Calm Her

Every once in a while a strangely wonderful opportunity finds you; something you really want just sort of, falls into your hands. Earlier this spring, my friend Sonia Rao asked me if I would make an illustration for the cover of her upcoming album: Calm Her. In the beginning she sent me the demos of all of her songs and I sketched out my thoughts and ideas, my feelings about the music. And also what I thought would just make a visually assertive composition.

Thumbnails searching for visually striking compositions

More, broader-themed sketches

Sketches from 'Summer & Wine'

Sketches with varied themes

Sketches from 'Calm Her'

Sketches mostly inspired by 'She' but also the album itself as a whole

In the end this last concept was Both Sonia's and my favorite. I feel it succinctly illustrates the narrative of the album, and simultaneously my own views on creativity, talent, and success.

Finished photoshop sketch & value study

Creativity is a strange creature. It is fueled, to me at least, by profound experience. It is always some concoction of both exhilarating and tragic experience that motivates us to create. And this same energy that can lift us up and express our inner thoughts and dreams to the world can coil tightly around us and drag us down into dark silence. In the case of this piece I envisioned the female figure, be it represtentative of Sonia, the Artistic Spirit, or perhaps the Female Spirit, firing out from this darkness of obscurity, wreathed in the billowing coils of her own talents and creative energy, soaring high towards light, gasping a cathartic breath. The unfurling trail of motely-colored fabric is the fabric her dreams, hopes, and ideas heaving her up high into the air. I felt that it was a powerful idea, and it made for a visually striking composition. one that would also be easily interesting from far away or in small formats.

An earlier color scheme, eventually dropped in favor of more earth-tone scheme

    So, after refining the lines, and planning the actual layout of each sheet of fabric, I began to work in Illustrator.
Here is an mid-stage rendering, all of the basic shapes and tonality is there, but there are no fine-details. Also, the color is radically different. While ultimately we didn't stay with this direction, I still really like this one, the colors are weirder, more eccentric but they work. 

In addition to the cover art however; I also designed the disc label, and it matches too!

In the end, Sonia and I agreed that a more Earth-tone palette was more fitting of the album's aesthetic. So, After a few more weeks, the art was done, and we shipped off to the printers.

I'm really proud of how this one turned out, and it is really rewarding to hold the album in my hands,
and to see it on iTunes. It's also a bit of an honor to have my artwork affiliated to Sonia's work.

Final album artwork, three panels: unfolded.
(click to see it larger)

    It's a peculiar experience to know someone before they make it big. It was a privilege working on this project, and I deeply enjoyed it. The creative freedom I possessed on this project is something a commercial artist seldom gets to have and it was incredibly rewarding.

Sonia Rao's album, Calm her is currently available on iTunes! Give it a listen!

Valentine's Day

So I've been seeing a girl named Ashley for a while now, and when Valentine's Day came up, I wanted to do something special for her, so I drew her this. She works with the organization Friends of the Urban Forest; helping to plant trees all over the city (so consider the shovel explained). But I loved watching her face when I gave it to her it was so many kinds of awesome.

California

And now for distractions! Both from the present season and from all of the projects I've put on hold. Those who know me well know that one of my absolute favorite artists is the woefully deceased Eyvind Earle; former background painter for Disney. He is known most commonly for his brilliant work in the classic Sleeping Beauty. But he left behind a prolific library of personal masterpieces that I drool over on a regular basis. Eyvind was frequently inspired by the grand, sweeping blankets of grasslands of California: rolling seas of gold wreathed in the wild, billowing masses of dark, gnarled trees. I'm as inspired by these surroundings as I am by his paintings. and I've wanted to paint the subject matter for some time now. I also owe a lot of inspiration to Michael Humphries, an artist whose work on the film "Open Season" (also heavily inspired by Earle) is filled with wonderful style all its own.
Since starting my job at Crowdstar I haven't had much time to work on personal pieces. but I'm tired of not doing my own work, I've been forcing myself lately to pick up the stylus again as often as possible. So here is the latest result of that effort. I hope I can keep it up, lord knows I owe a friend or two some promised pieces. sometimes you have to get things out of your head first. I hope you guys like this one, it's a bit different from my normal work. But I'm happy with how it turned out. And as always, thank you for checking out my blog.

