I’m a member of the art faculty at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, and our new art museum is having a fundraiser show this November. They sent out almost 1000 sheets of 5×5 BFK Rives paper to artists all over the country, and asked them to do a drawing or painting on the paper and send it back. The goal of the show is for these donated works to be offered very cheaply—my understanding is that many pieces will be priced as low as $25, to entice people to become patrons of art at a really affordable price.

Given that I work at the college, it was definitely expected that I contribute a piece! But, I’m actually very honored to be a part of the show, as we’ve received pieces back from such illustration luminaries as Milton Glaser and Mark English.

I prepped the surface with two coats of clear gesso, sanded between the coats, and painted the piece with oils. Click on the piece to see it larger and you can see the ridges of the gesso. Stylistically, it’s an homage to my good friend Kenton Nelson, a wonderful painter of nostalgic scenes. I was trying to think of an image that someone would want to have on their wall at home, and this is what came to the surface.

If any readers of this blog will be attending this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, then please come find me over at the Society of Illustrators Los Angeles booth, #2616! I’ll be doing an oil painting demo on Thursday at 2pm and a digital painting demo on Saturday at 2pm right at the SILA booth, located across the aisle from the Dark Horse pavilion.

In honor of the Captain America movie opening during the convention, I thought I’d do Cap characters for the two demos. Above is my demo sketch for Cap’s nemesis, the Red Skull. Come by and watch me turn this drawing into a full-color rendered piece. Hope to see you there!

Been working on and off on these two images for the past two weeks. These are for the first annual Cock-A-Doodle-Doo invitational group gallery show, opening this weekend at TCSB in Santa Barbara. The dots in the background on the top piece just about killed me, but I’m overall happy with how these turned out. If you’re in town, please stop by the opening on Friday night!

For the third year now, I had the pleasure of illustrating and designing the poster/theme art for the Westmont Christmas Festival series of concerts. Yesterday, they experienced a new record: two of the three shows completely sold out the day the tickets became available!

It all begins with the sketch. Ballpoint pen on post-it note. You can see that I labor for hours over these initial thumbnails.

From there, it’s off to shoot reference and then do sketches from the reference to get a feel for where I want to go with the piece. I was fortunate to get my hands on some great costumes and props from thespian friend, Miller James. Lately I’ve been doing all my prelim sketches in a large moleskine sketchbook with Prismacolor pencils—I love how the Prismas glide on the moleskine’s slick paper.

After a number of prelims, I finally comp the best sketches together in Photoshop. The lines here indicate the live area of the art as well as the bleed. This gets printed on cheap bond paper at the size I want to work (roughly 14 x 14″ for this one), and is coated on the back with charcoal powder to transfer it to the gessoed masonite panel.

Detail-2

Some detail shots. I had the most fun painting the gold fabric and fur cuffs on the primary figure. The plan had been to send the piece down to ArtScans in Culver City for their one-of-a-kind top quality scans, but my pushing the deadline to the limit prohibited that luxury this time around.

Thanks as always to Christmas Festival Director Michael Shasberger for this ongoing commission!

The Gallery Nucleus show was great! If you haven’t been before, it gets my highest recommendation. A wonderful, open gallery space run by Wade Buchanan, with an awesome bookstore in the front. Someone was taking photos of the show and got this great shot of my Knight piece, so I’m reposting it here. Thanks to Wade and co. for a great opening reception.

And kudos also to the board of this year’s Illustration Conference, I really enjoyed it. The “big tent” approach to the panel schedule was perfect and really kept everyone on the same page.

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.