Well, at least I have a good excuse this time to explain for the lag between blog posts. I’ve been working round the clock for the last few weeks putting together all the final touches on my show, Illustrative: Graphic Arts by Scott Anderson at the Santa Barbara Arts Fund Gallery. This was an exhibition of both illustration and graphic design done over the last several years, but definitely with an emphasis on my design work. The opening reception was last Friday night and was a great event. Below are a few photos of the work along with some commentary. For a far wittier recap of the night, check out my friend Chris Mundell’s post.

Theater posters done for Ensemble Theatre Company. The original oil painted illustrations were exhibited next to mounted prints of the posters.

More poster illustrations

CD designs

Panels explaining the process of two digitally painted illustrations

Posters that I designed that feature the work of other artists

Various invitation designs

Title wall with artist's statement panel. Below the wall is a table laden with leftover copies of posters I have, which were given away for free at the reception. This was a big hit and most patrons were seen walking away with multiple posters in their hands.

Another view of the posters wall, but this also shows an iMac on a pedestal on the computer. I created a Keynote slideshow that looped a desktop recording of the creation of one of the CD covers, as well as process shots of the Christmas Festival poster. This slideshow was definitely the most talked-about part of the exhibition.

Me and my family at the opening.

The postcard for the show.

Here are a few figure drawings from recent class sessions, all of them 2-minute poses, using charcoal on smooth newsprint. I live by the Conté a Paris Pierre Noire combination charcoal/conte pencils, sharpened to a razor point with a single-edged blade. They’re getting harder to find these days, but you can still get them here.

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.

Here’s a detail from my latest illustration for Stocks & Commodities Magazine. Thanks as always to AD Christine Morrison for the work!

Studies for an illustration I’m working on right now, done with prismacolor on vellum. I love drawing with prisma pencils, they glide on the paper in a way that is really appealing to me.

Rare that an illustration deadline will allow for the time for such luxuries as exploring different head options, but I have over a full week on this particular one, so I took the opportunity. I envy the time that artists like JC Leyendecker had, where he would do obsessive fully-painted studies of different poses of details like hands, just to make sure he had the perfect body language to convey the meaning of the picture. I don’t have Leyendecker’s legendary speed, so pencil sketches were about as much as I could allow myself before moving to the finish.

My wife’s birthday fell on the day after Mother’s Day this year, so I knew I had to come up with a nice gift to celebrate both days, and on a budget. So when you tell an artist that they’re not allowed to spend any money on you, you pretty much know you’re going to end up with a painting for a gift. I’ve been wanting to paint our daughter ever since she was born, so this seemed the perfect time to do so.

The gift ended up late because the week I started this, we ended up being evacuated due to a wildfire that came within blocks of our home. Being the procrastinator that I am, this was of course the week before Mother’s Day itself, so I was already pushing it to begin with. I finally finished the piece and my ever-patient wife thankfully found it to be worth the wait. Now that it’s been varnished and photographed, I can finally share it with all of you!

Above is the initial thumbnail sketch on a Post-It, where I came up with the basic idea, followed by the final tight sketch. You may notice that while I drew angel wings on the initial sketch, I wisely realized that would perhaps be a bit much and dropped them from the final.

Above is the final tight sketch. I drew the lines and circles in Photoshop to make sure they were nice and perfectly geometric, printed the sketch out in reverse on a laser printer, and then placed the print face down on the canvas and went over the back of it with a Chartpak blender marker. This transfers the toner down onto the panel, leaving me with the sketch facing the right side up, and more importantly, saving me the effort of tracing over my lines as I usually do when I coat the back of my sketches with charcoal. I’ll continue to tinker with this particular method of transferring my sketches, as the toner transfers on very dark, and tends to come up a bit through some of the thinner layers of paint.

Eagle-eyed viewers might notice a few differences between the sketch and the final, most notably the hair. When I first started this piece, I was already working from reference that was a couple of months old. By the time I got around to finishing the piece, Natalie’s hair had grown significantly longer as well as becoming lighter. They really do grow up fast.

