Smells Like Illustration

Happy Client

2011-11-07T08:13:00.001-08:00

See previous post on Carolina Ethanol Stock Certificate

MUSE FEST Preview!

2011-10-17T08:54:00.000-07:00

Here is a sample of what I will be selling at MuseFest!

I will not be selling my hand.

MuseFest

This weekend, you should make sure to come to MuseFest! It is going to be fantastic.

Stock Certificate

2011-08-07T13:01:00.000-07:00

This was an enjoyable project commissioned by Kevin Gardner of Carolina Ethanol. A stock certificate is a document reflecting legal ownership of a specific number of stock shares in a corporation. (thanks to http://www.investorwords.com/)

I incorporated images that relate to Carolina Ethanol's history, purpose, and methods. The border tile image is of Sargassum, a kind of floating seaweed, which is what Mr. Gardner is researching to make ethanol from.

The buildings are on a street in Charleston, SC, which is where the Sargassum is being cultivated in pools, and will be cultivated off the coast in the future; and where the business will move when the research progresses far enough. For the most part, the other imagery is marine-themed: the seaweed will eventually be grown in the sea.

Veremos Terra ("We will see land") ...well, Mr. Gardner told me something like this: Christopher Columbus had been sailing for a long time and he declared he had faith that the journey would end someday, that they would see land. At least that's what's in my memory. I'll edit this if I get a better explanation. For Carolina Ethanol, it's referring to the idea that we are on a treacherous journey in a fallen world, and we have faith that someday, our ship will be guided by the hand of God to a Promised Land.

The empty circle at the bottom will hold the seal of Carolina Ethanol, embossed by hand. Photo of the real thing signed & stamped forthcoming.

More Portraits

2011-04-20T14:42:00.000-07:00

Portraits

2011-03-25T08:05:00.000-07:00

More portraits from Portrait Drawing Monday Sessions at Space 157 (our studio on E Main St)

Medium: Prismacolor pencils on colored paper or matboard.

Three for now. More later.

Commission: Heirloom Tomatoes

2011-01-25T16:48:00.001-08:00

Here is a drawing of some juicy heirloom tomatoes that a friend commissioned as a wedding gift for his wife. By the time I was done, I was having to invent most of the biggest tomato due to rotting. Prismacolor pencil on Hobby Lobby scrapbooking paper. :p

Edit: I can see that the digital image did not transfer very nicely to Blogger... a step down from real life to digital camera, and a step down after that to the internet.
Re-edit: This really looks bad. If you want to see a better picture, I can email it to you.

Monday Night Portrait Sessions

2011-01-04T19:45:00.000-08:00

In August 2009, Friday Arts Project (mostly Stephen Crotts and I, and two to four other regulars at other times) began meeting in a dark room with one light shining on a friend or family member or practical stranger to practice drawing the human face. A few months after we started, we had enough work to put together a show, and we called it Countenance One. I have literally dozens of portraits from drawing one almost every week for the past year and a half. Here is the most recent portrait:

I might post others from time to time.
I usually draw with Prismacolor pencils on a medium-value matboard or paper, usually a chromatic gray or something between brown and another color. (Brownish pink, for example) All the drawings were made in 2 hours or a little less.

After doing enough of these drawings I've noticed that I'm about twice as fast as I was when we started practicing. I used to not even get both eyes in, much less something indicating the shoulder, values, much development of the hair. I'd say this has been a pretty valuable weekly exercise for me.

Studio Fundraiser Show

2010-08-24T08:05:00.001-07:00

Space 157 is having a fundraiser show in the Loading Dock gallery in the Gettys Center on Main St. of Rock Hill, SC, this Thursday, Aug. 26 at 6:30pm. Here are my entries:

Commissioned by Carolina Ethanol Partnership

2010-05-02T19:02:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who has started a business recently, with the above title. You can check it out here. Right now they are investigating growing kelp in the ocean near Charleston, SC to produce ethanol from it.
Two things that CEP wanted to show were a curtain/fence device that would keep the kelp from floating out to sea, and a sonic repellent device to drive marine life away from the kelp during harvest time so no animals are harmed.

The floating/anchored fence:

The sonic repellent:

Process: Sketched & penned by hand, then scanned in and handled in Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator. Altogether roughly 13 hours (very roughly, I inconsistently mentally subtract technical difficulties like not paying my internet bill, not enough memory, etc)

Pumpkins: bought by a fancy lady

2009-11-15T20:54:00.001-08:00

These are some recent things I've made- now, these are cellphone camera pictures of them, better pictures were taken by a friend.

