video iPod (or just to watch on your computer).

A good chunk of the invisibleman team spent a hilarious weekend in Kempton, PA filming and acting in this opus. Hard-earned money was wasted on high quality sausages, tyvek worksuits and chocolate syrup. Another year or so of feverish bi-coastal editing ensued, and it has been languishing in our HQ's armored media vault for a while now. If you love something, set it free...We're releasing this 20 minute film under a Creative Commons license ( Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 to be precise), so feel free to share this with your friends- although as the license states, please keep our credits intact, and resist the urge to sell copies of this masterpiece on Canal street out of duct-taped luggage.

The latest version of QuickTime is needed to watch this. It's a big download, but trust us, it's worth it.

DOWNLOAD - bighead_final.mov (88.9 mb)

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
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: keegan (155 posts)
September 25, 2005 6:50 PM

I just got back from my two week trip to Europe. We visited Germany (DĂ¼sseldorf and Cologne), the Netherlands (Amsterdam) and Denmark (Aarhus, Copenahgen and Møns Klint). We saw over a dozen museums and galleries, the best of which was probably the Louisiana Museum north of Copenhagen which had a really inspiring Matisse show (more on his tree drawing later).

On our last day we took a journey down to the southeast corner of Denmark to the island of Møn. There we found the most spectacular landscapes of our trip in the 400 foot white chalk cliffs of Møns Klint. A breathtaking end to our great trip.

In addition to taking scads of pictures, I tried to draw as much as possible, and I've created a collection of a few of the sketches to share. Click on the above image to see them, or click here.

I also have to recommend the sweeping epic of a novel, "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell (recommended to me by fellow invisibleman PA). This was my travel book, and it delivered exactly what I was looking for on a good trip. It's an epic that sweeps through time as well as distance. Be sure to check it out.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
September 16, 2005 1:45 PM

I'm writing this entry in the lovely Flingern neighborhood of Dusseldorf, Germany. I was determined to add to our "travels" category with a euro-dispatch, so here I am. My invisiblewoman and I have just returned from a little side trip to Amsterdam, and are spending the weekend in our home base in Dusseldorf, which happens to be our gracious hosts Marcus & Vanessa's cool apartment. They have been taking us around to see the sights, all the art openings in Dusseldorf's art scene, the best doner kebab shops...And we had a nice trip to Koln today. The Museum Ludwig was spectacular...

Amsterdam was really lovely, and our time there helped erase some unsavory memories of my first visit years ago. In particular, we were quite taken by the Jordaan neighborhood, which is full of great shops and bars, and some incredibly quaint canal houses.

Of course we took in some inspiring art, including the suprisingly good collection of van Gogh's drawings at his eponymous museum. Nice to his his little sepia sketches in his folded letters to his brother Theo. They had several of his sketchbooks on display, which was a treat! Off to Arhus, Denamrk on Monday, then a brief visit around Copenhagen.

Couldn't scan in any of my sketches while on the road unfortunately, so the above photo will have to do until my return. A few more photos are available for perusal here."

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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: keegan (155 posts)
August 8, 200512:30 AM

Early November: North Greenland - Rockwell Kent 1933

Just got back from a breathtakingly beautiful vacation up in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. One of the suprise highlights was a quick stop in at the beautiful Portland Museum of Art, where I was delighted to find a huge Rockwell Kent exhibit. I don't know if it was all the salt in the water that I swam in or too many lobster rolls, but this show just floored me.

The first images that come to my mind when I hear Kent's name are the amazing black and white ink drawings of Moby Dick. I had always kept him firmly in the camp of the great American pen and ink illustrators of the early 20th century. This show completely enlarged my view of his work, and of his amazing life. This fellow was a grade-A swashbuckler, travelling to the world's most spectacularly desolate and awe-inspiring places, and surviving any shipwrecks that nature threw his way (at least one that I am aware of).

His glowing landscpaes of Monhegan Maine, Tierra del Fuego, Greenland and Alaska are meant to remove the viewer's self-consciousness, and just revel in the marvel of the scene. He was quite a modernist as well, producing playfully cartoonish shapes, yet preserving their deep cobalt blue glow and blindingly bright snowfields.

