Frankenstein

I liked how my Bela Lugosi painting came out, so I decided to move onto the next logical choice. Here's my take on Boris Karloff in his most famous role. Once again, I was trying to emulate the look and feel of the Famous Monsters of Filmland covers I like so much.

NY Observer cover

Here's my latest New York Observer cover. This one was a little difficult illustrating because it was more of an abstract concept than usual. The story has to do with the ultra-elite Manhattan private school for girls The Spence School (Gwyneth Paltrow, among others, went there). The school is building an ultra modern glass breezeway connecting two of the buildings on their campus and the local residents are up in arms because it doesn't mesh with the local architecture (jeez, this is seriously the biggest thing these people have to complain about?). Here's the idea I came up with: several of the locals pressed up against a glass wall with a snooty, oblivious schoolgirl in the foreground.

Herman Cain sketch

Here's a sketchy painting I did of current G.O.P. Presidential candidate flavor of the month Herman Cain. This took about 90 minutes in Photoshop.

Bela Lugosi color

I went in and added color to my Lugosi painting. I took my visual cues here from the work of the great illustrator Basil Gogos, who gained fame in the 60's and 70's for painting many amazing covers for Forry Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland. One of the things I loved most about those covers were the artist's remarkable color palettes he used. They were all ultra bright and shouldn't have made any sense, but somehow they did.

Bela Lugosi Black and White

Every year around Halloween I try to do at least one monster painting. This year is the great Bela Lugosi. I think I'm going to try colorizing this and seeing how it goes.

Cheyenne

A while back I found a really incredible set of vintage photos online of a bunch of Native Americans taken sometime in the late 1800s. This is a member of the Cheyenne tribe. He had such an incredible face, I just had to paint him.

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

I heard the news last night that Steve Jobs had died. It's truly sad day for the entire world he helped change. There aren't many people you can call a true visionary, but Steve was one of them. I've been using Apple products for most of my adult life. I spent about an hour sketching him on one such device last night.

Mila Kunis

Here's a painting I've been working on and off on for a little while of actress Mila Kunis. I was tempted to paint a Meg Griffin hat on her head, but I didn't think most people would get the joke.