Drawing in Church- 10/16

Here's one from a few weeks ago I just finished. FYYI: Neon spray paint looks much better in person than on screen. A better example of spray paint and drawing. 

Drawing In Church- 10/23

This is the last page in my current sketchbook, and I was hoping I could close it out on a good one.

As I sat in the pew, I saw that the passage preached on this week was from Luke, about storing up a treasure that cannot be destroyed by moths or rust. Giant moths are in the air this week, with apologies to Chris Buzelli, but clearly I was inspired!

Here is a sneak peak of my spread in the upcoming Chronicle Book, by Julia Rothman, called The Where, The What & The How: 75 Artists Illustrate the Wondrous Mysteries of the Universe.
It looks like it will be a great book, a few thumbnails below from other artists. I'll post details for the release date soon.

Rolling Stone Trivia Issue

Rolling Stone asked me to illustrate their entire Rock Trivia issue. It was a huge commission, six images, 28 portraits covering 60 years of music. One image for each decade of Rock and Roll.  Two weeks for final art! Many thanks to Joe Hutchinson for the amazing gig. I have practically the entire issue to myself. The issue isn't out for a few weeks, but, I'll post some images of the full spreads when I get them from the magazine. 

I drew in different colored pens to add some graphic edge to these images, since the concepts for the images were less important than the drawings. 

Here are the image by decade: 1950s

1960's

1970's

1980's

1990's

2000's

Illustrator as Art Director - ICON7

Being the president of the upcoming ICON Conference, I had the amazing opportunity to art direct the ICON7 poster design. The theme of the conference is collaboration and the power of community, as represented by headline... Drawn Together. (Credit to board member Mark Todd for that beautiful piece of copy writing!) So, I wanted to create a poster that represented a collaboration: A two-sided poster that was an unusual collision between a design-ustrator and illu-signer. Ideally, I wanted each of the artists to influence the work of the other, if not co-create some of the elements.

My first choices were Jessica Hische and Chris Buzelli- total dream team... but perhaps unlikely pairs for something like this. One phone call and they were on board!

Here was my big idea in sketch form that I sent to the artists. Thankfully, at this point, I'm really in the backseat of the process of making these images. (Just like any good art director, right?) So grateful to these amazing artists donating their time to a great organization that promotes the illustration community. They took a silly scrap of an idea and made it way better than anything I could come up with alone.

I'll leave it to Chris and Jessica to post more images from the process, but I do want to show the best part of the collaborative design and illustration process, in my mind.

Chris actually designed the letterforms for the headline and took a shot at painting them, but Jessica thought sharper type would look better. So she took the baton and crushed it as usual with her uncanny vector-whispering.

I would not be prouder of this poster even if I had made the image myself.  I see why art directors really love their job. What fun to set great pieces on the board and let the game play on!

Hey, you SHOULD GO TO ICON! REGISTER TODAY! 

Jack draws Star Wars

SO, I'm not wired to be very a emotional dude, yet when I tell you that these Star Wars drawings Jack did made me teary, you may think I'm being rhetorical or just plain ridiculous. He made these on his own and shared them with me tonight.

To have my 6 year old connect with these stories that meant so much to me as a child is really meaningful to me. Say what you want about the Star Wars legacy or dismiss the real value of the products of our stupid culture, BUT you can't change what these movies were to me: a doorway to a love of drawing and visual storytelling. Sharing that with him is SO valuable to me... and I'm probably dooming him to a life of nerd-dom. I'd want nothing more.

Now, we worked together on the Empire Strikes Back image... a fun collaboration. He is a very clear art director :"DAD! LUKE DIDN'T GET THE X-WING THAT FAR OUT OF THE WATER!!!"

He hasn't seen these movies all that often, in fact, he probably last watched Return of the Jedi about three months ago. Check out the great visual memory of the skiff scene, below. I love that kid!

Jabba the Hutt is my favorite part!

Drawing in Church 10/2/2011