I'm looking forward to reading his wild tales of adventure as he sails to Tierra del Fuego in his book Voyaging. If you happen to be up in the area near Portland, ME be sure to check this show out. It runs until October 16th.

Amazon: Rockwell Kent: The Mythic and the Modern
Amazon: Voyaging
Link: Portland Museum of Art

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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: keegan (155 posts)
July 21, 2005 2:36 AM

I found this guide to reproduction online a few years ago, and I was glad to see that it's authors have kept it up to date. Written by Ron Rege Jr, Dave Choe, Brian Ralph and Jordan Crane, this handy guide is described as "A Primer on Xerography, Silkscreening and Offset Printing".

Print this out and keep it in your studio, as it will come in very handy one day. It has a great listing of specific brands of materials they recommend for each type of reproduction as well as where to order them from. I am gearing up for a super-secret Invisibleman project involving one of the aforementioned forms of reproduction, and no doubt this guide will be referred to frequently!

Link: Re: A Guide to Reproduction (PDF) 3.7mb

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
July 14, 2005 9:33 PM

Wow. Everything just came together for this show. The weather was perfect, Sam Beam of Iron & Wine was a surprise guest, we had amazing seats and the show was FREE!!! Fellow invisbleman Kurt joined Julie and I for this rockin' show. Kurt's camera is a bit nicer than mine, so I'll just post the above image...

If you haven't heard Calexico before, listen to some samples in iTunes.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
3:30 PM

This unfortunately shaped inflatable jungle gym contraption was spewing out children at an apple-picking farm in the Catskills last fall.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
1:08 AM

I work down at the World Financial Center. I walk past Ground Zero on the way to the office. It's a pretty antiseptic desolate stretch of concrete on the south side of the pit.

Each day throngs of tourists pour through there taking their pictures in front of...nothing. I understand why they come to see it. But they come and walk through this corridor desperate for some scratch of tribute, some artifact of sympathy. There's almost nothing there. A few keychain lanyards, a few old photos duct taped to the wall, and scattered about...some crappy high school poetry. And this is what the tourists deem picture worthy.

To be clear, I am not poking fun at the grieving teen who may write said poetry. I am just commenting on the absurdity of taking a picture of it. The good news is that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation just announced plans to open a "Tribute Visitor's Center" next to the firehouse on Liberty Street. I think this will go a long way in giving these people something worth seeing.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
July 13, 200510:23 AM

This isn't technically MY post, but the first by none other than Our Man in Japan, George Guida. George and I went to high school togteher and shared countless hours speculating on who would play Wolverine if they ever made an X-Men film, and discussing the finer points of Nicholas Hammond's acting in the live action Spiderman TV show from the 70's. We also made an ambitious film of our own (more on that later).

Continue reading "Star Wars in Japan"
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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
July 9, 2005 4:02 PM

I love a good thunderstorm in the summer. Nothing like it to refresh the muggy air, and it creates a contrast that is nothing but eerie. Though it does make Logan shake like a leaf and take refuge under my desk.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
June 23, 200512:13 PM

Fellow invisibleman KW has been hiding a collection of his best NYC street photos on flickr. I thought I'd liberate one of them from the darkness..Check some more out here.

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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: keegan (155 posts)
June 14, 2005 3:00 AM

Walknig back to the 2/3 at Wall Street...

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
May 24, 2005 9:34 PM

Click to see the images...

Well I have been re-watching all of the Star Wars films in the lead-up to Return of the Sith (which I have now seen twice...goes without saying-I totally loved it), and I was struck by the sheer number of limbs that are cut off in the whole saga. Here is a visual audit of the best instances of severed limbs I could find...severed by lightsaber (or other means) in the pre-Sith saga (though I will need to update this after Sith comes out on DVD). Also, I was left with the nagging question: why, out of all the Jedi we see in the early films, are there none with limbs missing? I suppose that they would merely have robotic prostheses, ala Anakin and Luke. Though it would be cool to see some stumps, with all those lightsabers flying around...Seems that lightsabers cauterize the wounds, though I guess that wasn't the case with the Walrus-man's arm...

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
May 14, 2005 1:35 PM

Though I risk breeching our laser-focused charge of covering drawing / illustration / photography and other visual arts, I felt a certain urgency in pointing out a few of the incredible FREE, live, high-quality music events in NYC this summer.

