Click for a closer look…

I’ve been swamped all summer, but have put several projects behind me in the last few weeks including:

• Sports Illustrated Kids- 2 pager
• MAD animated show work- Season Two begins
• Jeff Dunham Illustration Work
• The above Marlin Co. Poster illustration

I have just a few jobs on the board right now:

• MAD- 6 page parody for #511
• Yet another Marlin poster
• More Jeff Dunham stuff
• THE BOOK

If you are lucky enough to live on the islands of Hawai’i, you will find a few of my illustrations in the newest issue of Honolulu magazine.

Each year they give out their version of the “Worst Things of the Year” called the Sour Poi Awards, and this year they had me illustrate that article with a full page illo and a few spots. Here’s some of that artwork:

Click for a closer look…

The Holidays through me for a loop, so I am very busy playing catch up on several projects right now:

• Cover illustration for Reason Magazine
• finishing 6 page TV show parody for MAD
• Over 100 new congressional faces for the “Bobble Rep” app
• finishes of illustrations for comedian/entertainer who can’t be named
• January Marlin poster illustration

Speaking of Marlin workplace posters, here is last month’s illustration (click any image for a closer look)-

Final artwork

Pencil rough

Finished inks

EDIT- WOW, these are going FAST. Don’t wait around if you want to get your favorite.

In the process or remodeling my studio I had to clean out my flat files, and while doing so I came to the following conclusion:

I have way too much original artwork laying about.

To remedy this situation I have weeded through the immense pile of original inked illustration I have done over the last decade or so for The Marlin Company’s employee subscription posters and made fifty (that’s 50!!!) of them available for the low, low price of..

$25.00 each!

That’s right! Now you can own an original inked illustration by me (oh, boy… thrilling) and also help contribute to the college funds of my children. . . or at least buy them a few double espressos for those late night study sessions.

Here’s a few example of some of the pieces available at the Great Art Blowout Sale!:

There are a lot of different subject matters and themes to the illustrations. All are 17″ x 17″ (art size, except a few noted otherwise) and inked by brush and dip pen on Strathmore illustration board. All are good examples of inked line illustration. Visit the Great Art Blowout Sale page here to see what’s available and for more details. And, naturally, I will sign the artwork despite the buyer’s inevitable protestation that I do not.

This is the only one that is a little more . . . I am selling for $100: OOPs, this one sold!

. . . which is still a great deal as this is a fully painted 17′” x 17″ original done in watercolor ink and airbrush. It’s actually the only traditionally painted poster illustration I ever did for The Marlin Company, and is in fact the FIRST one I ever did for them years ago.

If you have have an interest in any of these originals, simply e-mail me.

Here is a quick MAD job I did earlier this month that just got posted on the MAD website. It’s obviously a parody of the movie poster for Disney’s “UP” featuring the Heene “Balloon Boy” hoax. I needed to approximate the look of the Pixar characters but with caricatures of Richard Heene and the kid.

It will probably be printed in the magazine eventually but the image is already available for download on MAD’s website, along with a lot of other parody posters and such.

The colors on this thing really got weird on me in CMYK. I’m not sure if that is something related to my upgrading to PhotoShop CS4 or not, but upon switching to CMYK everything became darker and much more purple, and it looks like it stuck when they switched back to RGB. Here’s a closeup of the dad:

The sky, for example, was much more bright blue than this darker, more magenta color. I started out using a high res image of the actual poster in RGB and then painted out the original characters, revised the clouds and prepared to paint in the new characters. Then when I switched to CMYK the weirdness happened. I tried to manipulate the color balance after but to little effect. I hate not having proper control over the look of something.

EDIT- Don’t misunderstand, I am far from a noob when it comes to digital imaging and printing. I have been dealing with CMYK and screen to print color shifts for over a decade now. Usually PhotoShop does a pretty good job when converting from a typical RGB color profile to a standard U.S. web coated SWOP v2 CMYK color space. In this instance the difference was more profound. I suspect it had something to do with the original downloaded “UP” RGB file I used as the basis of the illustration. Since it was a compressed JPG file, some of the color information was probably squeezed out of it and that made the conversion tougher, or perhaps the blue sky color was just so far out of the CMYK gamut that it was doomed from the start.

Here’s the original RGB poster image:

You can see how different the blue is. Now that I look at it again, I definitely think the issue was the original blue color being completely unattainable in CMYK/print.

Looks like I’ll have to cop out this week and post this rough pencil sketch of one of the projects I’m working on for the “sketch o’the week”. Yes, it’s another “workplace poster”. After looking at it again I think I’ll move the man down towards the bottom right just a little bit to better balance the composition. I should be able to share the finished artwork on Friday.

