This picture really had my attention for some time. I guess it was the blue man made shape against the green bush. But truly it’s all about getting a burger or two at a fair price.

Fast food joints are a major excitement for me when I go to shoot. This picture is a simple landscape bush surrounding an Arbys in eastern Pennsylvania.

it’s been too long since i have posted. here is my latest sketchbook and a detail of the cover art. it is so satisfying making a case bound book. hopefully i’ll have some of what’s inside it to share next.
ps i agree w keegan on the moma/pixar show. it’s amazing to see such fun, innovative works created with gouache and colored pastel!
also – please consider submitting a book or print to my 2″ show…

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 .

Caught the Pixar show at Moma today with Keegan and it was pretty mind-blowing (more on that later). First thing I did when I got home was to refine my photoshop settings and create some custom photoshop brushes – which I’d forgotten was quite easy: [select object within 999×999 pixels and go to ‘Define Brush Preset’ under Edit]. Below was my test sheet.

I always try to use photo reference when working on an illo. If the situation calls for drawing a recognizable person I like to build a photoshop collage; maybe shoot seperate reference photos for the pose or incoporate parts of a sketch. The example above was an illo I did for wsj.com… a portrayal of the Worst President Ever.

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.

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