Jon Keegan

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.

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…

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

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!

Click here to read more »

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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