So, here’s my first post in a while, and it’s regarding some bummer news. Any of you watching the news around the beginning of this month probably heard that Santa Barbara suffered from some terrible wildfires, specifically the Jesusita Fire. Well, we live within about a mile and a half from the origin of the fire, and were evacuated for six days. During the panic of preparing to evacuate, as we were packing up our most valued possessions, a well-meaning relative took all of my paintings off the walls and threw them in his car trunk.

You don’t want to leave art in a car trunk for a week, because bad things can happen to them. Such as the eyescrews from the back of one piece gouging into the front of another piece:

These are details from a poster I had illustrated for Ensemble Theatre Company, for a play about the final years of Zelda Fitzgerald, entitled The Last Flapper. Below is the image before it was damaged.

I painted that image five years ago, and while it has its faults that I see every time I look at it, I still have nostalgia for this particular image, as it was for a great client during a fun season of life. I’ve been assured by my good friends at the Fine Art Conservation Lab that they’re going to be able to restore it with no problem, and I hope they’re right.

I’m happy to report that my house is still standing, but it was a close call. The hillside just two and half blocks up from our house is completely scorched, but the firefighters made a stand there and save our neighborhood.

…little blog of mine. I started this thing a year ago with the hopes of posting twice a week, and have managed only a measly 30 posts so far. While I’ve managed to avoid the crash-and-burn of posting twice and never again that occurs with most blogs, it’s not like I’ve set a record for posting, either. So for those of you who are RSS subscribers, or who just make a point of checking in, I renew my commitment to providing more content on a regular basis. I’ve been experimenting quite a bit with digital painting lately and as soon as I finish one that doesn’t completely embarrass me, I’ll share the results.

And now a question: for those of you who are faithful readers, what’s the stuff you like the best? The ridiculously long and in-depth process stories? Or the quick-hit sketch posts? I’m basically trying to write the kind of blog that I myself would want to read, but I’m open for feedback. If you’ve got a preference, let me know in the comments section.

The sketchbook project with Peter Cusack moves along, albeit at a snail’s pace, and it’s my fault it’s taking so long—I had a busy February and finally got to work on it just in the last few days. I know I keep saying this, but I’ll get to it quicker next time, Pete!

Last time, I riffed off of Peter’s walking couple and came up with a different kind of walk. Peter took that idea and came up with a different idea for a leash. So for my turn, I decided to riff off of his man with a fedora, and in honor of the Watchmen movie finally coming out, painted a portrait of someone else well known for wearing fedoras, the vigilante Rorschach. This was painted with acrylics, which I am slowly getting more comfortable with.

My students with Margo outside her studio, which is in a converted office building that still has the original pesticide signage. Margo's in the middle with the black shirt, and I'm the guy on the far right squinting in the bright sunlight.

I’m going to shamelessly name-drop here for a moment. Two Fridays ago, I had the privilege of taking my Publication Design class at Westmont down for a visit & talk with Margo Chase of Chase Design Group. If you like graphic design and are not familiar with Margo’s work, you need to be—she’s recognized as one of the top designers in the field today. In addition to being a truly original and profoundly inspirational designer, she’s also a warm, friendly and charismatic person to be around.

I first met Margo back in 2004, when she graciously accepted an invitation to deliver a lecture at Westmont, which was quite literally the finest lecture I’ve ever heard to date. This past summer, I had the pleasure of getting to hire Margo for the re-design of the Westmont Athletics Department logo, and it was a real lesson in design management to watch how she deftly handled a tough audience of administrators and managed to finesse a logo through the various chains of command while maintaining the artistic integrity of her design concepts. It was a formidable assignment, but Margo and her team (including key personnel Shannon and Clark on that particular project) handled it beautifully.

So naturally, I boldly asked if I could bring a class of aspiring print designers down to meet her and tour the studio space. Not only did she say yes, but we were treated to an over two-hour visit, which included meeting all of the staff and viewing a slide presentation by Clark and Shannon which was truly inspiring. Margo and the entire team were incredibly friendly and accomodating, and extremely generous with their time on a workday. The students, needless to say, were pretty blown away. Thanks Margo!