Wedding Invitation

2009-03-16T17:46:00.000-07:00

Recent wedding invitation for some good friends. His last name is Fox, and her chosen personal symbol is the dandelion (die to live). They pretty much knew what they wanted; illustration is mine. copyright and all that. some information was changed in case you were thinking of being creepy.

More portfolio pieces.

2008-07-29T20:45:00.000-07:00

Digital illustration executed in Photoshop with Wacom tablet. More of an exercise than a well-thought-out conceptual piece. The thing is, it was never completely thought out. So it stands as an exercise.

One of my first 'real' illustrations. The concept was 'magic' and it was for a class, so we were restricted in some ways: no animate objects (so I used coats), monochromatic color scheme. I chose to show magic in a city scene, with chanting and an enchanted trash can. A very large enchanted trash can.

A botanical/nature illustration in watercolor, and I used a tiny bit of white gouache for the highlights on the berries in the middle. These are American beauty berries, two different varieties. I painted the wood grain background on watercolor paper first, masking out the berries, then painted the berries on top.

A screenprint on tea-stained paper. The whole class was assigned to make a print titled "The Most Offensive Thing Ever," and as you can imagine, most people took it literally, some did something like a mirror or something slightly more mysterious (a Virgin Mary with a bullet, for example) but I was the only one who managed not to show the Offensive Thing.

An illustration showing Life and then Death. Executed in colored pencil; type and border added digitally.

Senior Project

2008-05-16T21:10:00.000-07:00

My intentions for this were so different. 20 credit hours during the same semester as the project, the thesis, and the portfolio show is... not conducive to anything getting the attention it deserves.
The Elephant's Child, by Rudyard Kipling. Read the story sometime. It's a bit long but it's a great story.

Hand-bound by Courtney Vaughan.

from the portfolio

2008-05-02T15:41:00.000-07:00

From my Into to Illustration class, 2 years ago. Assignment was to do a self-portrait in the style of another illustrator. Executed in ink (pen and wash) on watercolor paper.

IN: Winthrop VCOM Senior Portfolio Show

2008-04-28T15:53:00.000-07:00

Our portfolio show was a success! Adrian Shaughnessy, author of How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing your Soul, was our guest speaker. He spoke about three important qualities a young designer must cultivate: Cultural Awareness, Communication, and Integrity. Our program, Visual Communication, includes design and illustration, and in past years the speaker has not been as relevant to illustration as to graphic design, but Shaughnessy's words were applicable to many fields, even those not in the arts. Several parents were heard after the show saying how much they got out of the event. Many parents who didn't 'get' graphic design and weren't entirely convinced of the validity of their child's degree were feeling much better about it.
As far as feedback on our portfolios, I received a lot of positive feedback from mothers, grandmothers, and people who knew something about children's books, or at least appreciated them. I think my portfolio will change a good deal in the next year or so, but I'd certainly like for children's book illustration to be... something I do.

I'll post some portfolio pieces later. Right now Blogger is having an upload problem.

two down

2008-04-16T21:47:00.001-07:00

Page 2 (second illustration, I guess it would be page 4)

Page 6? (third illustration)

All will be watercolor with minor digital touchups. like contrast, or his nose sticks out too far, or darken this shadow a bit.

elephants on parade

2008-04-12T06:20:00.000-07:00

Sketches.

Second page of The Elephant's Child

Third page

From my portfolio

2008-04-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

A not-quite-finished piece from Illustration II.

And oh my, how Blogger messed with my colors. Anyway, this was a cover for a children's book about reading. I don't quite remember the title, so that whole area- image behind title and type itself- is unfinished. I have to dig up the assigment sheet.

My process: develop sketch on plain paper, transfer to gessoed gatorboard (amazing, get some gatorboard and gesso it); watercolor (it naturally does that pattern/texture); scan and fidget with levels digitally; type on top.

First Commission

2008-03-29T18:35:00.000-07:00

officially my first ever commission! hooray!
collaborated with Mike Sudduth, whose illustration blog you can find in my links list on the right.

An education prof at Winthrop is writing a book about teaching, in which she has an exercise/worksheet on characterization for English or literature classes from elementary to middle school ages. The thing is called "Flesh It Out" and the students are to flesh out a character starting with the skeleton. She had been talking to a studio in NYC who was giving her exactly what she told them she didn't want- their skeletons were scary, ugly, and not right, and they just weren't taking the time to listen to what she wanted (which was a fun, non-scary, simplified, friendly skeleton with thick enough lines that it could be xeroxed many times without losing anything). so she came to the WU illustration department and our Prof. Gerry Derksen asked if any illoers wanted to do a skeleton for a book. The END.

