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

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.

While in Maine this past week, my brothers Stephen, Jamie and I each did mutliple drawings/paintings of a piece of driftwood. The drawing above came from the sketchbook. The images below are from some of the photography/video sessions we managed between swimming, hiking, canoeing and exploring the woods w nephew Finn.

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.

On August 10th I posted some of my sketches of The Prison Ships Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park. This is an animation of the location, and thus sketch selected, along with the painting in progress.
The sketch is about 3×5″ and the painting is 9×12″ (oil on board.)

This weekend I traveled Cape Cod to run the Falmouth Road Race. Prior to running I managed steal some time and sketch the Mullaney’s cabin on the shore of Pimlico Pond in Sandwich, MA.
The race was hot, humid but enjoyable. If it wasn’t always in August I would recommend it. Race results and info can be found here: SBLI Falmouth Road Race

Farmers use these to prevent creekbank erosion. In a short time, a high volume of cattle can sog up a landscape, creating giant unwanted puddles and even choke waterways as they drink and cool off. They are made of coconut hair and jute.

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