Ozymandias Update

Good evening, dear readers. Are you ready for yet another redundant blog post? no? Too bad! Some of my stuff takes longer to get into Illustrator than others, and thank goodness for that. Ozy has come a long way since it's-- wait for it... inception! hah! get it? no? :(

...and I'm enjoying playing with composition and concept way more than I ever used to. One of these days I'll learn to save myself some time and figure this out in thumbnails. god, I did do thumbnails for this. and none of them looked anything like this. But I suppose that doesn't really matter, because now the picture is one big "pull my finger" gag; I'm just saying it before someone else does. What do you, the people at home think? does this composition do anything for you? is it compelling? does your eye follow the finger to the horizon and then ride the horizon to the piercing stare of Ozymandias? do you look at what he's staring at? Despite the sky sort of pointing to the appropriately named 'Lil Dude' I fear that s/he's a little too little in terms of visual weight. but I'll see what I can do to remedy that. Hope to post again soon. Weee!

Another post, a newer sketch of my latest illustration: Ozymandias. I've made a big change to Ozy's head, thank goodness.


This is the image from the original post. just thought I'd throw it in to show the progression.

It Lives!

I know, I know. Hush now my little babies, I'm here. Three months is a long time... too long in fact. But as some of you dear readers may kn

ow, and others may have posited, I got a new job. In late February, I was rotting in a corner somewhere in the labyrinthian tombs of Lea--some company--when suddenly, I got a phone call from a slightly magical recruiter. The phone had fucking sparkles coming out of it, I swear! So anyway, he offered me a job at this social ga

ming company called CrowdStar, and seeing as how I'd run out of that ball of thread I got from Ariadne a few years back, I figured "hey why the hell not?" And within a fortnight's time my life had changed dramatically!

Life can be wonderful... absolutely wonderful. Within my first week I was already happier than I could ever remember. I won't list off all the whys but this is, so far, the best job I've ever had. I work on something new every week, I'm surrounded by tons of other talented artists, the work is fun and challenging, and the pay is great! The only downside was that these last three months I've also been busier than ever. I was working at tim

es, 60-75 hour weeks, sometimes 16 hour days, and most of the weekends in the last three months went to, you guessed it: work. All of this just to keep up with the pace. Since then, however; I've sped way up. but all that said, I wanted to share with everyone some of my work work. Out at CrowdStar I make assets in a game called Zoo Paradise, follow the link if you'd like to give it a go, and please do! It's really fun, and it's made by a group of really talented people.

These are Habitats for the Zoo Animals to...err--inhabit. These are my favorite assets to make, I love all the different biosphere's of the world, even the imaginary ones, so every time I get assigned a habitat, I get giddy. Every asset we make requires five "upgrade stages" for the user to achieve, which makes for some really fun challenges. That said, if I counted every "upgrade stage" from each item, I've made over 100 assets in just under three months! Whoa!

These are Concessions, in the game you build them to bring in money for your zoo. everything from food to entertainment. But they allow for some really fun gags. I'm not sure if you can read them but the Churro Stand assets have accessories like vats of horse grease wherein you can deep fry your own Churro. this later gets upgraded to a flippin' dippin' grease bar: for all of your greasy needs. Do I know how to make a Churro? Heck no! I've actually never even had one. Still, I felt the grease vats to be somehow appropriate. Finally, you might note the Frozen Banana Stand homage nestled in there. I really want to make a Mister Manager joke but I'm way too sleepy to think of one.

Lastly: the bathrooms, their use in the game should be pretty straight forward. They're not the most popular assets in the game, but good god were they ever fun to make... I'm also pretty damn proud of the bathroom of solitude... but that's neither here nor there.

Well I might add a followup post or two to this one, but for now this will be it for my work-work on this blog, you should really just play the game :3. As for my regular blog posts, now that I've gotten used to the new workload I'm going to try to start working on my own stuff again, so hopefully I'll update before another three months go by. Though, I've got a trip to Italy coming up and immediately after I get back I'll be moving out of my apartment, so... yeah.... the next title could be "It Died" but let's hope not. I think I'm going to go to sleep now, I'm beginning to wonder why all of my blog entries manage to get published at like 2-3AM... it's weird. Okay... y'all take care now. Bye wooorrld.

King of Kings

This is a rough sketch for my next illustration. I'll likely give it a few more passes before I'm happy enough to take it into Illustrator. Ozymandias is really only a loose inspiration for this one. Essentially, this piece is to show the ruins of a civilization lost in the distant future, think 10,000 years hence. Imagine a civilization that achieves a ubiquitous integration with technology: a singularity, that then utterly collapses. It would bereave the world of its knowledge, and leave only tattered reminders of what once was. Perhaps it would alter the natural world dramatically. Perhaps it would leave behind artifacts that still operated: their curious users, how they would be mystified by technology that they could not understand. perhaps it would seem enchanted to them. Would they know it was engineered by human hands? Would they lament the compendium of knowledge...now lost?

OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

--Percy Shelley

Kreativ Blogger Award

Well I'll be! . . .One of my best friends and often mentor: the brilliant Steph Laberis nominated me for a Kreativ Blogger Award!

It simply made my day! And as per the unwritten bylaws of all things in the vast network of tubes known as the interwebs, this award is a viral one, and must be spread in turn to seven other artists. Then you blurb seven random facts about yourself...

The following artists are artists whom deeply inspire me. Something about the art they make, be it in the content, style, philosophy, or just the aesthetic sensibilities they work by. Something in the details provides me with great motivation, inspiration, and just pleasure. So, without any further ado: I hereby transmit. . .err. . .give this award to seven of my most admired peers in the illustration world.

Bill Robinson Is a friend and wonderful artist. Both prolific, and exceedingly versatile, his work is always an inspiration to me. Everything he creates posses a wonderful tone and style.

Brittney Lee I have the distinguished privilege of actually owning one of this amazing girl's paper sculptures. Brittney is a sweet, and infinitely talented individual.

Andy Ristaino draws with a rubbery quality that bends your view of reality. He is filled quite endlessly with ideas and draws more than nearly anyone I know. He's an awesome dude.

Erin Leong Great friend and a wonderful artist with a bold and distinct style. She's always trying to think of another series to do. And always making beautiful art.

Rosie Sullivan I met Rosie at wondercon a few years back and I fell in love! Her art flows with a life and vivacity all its own, her line work courses with energy, she is a brilliant artist.

Michael Daley Is a curmudgeon. Really though, he's an amazing artist, he can draw anything imaginable, and do it faster than you'd ever dream of. Perhaps one of the hardest working artists I know. Mike D, you're an awesome dude.

Zaruhi Galstian I don't know Zaruhi personally, I just browse her gorgeous artwork! and often. I love her sense of shape, color, and composition.

Seven random facts about yourself

1. I'm a naturalist at heart. The natural world never ceases to excite me. Astronomy, Biology, Cosmology, all of it. I own a microscope and a telescope, and I love using both of them, any chance I get. I'm also a lover of science, logic, and epistemology in general.

2. I've lived in a few places spanning the breadth of this country over the last twenty-five years. I was born in Maine, raised in Virginia, lived for a time in Arizona, and have spent the last seven years of my life in sunny San Francisco California.

3. I love Bulldogs, Pugs, Corgis (really, any dog), But if you are walking an English Bulldog I will have to pet it, this is not optional. :P

4. I love to draw environments, especially rocky cliffs. and trees too. Something about them pulls me considerably.

5. When I was six or so, the steering locked up on my bicycle inciting me to panic and not think to apply the brakes. Thusly: I careened straight into a row of mailboxes. causing the neighbor to holler "shut up you stupid kids" And the story gives my sister endless delight to this day ;).

6. When I was little I wanted to be an artist, astronaut, or paleontologist. I went to school for 3D animation, learned only that I despise trying to make anything in 3D unless it's stone or clay, and decided to be an illustrator instead.

7. ...and to exhaust the "when I was a kid" subject, I wasn't allowed to own a video game system (other than the Game Boy and Gamegear my Dad got me) until I was well into my teens. Oddly enough I work in video games now and love playing them despite me being quite awful at them. Who knew? :P

Cyan Sea

I've had this color scheme in my head for a few months now. And I wanted to actually do something with it. Originally, I had had a dream in which I was walking across this cyan sea on a high, sheer, and magenta land bridge on which there were patches of violet grass. That said, I didn't dream of any blue fauns, but I thought he fit nicely into this. . .Disney Princesses color scheme I farted out of my brain. I think it's safe to say that the next thing I illustrate is going to be horrifyingly violent. . .or maybe just smutty. I don't know, but I feel way too warm and fuzzy after making this. It's weird. :P Honestly I try to see it while keeping in mind the music I listened too through it's entire creation. Basically, LOTS of Animal Collective. I think I had their entire discography on continuous loop. So look at this less as children's book material and more as that one time when you were tripping balls! :P

So, I mentioned Animal Collective had alot to do with how this one came out. I specifically hold this song responsible, it's called: "The Purple Bottle" and it's an adorable love song, easily one of my favorite songs by the band. There's so much going on in it to make it sound the way it does, I kind of like picturing it being played by lots of little creatures in classic cartoon fashion. But there it is, an explanation. :P