Something new.

Here's a new piece wrapped up recently It's a poster for an upcoming movie project. I'll post more details about the project as it gets closer to release. A little hint before then,  the movie is not about a giant dog headed woman, that's just a metaphor.
Check out a larger version here.

New instructional pen and ink video.

Earlier in the summer I finished working on a second instructional video for the wonderful online company Craftsy, who produce a series of instructional videos, both fine arts and crafts. My most recent video is on drawing with a pen ink and brush.  I cover portrait drawing, landscapes, still lives, how to add watercolor to your drawing, and compose your own image.  Check out bellow some examples of drawings I did for the class.
Check out the lessons Here.

 Here are some of the drawings I demonstrate on in the video:

  

Here are some images from the shoot:

For a link to the class go here
For limited time discounts go here:  25%, 50%
And for those that get there first, ten one time free options, click on the numbers below to see if they are available. First come first serve:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

National Arts Club Opening Night

These are images from my solo show at  the National
Arts Club on September 5th.
Thank you guys who made it out to the opening,
It was a wonderful evening, and a big thanks to
Micheal Gormley for the invitation.

Claw Claw

My talented friends Ray Jones And ShanonWeltman Are starting this cool design project Claw Claw (awesome name!) Ray and I sat down with a recorder and chatted about art, influences, anxieties, and other cool things. Check out Ray's transcription, and the cool giff he did of my digital process.  Photo courtesy of Ray.
Claw Claw 
Ray and me

New York Times Op-Ed

This is a new one for the Op-Ed section of the New York Times.
The story is told by an Egyptian reporter recalling the past 20 years
of threats against him by those he criticizes, and how the threats have
evolved from jail time during Mubaraks years, into death threats from
the Muslim Brotherhood, in more recent history.  This was a really
interesting story you can check out here  Thanks the the wonderful
art direction of Matt Dorfman!

Summer Nights

This is a new one I've been working on for a little while in my free time. It's about all of the things to do on a summer night. look closely, there are a lot of things going on. This one started with inspiration I got from the original book cover to the novel Lord of the Flies from 1954, the original cover was done by the print maker Anthony Gross. I loved the restraint and simplicity of his line.  I had a notion I wanted to create a drawing about summer nights done only in white line.  I started with just pencil and paper, created a sprawling composition.  The pencil was originally going to be just the sketch, but I liked the looseness, so I scanned it, inverted the line work, and then bit by bit, the pieces I wanted to clarify more or accentuate, I started to redraw in ink or paint. From that point on the piece became an improvisation of mixed media, deviating quite a bit from my original plan. This is where it ended up.  The mediums I used include graphite, ink, gauche, and digital (the digital is mostly the collaging, but also includes a couple gradations, and some flat color.

Take a closer look at the detail Here

This is Anthony Gross's amazing cover for the original Lord of the Flies:

   

I had the good fortune of being asked to illustrate a portrait of Buddha for Hohefuft- magazine,  a German philosophy magazine.  The story was about the point in his life where he decided against the extremes of ascetic life, and achieved enlightenment while his companions abandoned him.   For references I had fun looking up starving pictures of Buddha, I discovered a whole category of sculpture dedicated to the subject of the starving Buddha, which I thought were amazing:

  

These are what I based the portrait on.  Once I did my sketch and got it approved, I went to final, shown above. They were happy with the final, but once the editor had time to think about it, the creative team decided to go with the original pencil sketch, I had never had that happen before.  They really liked the loose quality, and thought it reflected the idea of the article better than it's more slick final version.  Check out both up top^ .  Here are some more of the sketches as well:

The article ended up printing beautifully, and sort of made me wish I could use a sketch like this as a final more often, I like that the art director was into the unrefined loose quality in the end.  Check it out here: