SVA Acceptance and Murakami Fan Art

Last week, I got the news from the School of Visual Arts in New York that I was accepted in their MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program. You bet your ass I'm excited- not as much about having to rearrange my entire life to be able take advantage of this opportunity, but it will be worth the effort. I've admittedly made previous posts about my failed attempts to escape Memphis relocation plans that didn't quite pan out, so I'm being cautious about gloating too much about this new development. Exciting times...

I made this piece a few days ago. It's an illustration based on the book “Kafka on the Shore” by Haruki Murakami. It's from the chapter that introduces a mysterious being that takes on the form of Johnnie Walker (of the namesake brand of whiskey). His appearance marks the first major occurrence of bloodshed in the novel, and there are parts that are sure to bring any cat-lover to tears (I’ll spare any further details for anyone that may be reading…). I want to make more illustrations for this story if time allows as it was an absolute pleasure to read.

Project Sketchbook 2012

Hey there, blog... Yeah, I know it's been a while. I want you to know that while I love you to death, I have to get this thing off my chest. The reason I haven't been updating you is because I've been hanging out with that hussy of a viral networking blog. I feel bad about the neglect, but to make amends, I will post the entirety of my Project Sketchbook 2012 entry here while simply tossing that OTHER blog a link. There, there, now...

Okay, creepy blog dialogue aside, I'm super excited (if not moderately stressed) about the opening night of Project Sketchbook 2012. It will be this Friday, March 2nd, at the Powerhouse (near South Main and G.E. Patterson) from 12-9pm. The event will be neighboring Live from Memphis' Music Video Showcase which is also this weekend. The night promises to be fun as always, and I'm looking forward to having the participants come down and check out what their brothers and sisters in arts have been up to. 

Take care, I'll hopefully see you this weekend, and I'll try to update this thing more often, eh? ;)

A piece for Chatterbox Theater's Halloween program. It was based on the show's second act, which explored the dynamic between a man and his werewolf wife.

For Ten Paces and Draw's Fan Art theme. This was the finish I came up with, based on Sarah Stroub's sketch of a Jack Skellington/Mickey Mouse hybrid. Here's Mika Nakano's drawing of my sketch.

Some Yardbird fan art. I was trying out a process that's not too dissimilar from one that I saw on Cam Floyd's illustration blog.

Some black and white gouache demos for my buddy John's Illustration 1 class. The top drawing was an example of working from a mid tone and painting in lighter & darker values, and the bottom one an example of building up darker tones while using the white of the page for light values. 

Finally, I've been playing around with making actual art objects, you know, things that have an x,y, AND z dimension. I took some small graphite drawings, mounted them on some small blocks and painted them to all hell with acrylic. There was a lot of matte medium involved. 

I'll be finding more ways to apply this technique, and perhaps a process post is in order? We'll see soon enough.

Updates for October

I've been pretty busy the past month; working on commissions, teaching, getting ready for a solo show, and getting a few boss illustration assignments, so unfortunately that means a lonely, unattended blog. I figured an image dump and and some corresponding ramblings would make up for lost time. So let's get started with a few commissions and odds & ends pieces:

The last two images were scans of a practice drawing that I did in preparation for a Halloween illustration that I'm working on. I've reintroduced graphite into my image-making arsenal, and wanted to combine that with some of the painterly work I've been doing lately. I started out with a graphite underdrawing, fixed it, then built up my value range further with ink and added glazes of subtle gouache color for emphasis in some key areas. The next piece is gonna be a badass and a half to draw.



This is an illustration I did about a month ago for This Land Press, once again under the art direction of Jeremy Luther. It was for an article about the band Tesla. Given that hair bands were the central subject matter, it was an excuse to come up with some ideas including these:

And this was my color reference:

This a quick drawing I made for the Ten Paces and Draw blog. It's a fun sketch swap blog where illustrators take each other's roughs and bring them to finish. I had the joy of working from Pawel Mildner's hilarious sketch (it's probably not so funny if you're a dog lover...).

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Finally, last week I spent some time with Occupy Memphis during their first few days in the Civic Plaza downtown. I went with the intention of asking what it was all about and doing some sketches. Fast forward to three nights of camping and occupation later, and I collected a nice little set of images from my time with the demonstrators. I tried to capture as much conversation as I could without the luxury of an audio recorder, but I'm happiest with how things developed visually. 

Publish Post

I plan to return to the occupation soon to see how things have developed.