New Work for a Good Cause

This is a poster design I did last weekend for the non-profit group ecofficiency.org that I am involved with. With a quick turnaround time of 48 hours I took some inspiration/influence from the Hatch posters that where used by many of the big country acts in the 50s and 60s and are making a comeback.

The Event should be a fun one and the money raised is going to help purchase water purification systems and send two of our members to Haiti to help distribute the systems to some of the poorest areas near Haiti's capitol Port-au-Prince. The team members will be departing on December 20th and return on the 29th.

Please help make this event a success by showing up and donating to this very worthy cause. This is our groups second event to help Haiti, our first event raised over $2000 which went directly to Doctors Without Borders.

More info about the event, donating, and ecofficiency.org can be found here.

Forever and a Day or Two

So it has been a few months since the last post, and I know my legions of loyal readers have been holding their breath and perhaps (according to my google analytics page) have possibly held it for a bit to long and passed or or worse.

Another summer has come and gone here in the great coastal city of Newport Beach and once again the beach is peacefully quiet, I have kept fairly busy with work and such and a few other projects. One project has been my involvement with a upstart group called Ecofficiency.org. At this point my help has mainly consisted of lending my design and web skills to the group such as maintaining and updating the website. Recently though the group held a fundraiser in which I had the very fun task of designing the poster for. The event was a success and the poster can be seen below. While I may not be the most active activists it does feel good to be able help out and give back a little to a worthy cause.

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On another front here is this posts sketch. Since Halloween was this past weekend I felt this sketch was an appropriate one. I can not remember when I sketched this or what inspired me but have the feeling it was again another late niter and I do remember there was a very light ink drawing of the shoe on this page originally though. I hope you enjoy.
The sketch as usual was done fairly quickly and loosely using a dip pen, brush and ink, and some watercolor in a Moleskine sketchbook.

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Price of Fame

So this sketch was done late night after a bunch of Amstel lights (shameless plug for Amstel, if you guys are reading this please send a case over) and listening to Jane's Addiction. The sketch as always done fairly quick, is of a stock photo of an older style camera and the face is a washed out black and white photo of a girl in a hoodie I found on David Carson's site. I then came back and scanned the sketch then brought it into Photoshop for a little manipulation. I copied and pasted the one original camera (the center large one) a few times and added a little color to them as well as to the girls face, a bit of white to somewhat look like a flash and a red box behind the text. As always comments or cracks are welcome.
Dip pen, brush, ink and Photoshop.

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A new sketch finally!

So it has been almost 4 months since I last posted a sketch and while I have been sketching, I just have not been posting them. Yes, I know the 20 people that read my blog are bummed and have been holding their breath. While hold no more as this is the latest to come out of my moleskine sketchbook. This is a sketch of some random model/person I found on a photographers site. As with most of my sketches the initial drawing was done fairly quickly in ink and then some watercolor was added and then a brief rambling of my thoughts on the side (which have been taken out). The words on the right were added in Photoshop as was the paint droplet. The original sketch had a very similar paint droplet that ran down to the bottom of the page and over my writing, but because I wanted to take out the writing it was a bit difficult (meaning time consuming for a quick sketch posting) to separate the droplet from the writing so I added a somewhat similar one in Photoshop.
Pen and ink, watercolor and Photoshop.

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Sore but Happy

So yesterday I got back onto the workout wagon and today I am feeling the effects of being a slacker for the last two months as the soreness has set in. After finishing my workout I was feeling beat and a bit queasy which is good cause it meant I pushed myself. Along with the exercise I am attempting to eat more, I usually only eat twice a day. While the physical part I enjoy and actually look forward to, the eating part is the hard part but I figure if I can take the time to actually eat a breakfast, lunch and dinner along with a protein bar and a Whey protein shake thrown in it will be a good start. Got to start somewhere and now is as good a time as any cause summer is just around the corner.

So today I figured I would sketch my breakfast oatmeal, orange juice and a few grapes. (I ate the grapes so they are not in the sketch). Ink and watercolor.

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Getting ink on your hands

Over the last couple of years there has been a trend in the design world to get back to basics and to hand build or draw out the design, to use letterpress, make your own type or screen print a design instead of have it sent to a printer. I for one like this trend and although unfortunately I have not had much chance to use with my clients I still like to get my hands dirty and use dip pens and watercolors and inks.

This sketch is of the word ink which seems to come into play in many of the forms of handmade design from sketching/drawing, screen printing, letter press, painting and so on. Sketch done with a fountain pen, dip pen, toothbrush for the splatter, waterproof ink and white watercolor. Hope you enjoy.

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Yet Another Sketch

Continuing my fascination with sketching faces, (I have been looking at a lot of fashion illustration lately) here is another with a little water color added. When it comes to sketching lately I am really liking sketching with a dip pen and different size nibs and even using a flex nib, that one is gonna take some getting used to. I can't remember what the hell I was watching on TV while I sketched this it could have been anything from House to a crazy show on Spanish television, but red seem to strike me and the phrase at the bottom came easily. I may soon take this to proper water color paper and mask of the negative space and let the paint flow.