Light was your first love

2008-01-21T13:34:00.000-08:00

"Why, if you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you'll never learn to see the country."
"But that's just how a real artist is interested in the country."
"No. You're forgetting," said the Spirit. "That was not how you began. Light itself was your first love: you loved paint only as a means of telling about light."
"Oh, that's ages ago," said the Ghost. "One grows out of that. Of course, you haven't seen my later works. One becomes more and more interested in paint for its own sake."
"One does, indeed. I also have had to recover from that. It was all a snare. Ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there, but they are also dangerous stimulants. Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn't stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower--become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations."
"I don't think I'm much troubled in that way," said the Ghost stiffly.
"That's excellent," said the Spirit. "Not many of us had quite got over it when we first arrived. But if there is any of that inflammation left it will be cured when you come to the fountain."
"What fountain's that?"
"It is up there in the mountains," said the Spirit. "Very cold and clear, between two green hills. A little like Lethe. When you have drunk of it you forget forever all proprietorship in your own works. You enjoy them just as if they were someone else's: without pride and without modesty."

-The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis

Ode to Illustration, by Steven Heller

2007-12-26T18:13:00.000-08:00

Steven Heller writes on graphic design and illustration and his writings appear in about 80 books. From the AIGA website (and you may have seen this on my wall in the studio), his Ode to Illustration:

Ode to Illustration

by Steven Heller

March 18, 2004

The question whether or not illustration is a valuable communications tool should be evident to everyone. Of course it is; at least when it accomplishes what illustration does best. What might that be, you ask? Let me count the ways:

1. When it adds an additional dimension to a text. Illustration can conceptually synthesize the essence of a story in such an acute way that the ideas therein are illuminated beyond the facility of words. The best illustrations supplement rather than merely compliment (or mimic) the text.

2. When it draws the reader into a story through a fusion of form and content. And illustration must be engaging at first glance, or require a double take, which is often a function of style and composition. A work that fails to pique the eye has little hope of triggering the mind. But surface is not an end in itself. An illustration must deliver the conceptual punch through pun, metaphor, allegory, or symbol.

3. When it invites the reader to decipher a message. Given the traits mentioned above, an illustration is a puzzle or brain teaser waiting to be interpreted. To efficiently stimulate the reader it must include blank spaces; it cannot tell a literal story but rather provide something of a riddle that must be solved, and that takes time.

4. When it serves as an icon. A single image is a concise amalgam of various notions fused into a visual idea. Rather than an easily forgotten decorative trope, a successful illustration leaves a mental "cookie" or mnemonic that enables recall of a story through conjuring an image that starkly summarizes content. The best illustrations are memorable signposts.

5. When it stands on its own as well as in close proximity to a text. Keeping an integral distance from the text without tearing the connective tissue is the most difficult task for any illustrator. An illustration must function as artwork as well as visual modifier. This does not mean inherent timelessness, but it does suggest that an illustration is understandable with or without its accompanying headline and story. It is not always possible to achieve the ideal illustration. Often committees intervene and good ideas are compromised as a result. Sometimes truly strong concepts are neutered because they are too demonstrative for the editorial context. Other times the illustrator simply fails to achieve the right conceptual balance between original thinking and universal language, and cliches result. Moreover, there are many times when a good illustrator is paired with the wrong story. But when everything is in alignment--when the illustrator acutely understands the subject--then magic happens with the result being phenomenally profound, incredibly witty, and decidedly memorable illustration.

As an art director I have given many illustrators difficult themes that I personally find impossible to visually interpret. I rely on the illustrator to conceive ideas and am beholden to their sleight of hand, which is an imprecise way of saying the neurological hardwiring that enables these conceptualists to discover ideas that are inaccessible to other mortals. By way of example, below are two such images that I used as cover illustration for The New York Times Book Review.

[i cut two paragraphs because you need to look at the images]

[SEE ORIGINAL LINK]

original link

Daytrotter

2007-12-22T17:30:00.000-08:00

There is a music website/blog/collective of people doing stuff -called Daytrotter... it is wonderful for several reasons. One, they use a ton of illustration and they have about 10 illustrators. Two, ...everything else.

--"What Daytrotter is attempting to do is to not kid around with you and tell you that we found something that you never knew existed. We are going to contribute to the musical landscape, not just toss it around like a used book or a stolen pick-up line. We’re going to give you something that you truly have never heard. We are not giving you songs from someone you love’s record album, thereby stealing from someone you love. We’re giving you exclusive, re-worked, alternate versions of old songs and unreleased tracks by some of your favorite bands and by a lot of your next favorite bands."

enjoy.

Digital Illustration

2007-12-10T23:05:00.001-08:00

Here are some pieces from my digital illustration class:

This was for a six-pack design assignment.

This was for AARP magazine and it was about growing up.