The New Pornographers (June 25)- First off, in my home borough of Brooklyn, Canadian smartie-pants indie-rockers The New Pornographers will be playing at my beloved Prospect Park on Saturday, June 25th at 7:30pm. Don't forget that one-fifth of The New Pornographers consists of honky-tonk siren Neko Case, who is a powerful force of nature in her own right. Backing up the Pornographers are two other quality canuk bands, Stars and The Sadies.

Yo La Tengo / Malkmus 'n Jicks (July 4)- Just a short stroll away from WSJ HQ in Battery Park City, a meeting of two indie juggernauts: Hoboken's own Yo La Tengo and former Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus with his band The Jicks. Also preforming is Nashville's crooner Laura Cantrell (who I've heard nothing but good things about!). Show starts @ 3:30pm, and sadly I'll be missing this incredible lineup.

Calexico (July 14) - Also performing on the southernmost tip of the city is the concert I am most looking forward to right now. Tuscon, Arizona's Calexico will be performing at the Castle Clinton National Monument (never even heard of this before...just east of the Staten Island Ferry). Calexico is a very difficult band to describe. I'll take a stab at it: gringo-mariachi-alt-tex-mex-folk-country-latin-indie-tamale. In a word, they are amazing. They will be performing at 7:00pm, and I will definitely be there for this one.

I couldn't seem to find the listings for Central Park's Summerstage. Their site is up, but no artists listed yet. I'm sure they will have a killer line up.

ALSO, Upcoming.org has a great listing of all the upcoming shows in the area. Mac users be sure to check out their cool iCal button that subscribes you to that calendar, automatically marking up your iCal calendar on you Mac with the dates of good shows you don't want to miss.

Heres some more info on Prospect Park and the WFC Arts & Events listings:

Link: Prospect Park / Celebrate Brooklyn Performing Arts schedule
Link: World Financial Center - Schedule of free music performances


UPDATE: Duh. Also don't forget the Village Voice Siren Festival on Saturday July 16th. Rain or shine. Coney Island. No final lineup yet, but do check their site for details...and you'll see our own PA's fine illo handiwork all over this gala event...

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
May 13, 2005 6:35 PM

Well I just finsihed up my first ten-week course at the Center For Book Arts. The CBA was recommended to me by the master book artist herself, Barb Zuckerman (make sure you check out her TRULY amazing books).

I took Bookbinding I with Nancy Loeber, and I thoroughly enjoyed the class. Bookbinding is one of those step-by-step crafts that requires an enormous amount of first-hand observation of someone who knows what they're doing (and my instructor Nancy clearly does...she was very helpful and patient– highly recommended!). There are many little tips and tricks that would be very hard to understand from the written word, or from a flat diagram - especially the stitches.

I made three books (each with a healthy assortment of mistakes and blemishes) and a cloth-bound case for my current sketchbook (complete with a handy compartment for my drawing tools). I joined as a member at the CBA, and will be periodically renting studio space so I can continue to hone my skills, and make some nice sketchbooks with my Rives Artist paper, fresh from Faulkiner Fine Papers in London (thanks Danielle!).

I whole-heartedly recommend checking out some of the classes at the CBA. It's such a cool workshop with tons of ancient, poweful (and deadly) machines, you will want to poke around and see what everyone is working on. They offer classes in all sorts of bookbinding, case making, letterpress, printmaking and typesetting.

Link: Center for Book Arts | Upcoming classes

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
May 5, 2005 8:38 PM

You can now pre-order "The Lambkins" by Eve Bunting on Amazon. This is the HarperCollins-published book that I did my first book cover for (Click here to see a large version). I also did a few black and white spots for the interior. Good for young teens, shrinking children and crazy old ladies with dollhouses.

Also, I have posted my ill-fated illo that was killed at finish just the other day.

