Me and Stan Lee

 

Anyone who follows my work knows I paint a lot of famous people. This is the first time I ever was able to give one of my paintings directly to the person. What made today especially gratifying is that the person I painted just happened to be Stan "The Man" Lee, creator of Spider-Man, The Hulk, Iron Man and the vast majority of my childhood heroes. Today at the Detroit FanFare show I was honored to be able to present one of my signed prints to Stan Lee. Even better: he seemed pretty blown away by my work ("Brilliant," was the exact word he used). Today was a really good day.

Detroit FanFare 2010 Limited Edition Print

 

I'm excited to announce that the folks who running the Detroit FanFare Comic Convention this weekend, in honor of Stan "The Man" Lee attending, are going to be selling limited edition prints of my Stan Lee painting at the main convention table. Each print measures 9" x 12 1/2" and is printed on a very nice glossy stock. This is a limited edition of 300, and each one is signed and numbered by yours truly. In the words of the infomercials, but wait...there's more! This little beauty can be yours for a mere $15. So if you're planning on attending the show and you've got an extra fifteen bucks burning a hole in your pocket, please pick one up. Gracias.

ImagineFX

 

Another one of my illustrations is in the new issue of ImagineFX Magazine (issue #62, for those keeping score). A few months ago IFX announced they were having a zombie themed issue with a contest that involved painting their Editor-In-Chief Claire Howlett as one of the walking dead. I didn't win the contest, but I was among the four runners-up, which meant I got my illustration printed in the book. It's an honor being recognized, especially considering how fantastic so many of the entries were. And yes, if you look close you may notice for some reason they cut half of my last name off and printed it as Mark Hammer. Oh well, you win some...

They like me!

Check it out, my work is featured on the very cool website IllustrationPages.com. This site was listed as one of HOW Magazines Top 10 Websites for Designers in March 2010, so this is quite an honor. Please click over here to read more.

Nosferatu - Final

I tweaked a few more details, sharpened up some lines and added a few color tweaks. Here's the final. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. I think I might try another monster or two in this style.

Nosferatu - Now With Color

Nosferatu WIP

I wanted to do at least one monster before Halloween. I'm still working on it, but here's still one of the coolest makeup jobs in film history, Nosferatu.

Ms. Marvel

After painting Stan Lee, I got on a bit of a comic book kick. Here's Marvel superheroine Ms. Marvel. This took about six hours in Photoshop.

Nashville City Paper

I had the opportunity to illustrate the cover of this week's Nashville City Paper. The article deals with Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and his choice to govern by surrounding himself with a series of "Task Forces" that consult on everything from public safety to the water department (read it here, if you're interested). City Paper Art Director Bret Pelizzari had a very clear vision of what he wanted to see. BTW, the model for the shadowy figures in the back are all me. I had my wife shoot a whole lot of reference photos of me trying to look tough. This is painted in Photoshop over a pencil sketch.