I’m heading down to ICON later this week, and am excited to be part of a group show that is tied into the conference. The exhibition is titled ICON 6: A Labor of Line, and features a great lineup of illustrators. The knight painting above is my contribution to the show, and it is for sale. Contact Wade Buchanan at 626.458.7477 for inquiries.

The show opening is this Friday, July 16th, from 7 to 11 p.m., and I’m planning on being there. Gallery Nucleus is located in Alhambra at 210 East Main Street. Come on out!

Finished this over a week ago and just forgot to post until now. The latest entry in my “dialogue” with friend and fellow artist Peter Cusack. Peter’s last entry was of a farmer with some cows, so I answered with this little Halloween cow (my daughter in her first trick-or-treating costume).

Been a long while since posting, and that’s because I’ve been buried in work, much of it for this upcoming show. Hope all those reading this in the Santa Barbara area will be able to attend. 5:30-7:30 p.m. this Friday, May 14th, at the clubhouse of the Tennis Club of Santa Barbara.

Time for some art. Recent painting done for fun, a few brushstrokes at a time over the course of several months. Oil on canvas mounted on panel, 8×8 inches.

It was a pleasure doing this pro-bono job for my buddy & colleague John Blondell at Westmont College. When John asked me if I would be interested in doing the poster for a series of six short plays by Samuel Beckett, I had only one condition: as long as it could be a portrait of Beckett, I was in. He’s got one of those fascinating faces, with an intense stare, and I had a great time drawing and painting him.

This piece was a departure for me media-wise: acrylic and pencil on watercolor illustration board. It was also done at a scale I would have never thought would be comfortable for me, around 18×24. Much to my surprise, this one went quickly and easily.

The thumbnail sketch concept for the poster, drawn with ballpoint pen on a Post-It note

The tight sketch, drawn with pencil on vellum

The full original art, sans text

The finished printed posters

The Creative Community: Scott Anderson from The Santa Barbara Channels on Vimeo.

This is the second time I’ve painted Picasso. While I’ve got immense respect for the man, especially the enormity of his artistic output, I don’t't really consider myself a huge fan of his work. He’s simply got a great face to paint.

This began life as a guest demo for the VADA program at my old high school, and is an attempt for me to branch out a bit in terms of the range of my work. While the drawing and style of painting is exactly the same as how I always approach my usual work, this one is a bit of a departure for me in terms of color palette. I honestly had so much fun with this one that I’m sure I’ll be doing some more portraits with this kind of muted grays-on-color approach.

Been a while, but it was a decently productive holiday break for me, so there should be (knock on wood) a couple of posts in quick succession here. First up is a still-life which will be a gift for a faculty colleague whose home was burned in the Tea Fire a year ago.

Received a commission from Dean Welshman over at Rhode Island Monthly to paint a portrait of Red Sox player Rocco Baldelli. I had never heard of Baldelli before, but after having done a lot of research on him, I’ve come away with a great admiration for the guy. How refreshing to learn of a baseball player who is renowned in the league for being humble and an all-around nice guy. He’s been diagnosed with an illness called channelopathy, and has been valiantly fighting through it and still managing to make plays for the Sox. He’s from Rhode Island originally, so his signing with the Sox has been a special homecoming for him and his New England fans.

The illustration won’t run until October, so I can’t show the final version just yet, but this particular job had a long enough deadline that I actually completed two totally different versions, just to satisfy my own nagging feeling that the best solution is still just around the corner. The client went with the other version, but I like how this one turned out well enough to go ahead and post it.

Thanks to Dean Welshman for the great assignment. I know all illlustrators these days make a point of mentioning art directors in their blog posts, and it can come across sometimes as just kissing up to the client, but seriously, collaborating with Dean on this job has been one of the most pleasant experiences of my career, and I’d work for him again in a heartbeat.