Mother, Crone, Maiden
Client: Tor.com
Art Director: Irene Gallo
2012.01.17
Misleading title, I know. The fire and the crowd were drawn for totally separate illustrations. That, somehow, didn’t make them any easier. The Activist and Trickle Down Effect were both done for the same issue of The Work Style magazine. Both were art directed by Marta Scetta. I had a lot of fun with these two as they were rather active.
From thumbnails to final, here’s the process for The Activist…
… and the process for Trickle Down Effect.
Marta chose #2 with only one change, switching from a male character to female character. This terrific idea lent itself to create a more interesting character, as the male juggler that I’d drawn looked sort of generic.
2012.01.17
This is, for me, an unusual process. I usually draw everything in the same place, but this piece called for organization. In the end, it’s actually two drawings put together. It’s just beest to explain it visually.
2012.01.10
It seems Herne and Peony have gotten me some medals in SILA’s Illustrators West 50. Herne’s got the silver in the advertising category and Peony the gold in editorial. I’m pretty happy, of course.
Congrats to Ninh Nguyen and Kristin Lenz, their respective art directors.
2012.01.02
A lot of sketching goes behind every project. Here’s a few of the sketches that didn’t quite make it to final for a reason or another, but I would’ve been happy to have finished any. These are all from last year.
This last one was actually finished but then killed.
2011.12.09
This has gotten better through the years, but every now and then, I’ll feel like something’s terribly wrong (all my fault) if an AD hasn’t gotten back to me in a few days.
2011.12.05
This project starts with me busting my knee while climbing, scaring the hair off of my friend Renee, her first time belaying me. Irene called me for a project during thanksgiving week, and truth be told, I wasn’t going anywhere for a while (as Chris so kindly pointed out); So why not work on an illo for a wicked story? Plus I would never say no to Irene. If I really detail how much I like working with her, I’d have a restraining order in my hands. I’m busy handling Ted’s while we’re on that matter.
This time around, the story is called Glitches, written by Marissa Meyer. It is a prequel to her book, Cinder.
Thumbnails flowed easily this time around. They normally do with stories from Tor. Like I’ve mentioned before, Irene takes the cookie on matching stories with illustrators. This translates beneficially for the artist. Sometimes the mood of the story matches perfectly with the artist’s work, sometimes it’s the characters, or the setting. Whatever it may be, with her projects, there’s always something evident for one to latch onto. After a single read, I had collected plenty of concepts to work with, the main theme being a juxtaposition of inorganic over organic.
Number 2 being the choice, I sent Irene a somewhat cleaned/incomplete inked drawing. I’ll explain why…
Here’s what I showed Irene…
Here’s what the complete one looked like…
Irene is a seasoned art director. Far be it from me to doubt her skills at understanding what I had drawn. My reason behind it is always that I hate to leave my art directors treading on too much faith. They’re already putting a lot of trust in me by handing me a project, best not to push it. This time, it was easier to say “looks a bit empty now, but the background will be filled out” than “I’ll make some sense of this mess, please trust me”.
While on this stage we also went over some tweaks on Cinder’s mouth. When working with linework, any tiny detail makes a giant difference. Irene pointed out that the lines describing her philtrum and upper lip gave her the appearance of a more mature woman. In the end, we decided to remove them altogether since we were aiming to make her look like the young teenager that the character is.
After a couple of color schemes, we chose the green dress. By the time I was done with this illo, my knee was back to normal (ish), so I’m back to finding new ways to destroy my body against a wall.
2011.11.16
I feel Irene has mastered the art of matching stories with illustrators. Every time I get a project from her, I get all giddy. Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s Ghost Hedgehog is a really cool story of a boy who serves as temporary ride for souls in search of closure. Her visuals are quirky and inventive, and her characters are nicely developed. It provided me plenty to play with. I would’ve been happy to finish any one of these thumbs, which may not be the case of every project :S
Sketch level was a bit of a challenge. Drawing 11ish year old girls is a pain. You just kinda get used to drawing fully grown adults, awkward teenagers, or cute young kids, mostly toddlers. But 11-12 year old girls are somewhat of a gray area. I just couldn’t get the expressions and proportions right. There was a lot of research and A TON of girls before the ones that reached finals. These are the least embarrassing two.
And this is the drawing that went to final. By the way, the reason why the boy was not a hassle, my nephew is 11 years old.
I went through a bunch of color schemes with this one. Here’s the four that I showed Irene. It’s a good thing the first two were a no go. That kid looks like he’s miserably walking back from a birthday party his mom made him attend since “it would’ve been very rude not to”. Green was the first one I really liked, but then I tried some reds as well since the story has lots of them (you haven’t read it yet?!).
A few emails back and forth, and Irene and I went for green.
2011.11.09
This is sort of a continuation of this neat blog post that Jason Raish wrote a while ago for Illostop. If you check it out, this’ll make more sense.
Interaction between Illostop members is not limited (as evidenced by an abundance of questionable tweets), but we don’t get to see each other very often. Other than the folks that live in New York, some of us only attend one or two NY events a year, making these little encounters all the more exciting.
