Princess Leia

One of my very favorite apps for the Mac is Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro. I use it all the time for sketching because it's digital pencils feel just about as close to the real thing as you can get. I use the pencils so much I've kind of neglected the other great tools the program has. Last night I tried to rectify that by playing with the digital markers and brushes. The result is this sketch of Princess Leia.

New York Observer

It was my turn for another NY Observer cover this week. This week's cover story was about the current outrage over the SOPA and PIPA bills that were getting rammed through Congress before public outcry as well as several very visible protests by several major websites put those bills on hold. The article focuses in particular on the fact that most of the Congressionsl leaders (such as Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, seen here) don't have a clue about how the Internet actually works. Thanks to Lauren and Scott at the NYO for another fun job.

Martin Luther King sketch

Today is Martin Luther King Day, so in honor I did a sketch of the great man over lunch. Ballpoint pen in the ol' sketchbook.

Final Helena Bonham Carter

I'm calling this one done. I wasn't digging the original color scheme, but I think it all came together when I decided to use green as my focal color. The hair was particularly fun to paint, and probably took nearly as long as the entire rest of the image. Her hair is actually more brown, but I darkened it here in order to blend in better with the background.

NEW! I just heard a very cool development. This caricature won the weekly MYFX challenge over on the forums for one of my very favorite magazines ImagineFX. There were a bunch of great entries so I'm flattered that I won the most votes. Thanks to everyone who voted for me.

HBC- wip 3

I have the main structure worked out o. HBC. Now it's all about working out the fine details, such as the hair from here.

Helena Bonham Carter - Progress

More progress on HBC. Once I'm happy with the overall structure, I start zooming in very tight and begin working with a progression of smaller and smaller brushes to tighten up details.

Helena Bonham Carter - WIP

This is the very early stage of a painting I'm doing of Helena Bonham Carter in full Bellatrix Lestrange garb. This is the block-in stage, and I'll be the first to admit it looks pretty ugly right now. For those interested in such things, what I've done thus far in Photoshop is do my sketch on a separate layer, then on another layer below and one above the sketch layer, I've begun laying in rough color with a basic hard round Photoshop brush I've made a few tweaks to. From here I'll continue tightening up details and moving on to using a couple of other custom brushes as well.

Daniel Craig

I decided to try a caricature of Daniel Craig. The trick here with him is he has so many caricaturable features you really have to pick and choose what you're going to exaggerate. I decided I'd focus primarily on his jutting ears and especially his huge, neanderthal brow. As usual, this was painted in Photoshop.

The Krampus Christmas Special

Of all the Rankin & Bass Christmas specials, I can never believe they never did one featuring the Krampus, so here's my interpretation. Merry Christmas everyone!

Bruce Lee

Quickie caricature of Bruce Lee for this week's Caricaturama challenge on Facebook.

Ricky Gervais

Here's my entry into this week's Caricaturama challenge on Facebook. This week's victim is Ricky Gervais.

The New York Observer

Here's my latest cover for the New York Observer. Because of the short week for the folks at the Observer, I actually had all weekend to work on this for a change. Even still, I kind of wish I still had another day to work on it. Oh well, such is the life of an illustrator. The article has to do with three city leaders (John Liu, Bill DeBlasio and Scott Stringer) and their reaction to Mayor Bloomberg's treatment of the Occupy Wall Streeters.

Mitt Romney Sketch

Quickie sketch of Mitt Romney. About 40 minutes in Photoshop.

The Walking Dead

Anyone who knows me, knows how much I loooovvvveee zombies. So it goes without saying that I'm a tremendous fan of the Walking Dead TV show and comics. I really wanted to try something different with my next portfolio piece. I've been working on this on and off for the last two weeks and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

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.