3x3 magazine

2007-11-29T20:24:00.000-08:00

http://www.3x3mag.com/

"Introducing 3x3, the first magazine devoted entirely to the art of contemporary illustration. Three times a year we take an in-depth look at art and environment of three illustrators. We explore their influences. How they work with clients. How they got their first big break. Each article is written by a fellow illustrator who knows exactly what our audience wants to hear. From the U.S. to Europe, Asia, or wherever, we’ll stay tuned to what’s going on the world of illustration.We’ll feature four or more new talents in every issue, they might be right out of school or are just now beginning to make a name for themselves or illustrators we find that have a truly unique take on the art of illustration. Plus we’ll showcase the recent work of as many as sixteen of the best illustrators in every issue. Selection will be by invitation only. And we’ll even offer signed original artwork or prints for sale. All in all it’ll be eighty pages of the best illustration has to offer, including guest articles by artist reps Vicki Morgan and Gail Gaynin, a feature on a living artist who has made and impact on the industry, an in-depth look at a recent advertising campaign that has successfully used illustration and an ongoing feature where we ask our featured artists the same twenty questions. 3x3 will be published three times each year: Fall/Winter, Spring and Summer.

Our Mission
Our mission is to spotlight the best international artists working today and encourage a new focus on the use of illustration by the advertising and design communities."

A recent Johnsonian cartoon

2007-11-27T20:16:00.000-08:00

The Johnsonian is Winthrop University's student newspaper.

How To Work With An Illustrator

2007-11-27T20:10:00.000-08:00

How to Work With an Illustrator
by Scott Hull

Veteran illustration rep Scott Hull gives designers the lowdown on forging successful partnerships with illustrators of every kind.

Start by closing your eyes. See that image in your head? Go from there. Perhaps it's a wedding. Or a funeral. Or a zebra flying a hot-air balloon over the Danube. Or perhaps there isn't a picture in your head at all, but there desperately needs to be. An illustrator can help there too.

An idea, or even just a feeling you're trying to evoke, can be enough to go on. Ask yourself: Does it make sense to use a photo instead? Sometimes realism works best (when it's even possible—the zebra shoot could be tricky), but a photo of a tea party is completely different from a line drawing or a painting. Remember that images are never silent. Each one has a voice, and it's up to you as the art director to choose the one that's right. You'll probably have an instinct here. Trust it.

So, let's assume you've decided on illustration. Splendid. Stock illustration is a great resource, but if time and budget allow, you should consider having an image made from scratch. There's a term in the garment industry: "bespoke." It means a piece of clothing made specifically for you by a tailor. The difference when you're wearing the finished piece is subtle but definite.

If you do elect to go this route and hire an illustrator, start by looking through your illustration resources—portfolio books, annuals, postcards. You do have illustration resources, don't you? Keep your eyes peeled for any examples of the style you're after (or interesting alternatives). Once you find a good-sized pool of illustrators, track down more examples of their work. Here, the internet is your friend, as is the artist's representative, who will happily send you samples.

Soon, you'll be dealing with the actual illustrator, who will invariably be charming and delightful. Explain what you have in mind one last time, going over the details with all necessary hand gestures, even if you're talking on the phone. This step is crucial; stick with it until you're sure you understand each other. And listen closely for suggestions you hadn't thought of. A fresh perspective (from an artist—one of your own kind, no less) can really help define the idea.

The next phase is Sketches, where you get to find out just how well you two listened to each other. Many illustrators are wonderful at communicating with words. Others … not so much. Focus on the artwork. Is it on the right track? If so, and you have approval from your client/editor (if you need it), it's on to Final Art, which rhymes with Best Part.

Here, for lack of a better phrase, is Where The Magic Happens. Don't scoff: It warrants capitalization. Really, if you think about it, the whole doggone process is crazy: A jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring image in your head turns into a jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring image in your audience's head, via this convoluted, logic-defying process of converting that image into some smears of pigment (or pixels) on a two-dimensional surface. It shouldn't even work, but it's does—it has for thousands of years, since the first prehistoric illustrator scrawled a buffalo on a cave wall. Something out of nothing. Colors and lines representing ideas. 1 + 1 = 3. It's a miracle.

So, congratulations. You've got your perfect image. You look good. The illustrator looks good. Your client looks good. And what's even better? Now you've got a success, and some experience, and a friend in the industry. So the next time a project comes along and something in your head tells you that a certain someone would be perfect for this assignment, you can say, "Hey, what if we used an illustrator? You know, I know a person we could call. …"

Scott Hull, designer-turned-visual ambassador, represents more than 20 artists. His firm, Scott Hull Associates, based in Dayton, OH, has earned a reputation as one of the nationâ€™s foremost illustrative groups with 25 years in the business.

http://www.howdesign.com/dc/features/workwithillustrators.asp