I’ve met, known, and been a fan of these guys for quite a while, but this was, I think, the first time I get to really hang out with them. They’re awesome, and pretty tolerant, considering I had just come in from some infamous Workbook carnival craziness.
So these are Sam, Victo, and Raul on this first pic.
Chris, Scott and I on this second one. Victo says she apologizes for the blurry pic. In her defense, the cardinals had just beaten the Texas Rangers and she could barely contain her excitement.
By the way, here’s also a couple of sketches that Raul and I worked on. You can tell the guy can really life draw. You can also tell which ones belong to Raul and which ones belong to me.
Intimidating as it was, I attempted to repay him with a sketch as well, only to realize I should leave this to him and stick to my guns. He draw one of the best portraits I’ve ever seen of me!
2011.10.31
Let’s just start by saying, Bob Pastore can throw one hell of an awesome party. Here’s the gist of it: carnival theme, burlesque performers, jugglers, drag queens, life-drawing artists, and pigs in a blanket! Along with friends Dongyun Lee, Chris WhetzeI, Chase Stone, Michal Dziekan, among others, I was lucky enough to be one of those life-drawing artists. On the other side, I was about to go life draw in front of a crowd, so yeah, I was pretty anxious. I had also flown in from Georgia and had only been able to bring a very limited array of materials (TSA’s wondrous work), so I was THAT guy. Bob rescued my act and fetched materials for me! Can you believe how awesome this guy is? Anywho, a few drinks in and and nerves forgotten, those sketches started flowing.
Here’s a neat video that Michal took of me sketching. By the way, the folks saying those really nice things about me (not sure if I deserve such words) are Michal himself and Delia Evin. Needless to say, I’m flattered.
Check out the blogpost from Workbook itself. The pics are amazing!
2011.10.26
Last night, we finally got to meet Michal, winner of the breakthrough contest. Richard threw him a party on a Tuesday night with an unnamed amount of bottles of wine. We’re all starting to piece the night back together through pictures from everyone’s phones. Here’s one of mine.
2011.10.20
Richard, Anastasiya, Ana, and Kay have been putting together these theme-based blasts for a few months now. Needless to say, October’s theme is Halloween. It turned out so cool it had to be shared.
By the way, I still get all giddy every time I see one of my pieces among all of these outstanding artists. It makes one feel humbled to say the least.
Check’em out.
Gregory Manchess
“A gypsy fire is on the hearth,
Sign of the carnival of mirth;
Through the dun fields and from the glade
Flash merry folk in masquerade,
For this is Hallowe’en!”
- Author Unknown
James Bennett
“Come on lady, let’s go! Halloween, doorbells, candy, let’s pick it up in there.”
-Jerry Seinfeld, from “Halloween”, an illustrated children’s book.
Murray Kimber
“I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.”
-Frankenstein’s Monster, from the novel “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley
Goni Montes (heehaw!)
“You wake up, but you can’t move a muscle. Lying in bed, you’re totally conscious, and you realize that strange things are happening. There’s a crushing weight on your chest that’s humanoid. And it’s evil.”
-Alexis Madrigal, from “Freaky Sleep Paralysis: Being Awake in Your Nightmares”
Tyler Jacobson
“Listen to them – the children of the night. What music they make!”
-Count Dracula, from the novel “Dracula” by Bram Stoker
Douglas Smith
“For much of the twentieth century, the traditional role of women in horror films has usually been that of the helpless victim or hapless hereoine. But some women have broken all the rules and given men a run for their lives…”
-Cassandra Peterson, AKA Elvira: Mistress of the Dark
Jason Seiler
“WEREWOLF, n. A wolf that was once, or is sometimes, a man. All werewolves are of evil disposition, having assumed a bestial form to gratify a beastial appetite, but some, transformed by sorcery, are as humane and is consistent with an acquired taste for human flesh.”
- Ambrose Bierce, from his book “The Devil’s Dictionary”
Guy Stauber
“Zombies will try to scale any surface no matter how unfeasable or even impossible. In all but the easiest situations, these attempts have met with failure. Even in the case of ladders, when simple hand-over-hand coordination is required, only one in four zombies will succeed.”
- Max Brooks, from “The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From the Living Dead”
Ted Wright
“I condemn you to living death. To eternal hunger for living blood.”
- Count Dracula, from the novel “Dracula” by Bram Stoker
Scott Brundage
“Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”
-The Three Witches, from William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”
Bill Sanderson
“Ghosts in the world, malignant, grim,
Vex many a wood and glen
And house and pool-the unquiet ghosts
Of dead and restless men.”
-Walter de la Mare, from his poem “The Phantom”
Mark T. Smith
“Where there is no imagination there is no horror.”
-Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr.
Gary Kelley
“Gaunt and spindly he was, draped all in black, with skin the color of the moon. Like something made to frighten crows from the vineyard. He had an eerie walk, as if the breeze carried him.”