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Please feel free to post a comment if you like and Merry Christmas!

Pinkie Master's

Pinkie Master is a little dive bar in Savannah, Georgia. I was there a little over a year ago and we would pass this bar everyday while walking around Savannah and down to River Street. For what ever reason we never stopped into Pinkie's Bar which is odd cause I am a huge dive bar fan/patron and this bar just had a great look to it, the Pabst Blue Ribbon sign really says it all. So on our final day I made sure to take some pictures of Pinkie Master and hope to have a beer there when I return to Savannah. The short paragraph on the side is just a little scenario I was thinking about when I was sketching this. Pen and ink in my moleskin sketchbook. I may add some color in photoshop and If I do I will be sure to post that one.

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hot sauce battle

I was eating a chicken taco from Taco Bell at my desk at work the other day and saw that I had an old Del Taco hot sauce packet, so I used that sauce on the second taco and then decided to sketch the sauce packets. I like Del Tacos hot sauce a bit better.

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Sketches from the Sketchbook

It has been way to long since I have posted anything on this blog which explains why the visitors to this thing are virtually non existent. So I am posting a few sketches from my sketch book which I am about to finish, there is only 1 page left in it, and then on to a brand new 5x8 moleskin sketchbook whoohoo.

The first sketch was made with a lettering pen and ink, brush and ink and water while watching the 11:00 Simpsons. I drew a quick outline with the lettering pen dipped in non waterproof ink and then during the next commercial break I went over the initial sketch with the brush dipped in ink and let that dry just a bit. After the Simpsons ended I then put a few drops of ink in some water and went back and did a little highlighting around the eyes and hair and added the eyebrows.

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This second sketch I am sure was made during another late nite television show although I can not remember which. I used the lettering pen dipped in ink for the initial sketch and then used the brush dipped in ink to ad some line thickness to certain parts of the sketch.

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For whatever reason I have been into drawing eyes and faces the last few months and using a lettering pen that I have to dip in ink. I am liking the way the pen feels on the paper when I write or draw with this so I may keep at it for a while or at least until I accidentally spill the bottle of ink and make a mess of my desk and carpet.

Hospital chair

I came across this sketch in my sketch book the other day of a chair I sat in at the hospital. I remember sitting there thinking the worst and the best and then thinking if these chairs could talk what kind of happiness and sadness could they speak of. How many people have heard news and sat back down in relief or sat back down to slump over and cry. On this day my news was good. It is not so odd that sitting in a chair in a hospital really gets you thinking.

Hats not Shoes

This weeks Illustration Friday theme is "Hats". I have not participated in this in a very long time and need to get back into it as it is a good creative exercise. So this weeks submission was a quick ink sketch and watercolor background scanned into photoshop and then some patterns added to the hat boxes along with a hat in the background for good measure. Look for next weeks submission.



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HIde

Hide is the theme this week over at Illustration Friday. I went with the classic hiding under the bed. As kids we all did this sometimes for fun and games and maybe other times for reasons that were more serious. I did this weeks submission using the old stipple method that many of us may remember from art school. It was fun to do but a bit time consuming even for this rather simple piece. I think it came out alright but then again I have not stippled something in many years. Hope you like and as always please feel free to post your comments.
Thanks.

Communication

So this weeks Illustration Friday is Communication. I am a bit late in submitting but that is fine. So I went with the eyes since the are the window to your soul and people always say I can tell by your eyes. Our eyes communicate a lot without us having to say a word. How many times have you looked into somebody's eyes and could tell what was wrong or what they were thinking. This illustration was made with pen and ink and black pastel stick. Then I scanned the sketch into photoshop and color was added to my scribbled text and to the background. I hope you like it and please feel free to post any comments.

Red

So I have not participated in an Illustration Friday in a while but I had some time this week and decided it was time. Red is this weeks theme and for whatever reason this image is what came into my mind. It is a bit darker in content then my previous posts. The image was made with an ink pen and pastel touches then scanned into photoshop, colored and a background added. Please feel free to post any comments.

Thanksgiving

This weeks theme over at Illustration Friday is Thanksgiving, so here is my interpretation. It is based on that stereotypical uncle that you may have that eats to much and then undoes his top button and falls asleep on the couch while watching football. This was made with ink, and a wallpaper pattern I found and then put together in photoshop. I hope you enjoy and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

"Clear" head and mind.

Here is the an illustration I made for my first blog post, it is titled "clear". The illustration is for a weekly creative excersize called Illustration Friday it is a weekly creative outlet/participatory art exhibit for illustrators of all skill levels. The idea came after seeing that Ellen DeGeneres commercial where she is meditating and trying to clear her mind. I painted the the background using some water color and then scanned the painting in and found a photo of a women meditating and reduced the photo to just the white parts I wanted and placed that over the painted background. I then added some type and scanned in a bubble I drew and added some type to finish it all off.