Catching Up!

Hey guys! Sorry about the posting hiatus- Between a trip to New York and a CRAZY (for so many reasons) month, I haven't really been tending to the blog like I should. Consequently, the Daily Gouache project got pushed to the backburner (Shame! Shame!). To rectify this terrible wrong, I'm gonna post the last few gouache pieces I made before my trip up north, some quick sketches and doodles I did there, some illustrations for This Land Press and Baker & Hill for National Geographic's website, and a few more awesome projects that I've been keeping busy with! Does that sounds like a lot? It sure is, but that tends to happen when the regular flow of posting gets held up.

First up, some gouache/inks from early August:

Here's a illustration I made a few months for an awesome publication called This Land Press. It was based on a short fiction story by Lori Ostlund.

These are some thumbs that I sent for this project:

These are a few ideas that I narrowed down for the piece, but the one that the art director and I leaned towards was the one that emphasized the escape from one place to a destination that was less than ideal. On the drawing side of things, it was a lot of fun playing with the perspective and crazy color contrast. A big thank you to John Lee and Jeremy Luther for this assignment.

These are "stills" from an animated quiz that I made for Baker & Hill at about the same point in time for National Geographic's website:

This project was a triple-prong endeavor, with different quizzes being handled by the before-linked John Lee and fellow 901-er Bee Johnson.

Finally moving on to more recent things, these are some quick studies from my trip to New York last month. I plan on making a series of drawings based on that week when I'm able to make time for it.

These are a few gouache pieces that I made based on Kurt Vonnegut's "Sirens of Titan":

The novel was full of great imagery to work from; the two moments that I picked pertained to "goofballs", pills which allows one to breathe in low-to-zero oxygen environments, and Kazak, the faithful canine companion to a chief character in the book. The third image was an idea sketch for the image above it.

This was a piece that I drew live at the Cooper-Young Festival. Live From Memphis invited me and two other REALLY talented illustrators to set up at their booth to sell our wares and do some on the spot drawing. I had an hour to make a piece from scratch, so I pounded gouache and ink onto a piece of Arches until I ended up with this guy.

And finally, this...

and this...

...are from "Tanuki!", a comic that I started a few years ago. I have the first chapter drawn out and I'm working on finishing the second one. There's going to be changes to the look from when I last posted about it. I'll definitely have something up in the near-future time frame.

So with all of that covered, I'll be keeping my posts short, sweet, and regularly spaced from now on. More Daily Gouaches to come next week!

Thanks for looking!