Dangerous Animals Club

The Tobolowsky Files is one of my favorite podcasts on the web.  Actor Stephen Tobolowsky (aka Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day and a bazillion other characters) tells entertaining, heartbreaking, and hilarious stories from his life.  He covers everything from childhood to overcoming difficult college professors to stories from film sets to loss of a parent.  He does so honestly and with love.  One of favorites was titled the Dangerous Animals Club.

He tells of he and his childhood friend spending their days collecting dangerous animals from the nearby forests and overgrown fields.  This reminded me of my own childhood when my best friend and I would do the exact same thing.  One summer we amassed a rather impressive collection of snakes found under our porch, spiders, toads, ants, and any other creepy crawly that we weren’t afraid to poke a stick at.

Today, I feel awful about keeping these wild animals in little cages on a shelf behind our garage and performing “experiments” on them that could only be considered torture.  But as they say; boys will be boys.

This illustration is an tribute to the Tobolowsky Files and my own childhood.  I’ve also submitted it to Threadless for voting so please take a moment and vote for my design to be printed as a T-shirt!!!

Published!

A while back I did this illustration for a Roosevelt University publication. The article is about the educational and social difficulties children of migrant workers face. Today I got the printed magazine and it looks great! It’s always a good feeling when you see your work in a professionally printed magazine. The smell of the press still on the pages is better than the new car smell if you ask me.

I also wanted to give a quick shout out to Josh Kemble’s new Podcast The Examined Life of an Illustrator. Josh used to co-host the excellent but now “podfaded” Big Illustration Party Time. His new podcast is incredibly personal and chock full of great information for young professional illustrators and inspiring stories for those of us toiling in our illustration dungeons. Check it out!

Coffee Shop patrons

Fireside Bowl

Painting practice

I just watched the interview of Tom Fluharty by Bobby Chiu which inspired me to do some oil painting – something I rarely do and something I need to do more of. I only had a limited number of colors on hand and didn’t want to go to the store because I know what would happen. By the time I get back from the store I wouldn’t feel like painting anymore. So I just used what I had available. I had fun and while it’s no masterpiece it was a great exercise.

John Locke vs. the Wild Boar.

I LOVE Lost. The mysteries, the characters, the fandom, the mythology they’ve built up… everything. And, with the final season currently being aired I am fully engrossed in the world that Damon and Carlton have created. I read blogs, listen to podcasts, and I am currently re-watching the entire series with my fiance. While watching the first season, and having seen how far the characters have come since, I really appreciate John Locke and his conflict and was inspired to do this illustration.

As you can see from the sketches, it took me a while to come to the final concept. The original concept would have been much more violent and scary. I wanted to show a John Locke that you never got to see – the moment he kills the boar. Which, I think, would have been a defining moment for first the character of first-season-Locke. But, I struggled with the concept and realized that it was being contrived. I naturally try to infuse a sense of humor into my work and was avoiding that at the start of this project. Once I let my personality out, the drawing flowed much easier. Locke is ultimately a pathetic character and is often scared and frustrated when no one’s looking. I pictured him stalking the boar as a deadly hunter…that is until the boar sees him and then it turns into a Road Runner-esque chase sequence through the jungle… that is the moment I tried to capture.

Portrait experiment

A little blurry self portrait, 45-minute, oil experiment. I don’t use oils too often and this was fun.

Grocery Shopping

Wrinkles

My first Illustration Friday entry that’s actually on time (barely)! The subject was “wrinkles”. It’s done in charcoal.

I am turning 27 this year.  Entering my late 20s.  And when I look in the mirror up close I can see my baby-face just beginning to disappear and some sort of “adult” coming through.  Of course, I am still pretty young in the grand scheme of things.  Humans as we know us have been roaming and fighting for 200,00 years.  The planet is 4.5 billion years old.  The universe is between 12 and 15 billion years old.  And, we’ve still got a good 2 billion years before our Milky Way collides with Andromeda and the Earth and our entire solar system is ripped to pieces.

So, I guess I’m still a spring chicken!  Mmm, chicken…

Wacom doodles

This is a pen and ink doodle that I did on the back of the photo that comes inside the Wacom Tablet packaging. You know, like those photo frame people that show you how happy you can be if you use their frame… Anyway, I did this over about a month, just adding to it at random down times at work and whenever inspiration struck. Click on it to see it in detail.