Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Several months back I was hired to do a cover for the Nashville City Paper. It's a long story, but the short version goes there was a bit of a mixup with the schedule and as it turns out I had to turn around the entire cover in just about seven hours. This is far and away the shortest time I've ever had to do a cover for any publication and on top of that there was surprisingly little photo reference to be had of the people I had to paint. I finished on time, but I wasn't really happy with the result, but at the time I figured at least it was done and that's what mattered. The story, incidentally, had to do with a crazy contract/real estate deal involving three former Kansas City Royals, Dan Quisenberry, George Brett and Willie Wilson. Today the AD from The City Paper realized he never sent me a copy of the cover to show me how the final layout turned out. I have to admit, seeing it now months later, I like how it turned out better than I did before.

New York Observer Cover

Here's my latest New York Observer cover. This one was particularly difficult because it was almost impossible to find a photo of the main subject. The article is about a guy named Bill O'Reilly (no, not that one). He's a Republican political strategist who ran the campaign of Bill Turner, who won Anthony Weiner's House seat in a heavily Democratic district. After much searching, I only found a single, not very good photo of the guy. I take a little comfort in knowing that even if I messed up the likeness. No one is going to know what he looks like anyway.

Peter Dinklage

I cleaned up my painting of Peter Dinklage and added some color. Here's how it turned out.

Peter Dinklage WIP

I started painting over a ballpoint pen sketch I did of actor Peter Dinklage, who plays Tyrion Lannister on one of my favorite shows, Game of Thrones. My man Peter just won an Emmy for his role, so now seemed like as good a time as any. This is my result after about 90 minutes. I think I might polish it up some more and take it to a more finished piece.

John Krasinski

I have to confess, I've hardly ever watched NBC's The Office. Mostly because I love the original British version of the show and I always found the American version to be a pale imitation. Here's my version of series star John Krasinski for this week's Caricaturama challenge over on FaceBook.

Sting Sketch

Here's a digital sketch I did of Sting as he appeared in the movie Dune. This was done for one of the Caricaturama challenges over on FaceBook. I kept it fairly loose. You can actually still see the undersketch through the digital paint.