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

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

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Posted by: keegan (126 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 (126 posts)
April 17, 200810:17 AM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Download: Keegan's Custom Brush Collection #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click on the image for a larger view.

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

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

Some detail shots after the jump...

Continue reading "Your Vegas Poster"
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Posted by: keegan (126 posts)
December 21, 200712:00 AM

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

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

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

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

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

Now if it only had a drawing program...

(Click on the image for a larger version)

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

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

Click on the image for a larger version.

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Posted by: keegan (126 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 (126 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 (126 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 (126 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 (126 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 (126 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 (126 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 (126 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 (126 posts)
August 19, 200712:00 PM

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Posted by: keegan (126 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 (126 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 (126 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 (126 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 (126 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 (126 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 (126 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 (126 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 (126 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 (126 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 (126 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 (126 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