I’m nearing the end of my current moleskin sketchbook. I’m hoping my next sketchbook will be of finer paper quality and larger – but the moleskin’s not a bad way to go if I can’t find something better.

Click on the snowy image above to watch this scary short about man vs. nature. As the cooler weather approaches, watch what you put on your head.

Last week my girlfriend and I hiked a healthy portion of the Appalachian Trail within the Presidential Range of New Hampshire’s White Mountains. We took advantage of the High Mountain Hut System the AMC runs up there. Our hike was incredible. After an initially dreary hike-in day, we enjoyed “the best weather of season” according to the locals. In total we spent 3 nights in the huts, 4 days on the trail.
I’ve created a web gallery of our pics. Several of you IM contributors will recognize the sites: still beautiful, awesome and amazing. (And the huts only make ’em better!)
As the sheer number of pictures will attest, Corrie and I took our time getting from hut to hut. That left very little free-time for stationary sketching. Fortunately I did fit in some painting on the shores of Squam Lake prior and did draw the kitchen accoutrements with the Madison Hut, as seen below.

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