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!”
A recent illustration for WSJ.com regarding economists current view of our economic standing. I usually have around 24 hours to turn these illo’s around and in this case I wish I had a bit more time to work on the drawing.
Just found out that the great Arthur C. Clarke has passed away. This past fall I came across a dusty and yellowed pile of his books in The Stone Soup Bookstore of Camden Maine. I began to quickly digest his amazing stories and man were they in my wheelhouse. The Times has a great obit. I’d recommend Rendezvous with Rama, Childhood’s End or Against the Fall of Night if your interested in a bit of grand sci-fi.
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
Here are a couple characters for the Anteism road trip I whuped up. And a couple others.
Recent illo for WSJ.com. There’s something rather timid looking about that googly-eyed congress.
Another drawing from the “One Fell Swoop” album artwork I posted about last week. This regal bird is printed on the CD.
The NY Press is doing a story about a city labor leader who’s proposing that vehicles pay double the current rates to enter the city and mass transit made free. So for the cover illustration I created this image of the NYC subway under some Mumbai-esque crowding conditions. Click the image or here for a larger version.
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.
Last weekend I created this illustration for The Riverfront Times of St. Louis highlighting an article they did about The Clowder House, a local cat retirement home (for when the owner gets too old to care for the kitty). It was fun showing the details like the cat meds, the pajamas, the rubik’s cube and the Wii. Click the image to see a larger version.