- Aaron Frisch, from the illustrated book “Dark Fiddler: The life and legend of Nicolo Paganini”
Mark Summers
“And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall.”
- Edgar Allen Poe, from his short story “The Masque of the Red Death”
John Hersey
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
- H. P. Lovecraft
2011.10.18
I kinda wanna start posting more sketches here. There’s a lot of digital media in my work, but I get bored of this darn puter all too often. There’s a lot of these cathartic departures lying around and some of them are pretty fun. This one’s a fun play with inks and watercolor, and I think there’s some acrylic in there, maybe. By the way, I’m totally cheating here by drawing Thom Yorke. The guy has striking features, there’s no way to miss his likeness.
2011.10.17
Folks don’t normally get to see my black and whites, but this one looks kinda cool, so why not post it? I also finally took this chance to time myself. A lot of long time pros know their processes so well, they can accurately tell how much time a project may take them. I’m trying to find that out myself. Anyway, not sure what to make of it, but at least I know this piece took approximately 30 hours, admittedly, much more than anticipated.
I based this whole piece on sleep paralysis. When I was a teenager a…um… while ago… this happened to me for the first time. It may have been my very religious upbringing, but without knowing of any folk stories or any past experiences, I thought I was being pinned down by something unearthly (refusing to say demon… whoops… gone and said it now). I found out much later it was, in my case, due to physical exhaustion.
Most of my time went into these infamous inks. Sketching those mushrooms went faster than refining them with black linework.
By the time I started painting this, I had a solid idea of what the colors were going to be, only to find out that once all the colors were set, the little dude in the middle looked like a chupacabra (by the way, this little paper construct is a pretty wicked rendition).
Somehow, in my head (and probably only there) changing the color scheme made it look less like a chupacabra (this one’s just plain funny). So blue and gold was the last color scheme.
Lesson here? I wish I were faster, and it would be good to better foresee how colors will affect the piece.
2011.09.30
The folks at inPRNT and I have put a few prints up for sale. You can find them here.
2011.09.29
Richard Solomon, liger tamer, rainforest activist, mastermind behind the Macarena, Dos Equis drinker, and agent extraordinaire along with his staff, whom I will refer to as the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, have recently concluded the judging for The Breakthrough Contest. I spent a few hours looking at the work from winner, Michael Dziekan, all the runner-ups, and the staff picks. Go check these folks out, they’re scary talented! Congratulations to all of them! I hope to see more of them along the way. By the way, it was kind of a neat surprise to see my friend Solongo among the staff picks.
These are the first five, but check out the staff picks too. They’re awesome!
Lost
Spots for Wired’s article Lost: The definitive guide to pop culture’s buried treasure
Client: Wired
Art Director: Alice Cho
2011.08.02
During a recent class, one of my students approached me with a very common concern. In her mind, she could visualize her figures and how these fell within the composition of her illustration. Once drawn on paper though, these looked nothing like they did in her thoughts. On the other side, her attention to detail was impeccable. This made me realize that I had been ignoring the basis of her problem. We found out she was paying plenty of attention to detail but ignoring the base gestures to build upon. It is a problem that I had neglected to see, as most of my students have already acquired this knowledge and put it to good practice through their foundation classes. After a few lessons on gesturing and its importance, the student reached a control over her figures she hadn’t grasped before.
The information here is amply discussed on hundreds of books and websites. This doesn’t make it any less relevant. So I’ll take the chance and explain how I use gestures in my process through this project done for Euroman and art directed by Sune Ehlers, who is also a phenomenal artist.
During thumbnail stage, I don’t normally bother with correcting the figures. The main concern here is gesturing the right compositions. Keeping them as simple as possible makes them easier to read.
After moving to sketch level, the real figure gesturing starts. At this point, the main concern is to get the right proportions and motion. Getting into proportions, my concern isn’t really making the figure look correct as much as believable. Sure, the proportions might not be those of a real human, but if it looks alright and makes the illustration interesting, then that’s good enough for me. I also keep the figures undressed at this point… or at least most of them. The ones in the back I don’t care for as much as the one in the front, so I roughly gesture them clothed.
And then they get dressed, keeping in mind that every added clothing detail will seriously affect the composition. 
Once the inking begins, a couple of details may shift here and there, but the main idea remains. Remember that thing I just mentioned about elements seriously affecting the composition? Well, say hello to that unwrapped turban. Nonetheless, the gesture underneath dictates almost everything. This may sound constricting, but it’s a really good safety net to fall upon once the illustration starts getting complicated.
Oh yeah… and there’s that thing about the background. After that, what remains are a few layers to color this number up.
2012.02.22
Cat Hellisen‘s Mother, Crone, Maiden was a bit of a challenge. Full of intense, risky visuals, it proved rather difficult to choose some over others. It took one or two days just to come up with thumbnails, a process that normally takes a few hours.
Irene and I decided to take the trippy route with this one.
And then I went seriously overboard with the inks. Painting this was more of an excavation process than anything else.
After hours of lasso tooling this into shape, this is what emerged.