Professor Stephen Hawking

Some people have sports stars or movie stars as heroes, some of my heroes are geniuses like Professor Stephen Hawking. I kept this one loose and painterly, just how I like it.

Game of Thrones

Here's the Game of Thrones piece I've been working on for some time now. I'm a huge fan of both the show and the books. This was inspired by a bit of both, particularly the title of the book series "A Song of Fire and Ice." Painted in Photoshop and Corel Painter.

Darth Talon

This is a T-shirt design I did for a Star Wars convention featuring Darth Talon from the SW expanded universe. It was ultimately rejected by the powers that be, but I still rather like how it turned out.

David Bowie sketch

I have a bunch of projects I can't show right now, so here's one I can. A little sketch of David Bowie.

Locutus of Borg

My friend Josh Wiley commissioned me to paint Locutus of Borg. This was a load of fun to do. I'll take any chance I can get to paint some Star Trek.

Leader's Edge

New spot illustration for Leader's Edge. This is an insurance company exec named Mark Drummond Brady. He's a former member of the British military, a world-traveler, and, according to his bio, he has a bit of a rock and roll streak as well. Thanks to Brad Latham for the assignment.

HorrorHound Weekend

I had a fantastic time at HorrorHound Weekend in Cincinnati. It was my first convention appearance and I had a lot of fun meeting people, including many of my friends I've only met online. While I was there I got to meet and present prints to Sarah Wayne Callies and Norman Reedus from the Walking Dead. And on top of all that, my Norman Reedus illustration made it on the cover of the convention exclusive issue of HorrorHound Magazine. Special thanks go to Marc Draven of Ink Fusion and to Nathan Hanneman of HorrorHound for putting my work on the cover.

Merle Dixon

I think I've made my affection for The Walking Dead pretty clear by now. Next weekend (March 22-24), I'm very happy to be making my first convention appearance at HorrorHound Weekend in Cincinnati. I'll be selling a number of prints, including this brand new one featuring some of the guests of honor, the great Michael Rooker and Norman Reedus (and the great David Morrisey, who won't be at the con). If you're going to be attending the convention, I hope you'll stop by my table and say hi.

Leader's Edge

My newest spot illustration for Leader's Edge Magazine is out now. The subject this month is an insurance company president named Scott Trofholz. Typically, when I'm doing an editorial illustration job about someone I know nothing about the Creative Director will provide me with the copy for the article and I'll read through it and jot down some ideas based on any interesting things the interview subject might have revealed about himself. In this case, the interviewee focused heavily on his interest in hunting and fishing in his spare time. On it's surface, that alone didn't seem to allow much room for being funny, but then I got the idea to juxtapose the two sports and then things started to work. I knew I was on the right track the first time I did a quick doodle of the guy hauling a deer out of the water on the end of his fishing rod and it made me laugh out loud. In total, I submitted three sketches, and I would have been happy to paint any of them (professional note: when submitting sketches, make sure you like them all because you'll regret it later on if the sketch that gets chosen is an idea you hated from the start). But I'm especially glad that new Creative Director Brad Latham chose my favorite of the three.

Sigourney Weaver

Here's a new painting of one of my favorite actresses Sigourney Weaver.

New sketchbook

I just got a nifty new toned sketchbook and I wanted to break it in. I also love gorillas, thus a sketch was born. The toned paper works really well to create a mid-tone in my ballpoint pen sketch. The highlights were added on with a white Prismacolor pencil.

Dr. No

Here's tonight's painting. Joseph Wiseman as Dr. No.

Pierce Brosnan

Here's today's practice. A little Pierce Brosnan. Since I've already painted Daniel Craig and Eva Green, I thought I'd try a different James Bond for a change.

Jake "The Snake" Roberts

This is a commissioned painting I did of former wrestler Jake "The Snake" Roberts.

Leader's Edge

New spot illustration for Leader's Edge. This is Eric Leavitt, president of an insurance company bearing his name. In the profile about him, he revealed his love for the Red Sox and that he once did a little sumo wrestling while he was a Mormon missionary in Japan. That pretty much left the doors wide open to have some fun drawing him.

Oh Captain, My Captain

I don't often revisit old work, but when I received an invitation to enter a piece in the upcoming Star Trek show at the Q Pop Gallery in Los Angeles, I couldn't resist heavily re-working my old Captain Kirk painting. Looking at the original (below), I couldn't help but cringe at it's many, many flaws.

If you compare the re-worked version to the previous version I did a few years ago, you can see how I've gone ahead and tightened up the details and reworked the background completely. Personally, I think it's about a 1000% improvement and shows some of the growth I've had as a painter. The gallery show is scheduled for February 16.

Charles Bronson sketch

If I've never sung the praises of Autodesk Sketchbook Pro before then shame on me. I've tried a lot of different drawing programs and none have come close to how natural the pencil feels as it does in this program. In the latest version of the software they added on some really great new paint brushes too. Here's a sketch I did of Charles Bronson after noodling around in the program for about an hour.

Brian Setzer

Here's my piece for the upcoming Code: 13 gallery show at the 423 West Gallery in Los Angeles on Jan. 18. The theme of the show is about rockabilly and tattoo culture and I can't think of anyone who sums that up as well as the great Brian Setzer.

Eva Green

Caricature of the insanely gorgeous Eva Green as Vesper Lynd in one of my favorite James Bond film Casino Royale.