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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: keegan (155 posts)
April 8, 2005 9:02 PM

I too had the honor of serving as a juror this week, and I was excited for the drawing opportunities. It's hard to find a place where there are a good mix of people sitting around bored for long periods of time. College was full of spots like this, but now you must turn to coffee shops, airports and places like the Brooklyn Supreme Court Building. During lunch, I walked down Monatgue Street to the promenade.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
March 25, 2005 3:18 PM

These are some quick gouache studies I did in my sketchbook this summer while driving cross-country back from California. The upper right nad one is from Lake Tahoe, the rest are from Grand Teton National Park in the Great State of Wyoming.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
March 9, 200512:06 AM

To properly promote oneself, you need a solid mailing list. Years ago, I had spent many an afternoon at Barnes & Noble with a foot-high stack of magazines scouring the infitesmal type of the masthead for the names of art directors and designers to send postcards to. Well, often by the time the magazine hits the stands, the AD has moved on to greener pastures and your postcard hits the trash can. The best way by far, is to buy (technically rent) a mailing list from a direct marketing firm.

Continue reading "Adbase Mailing Lists"
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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
March 7, 200511:04 PM

I had been working on an animation of people riding the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan for the past several years in spurts. Sadly, after my Powerbook was stolen in San Francisco in this summer, almost all of the files were lost. Probably a good thing, as it will force me to make some new stuff. So here's all that remains of the sample near-finished footage. This is all using After Effects and scanned drawings. Also take a peek at the rough animatic that shows more of what I had planned. Some more of my animations...

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
March 1, 2005 2:56 AM

The master we learned from at Syracuse. Roger has made available some PDFs of his inspiring sketchbook pages: Carnival at Night and Sketchbook. He just fills them up. Check out all of his site: http://www.demuthdesign.com/

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
February 22, 200510:11 PM

I have gone on many a long-winded rant as to why I think the Shrek films blow. This is my opportunity to put it all down in one place, succinctly, with visual aides.

Continue reading "Shrek Blows"
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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
9:01 PM

(Click on the image to see a larger version)
This is a detail of a piece I am working on for my new postcard. I am really enjoying doing all the values, and I can't wait to get into the color. Doing it all in Photoshop, using custom brushes. This is the second version of this, as I needed to redraw the people to look more like my characters...

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
January 31, 2005 1:46 AM

Lesson learned: You have to find all the little bits you love to do in an illo, and then do pieces with nothing but those parts. That's the plan at least.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
January 17, 2005 1:21 AM

I seem to remember coming across this on the web years ago, but there is a movement to preserve the out of print drawing instruction books created by illustrator Andrew loomis. This website has the entirety of several of his books scanned in for your browsing. Some very good core-drawing skills, ala How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way.

http://www.saveloomis.org/

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
1:09 AM

Man. I have been a HUGE fan of Craig Mullins' artwork since I first played Marathon, the classic FPS on my Mac back in college. He did all of the most influential cocnept art for Bungie's games. His website is a must-see, loaded with his amazing digital paintings. I haven't seen a whole lot of illustrators' tutorials around recently, which I think is a shame, since they are so valuable. I found a few tutorials Craig Mullins did on the web, and they are fascinating:

http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials/7731
http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials/7840
http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials/974
http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials/7863

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
January 10, 200511:04 PM

Some more tests using photoshop to color the scans of my sketches.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
10:40 PM

Been doing a lot of drawings in my small Moleskine sketchbook on the subway, as I enforce a strict No-New York Times rule (limited to the paper edition), for the time being.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
December 17, 2004 2:36 PM

Been playing around with all of the settings in Photoshop's custom brushes...some pretty amazing effects...very good feel to them...

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
August 6, 200412:05 AM

I've been seriously out of touch with the comics world over the past decade or so, and every once and a while I'll stop in a comics shop to see what's going on in the painted graphic novel world that Kent Williams / Jon J. Muth / Sienkiewicz et al helped make huge. Ashley Wood seems to be the current rockstar of late, and there's a lot that I really, really dig on his site. Would love to see more about his process. Looks like a very cool intersection of handmade work with nice digital touches...

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
August 5, 2004 3:08 AM

Arche's Aquarelle hot-pressed watercolor blocks are my current favorite paper to work on. The glued-around-the edges block is very handy, saoks up the paint just right and takes pencil very well to boot. Always good to have many blocks of this lying around. I use the 12" x 16" 140lb the most.

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Posted by: keegan (155 posts)
2:58 AM

I can't wait for better paper in my sketchbooks...the water color just sits there...ugh.

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