The work is piling up… I am currently totally swamped.

• MAD Job- small one but fun.
• Bobblehead design- I’m doing a caricature of Obama as a “turnaround” similar to an animated character design which will be turned into a bobblehead.
• 535 caricatures- That’s the actual total of the number of caricatures I am doing for an iPhone app project.
• Documentary Movie Poster- Another Obama image
• Graphic Novel- I’m working with a very well known syndicated cartoonist/author on a full length graphic novel we are pitching to various publishers, so I will be doing about 8-10 pages for the pitch.
• Newspaper Illustration- Haven’t done anything for the Minneapolis Star Tribune in a while (newspapers, in case you haven’t heard, don’t quite have the budget they used to) but this project promises to be a really fun one if it gets over the budget hurdle.

Here’s the latest workplace poster job just completed:

The assignment- an illustration of the interior of an expensive home with a professional, middle aged couple looking on in exasperation as two sloppy house painters with coke-bottle glasses make a mess of their home. The initial sketch:

Click for a closer look

The client wanted me to change the painter on the left so he was working in a reasonably safe manner… on a stepladder the right way, etc. I should have known they’d object to that pose as they need to promote safety in the workplace. They also didn’t like the roller of paint from the guy on the right leaving a trail of paint across the couple’s faces. The asked me to move the couple back and slightly more centered.

Click for a closer look

Those changes were made and incorporated into the very colorful final. Sorry forgot to save just the inked version.

Just a few projects on the drawing board right now-

• MAD Job- Two pager that is scheduled for issue 502… due in October sometime.
• Scholastic Cover Illustration- Monday deadline… looks like I’ll be working a bit when in Pittsburgh.
• iPhone App projects- Two of these in the works… an interesting idea and a possible new market for illustration. One is a maybe but one is a go involving over 500 caricatures. (!!!!)

Just finished this workplace poster illustration for The Marlin Company:

The above is a very rough pencil I did when at Comic Con in San Diego. I had to scan it at Kinko’s and e-mail it from my hotel, which is always a problem. Kinko’s cannot seem to scan anything as grayscale without screwing it up. It was barely legible. This is a scan I did after I go back to transfer it over to the board. The client liked the sketch but wanted me to have the two instructors interacting slightly more like they were discussing their annoyance at the ghost who doesn’t “get it”.

Click for a closer look…

Above is the finished illustration. I used some cheap PhotoShop effects to make the ghosts look… uh… ghostly.

Summer is hit and miss with frelance work for me. Sometimes I am busy and sometimes… not so much. Her’e what i have on the baord right now:

• MAD Project- Finally wrapping up a small job for MAD that got put on hold by the special “Issue 500″ spot and the Bo Confidential book. It might appear in 501 but likely it’ll be bumped to 502.
• Penthouse Illustration- a 1/2 page gag illustration.
• Graphic Novel?- I’m currently working with a well known cartoonist/writer on developing a graphic novel adaptation of a book he wrote years ago. We are doing some art for the “pitch” right now and if a publisher picks it up it’ll keep me busy for quite a while.

I just finished this workplace poster job Monday morning for The Marlin Company. It was a rare instance with them when the initial concept got changed and I had to do a fair amount of redrawing to suit the new direction.

The original image called for “a high school classroom scene. It’s the first day of school. Two students are comforting a student teacher – a husky, strapping guy – who clearly has a major fear of public speaking. On the blackboard, in very shaky lettering, he’s written, ‘Welcome! Mr. Williams. Student Teacher.’ He is facing the class, sweating, looking humorously terrorized, while two or three sympathetic-looking students gently pat him on the arm or shoulder in a show of support.”

The initial pencil rough:

Upon review the client decided that the students comforting the teacher conveyed the wrong message, which is supposed to be about supporting your coworkers when things get difficult. The students are the difficulty, not the source of support. Therefore they asked that I change the image to show more of the class, looking a little menacing but in a non-threatening way, and then have two faculty members offering the support.

The second pencil:

The only changed they asked for here was to add a sling shot to the back pocket of the foremost student.

The final art:

Click for a closer look…

After the intensity that was the book job I had prior to Memorial Day, I actually don’t mind having a light board right now. I’ve got a small project for MAD #501 to finish up, and then no other jobs pending. Just in time for me to turn to my theme park operations and give them a little attention.

I just finished up this poster job for The Marlin Co., which they allow me to share on the blog right away. Due to some of the layers being merged and then saved I don’t have a copy of just the inks, but here is the pencil sketch and final:

The client wanted me to lose the cue cards on the girl in the lower right, and make her more frantically pointing at the window to show the weatherman his mistake. Hmmm… the guy must work in Minnesota.

Click for a closer look…