Greeting Card Sale - 30% Off!

30% off ALL greeting cards, just in time for the holidays! This is a great chance to get some unique cards and support independent artists! I recently updated my print shop, so there is now artwork available for greeting cards that was not previously available.

These 5 x 7 inch folded greeting cards come with envelopes and a reusable matte black box to keep them safely stored when not in use. The cards are printed on high quality 110 lb. matte stock with a beautiful UV sheen finish.

Don't miss out, this sale ends November 20th at 11:59 PM Pacific.

Florence and the Machine - Finished Illustration

This digital illustration was originally started as part of a demonstration for a digital painting class at Syracuse University that I was a guest instructor for. The students were required to create a musician themed illustration in the manner of something that you would see accompanying an article in Rolling Stone magazine.

For this piece, I picked Florence and the Machine as my musician subject matter. I became totally hooked on Florence's album Lungs back in September, so it was an easy choice when it came time to pick my subject matter for the college demo. I'd been thinking about doing an illustration about Florence anyway, so this was the perfect opportunity.

I went with kind of an art nouveau/steampunk motif to represent the "Machine" part of the band. Florence and the Machine is essentially Florence Welch and whoever else happens to be performing with her at the time as her band.

This illustration was started on watercolor paper with brown colored pencil and ink washes. All color was added digitally painted in Photoshop. The final illustration measures 10" x 17" and was completed in November of 2009.

I saved a whole bunch of progress images which I will eventually post here. In the meantime, the previous post with progress images can be seen here.

EDIT: Prints of this illustration are now available!

Free Worldwide Shipping On Prints!

From now until October 27th, you can get free worldwide economy shipping on any orders through my print shop! That's right, free shipping to anywhere in the world. If you've been thinking about buying anything from my print shop, now would be the perfect time to take advantage of this offer.

Inspirations: Vintage Books no.3

I found this book during one of my used book shop hunts. The inside of the book contains reproductions of ship sailing cards that were used for advertising specific ships and voyages. However, what really drew my attention was the cover. The solid shapes and color scheme are reminiscent of the designs that many screenprinters and digital vector artists try to replicate today.

Yankee Ship Sailing Cards: Volume III, copyright 1952 by the State Street Trust Company in Boston

Dog Portrait - Collaboration

Jeff and I collaborated on this dog portrait as a wedding gift for some friends of his. They're getting married this weekend, and instead of asking for wedding gifts they're asking for people to make a donation to the animal shelter that they adopted their Boston Terrier from. This portrait of Spencer will be sitting on a table at the wedding.

Jeff did the black and white drawing and ink wash painting. I added all of the coloring through digital painting in Photoshop.

Inspirations: Vintage Books no.2

I found this 1950 Random House book about The Pony Express in a used book store in Rochester. The design of it just really caught my eye, with the relatively simply graphic design cover and the inside illustrations. With the exception of the inside double page spread on the cover, the only other illustrations are spot illustrations at the beginning of each chapter. However, I find the simple color scheme of black, white, and the faded yellow as the midtone, to be very appealing. I would like to experiment more with this super simplified approach to color.

Sketchbook Page - Erie Canal

It was finally sunny yesterday, after about a week of cold and rainy weather. To take advantage of the day of sunshine, Jeff and I went to the Erie Canal area in Pittsford and did a little bit of sketching. Below is a sketch from my Moleskine sketchbook, done with a ballpoint pen. Also, if you find yourself in Pittsford, I highly recommend stopping by The Coal Tower restaurant for their seasonal pumpkin soup - it's delicious!

More Zoo Sketches

I went to the Seneca Park Zoo yesterday to do some sketches of the animals. It was pretty overcast, and eventually rained later, but it was still nice to get outside and take advantage of the fall weather. I need to do more art outdoors. I want to try and do some watercolor landscapes outside once the leaves start changing colors more.




I've been bringing my camera along in addition to my sketchbook when going to the zoo to draw. This little meerkat was so entertaining with his posing that I had to include some of the photos of him in this post.

Marjane Satrapi

On Monday I went went to watch a panel discussion that was part of Syracuse University's cultural diplomacy symposium. One of the discussion panel guests was Marjane Satrapi. The discussion was almost three hours long, so I did a little bit of sketching in my Moleskine book while I was watching. This is a sketch of Marjane Satrapi - all of the panel guests were sitting in chairs in a round table format at the front of the auditorium.

When the panel discussion was over, Jeff and I met her outside of the building. We had a copy of Persepolis with us, and she very graciously signed it. It was a great experience to get to meet her and to hear what she had to say.

Florence and The Machine - In Progress

I recently started working on this Florence and The Machine illustration to use as part of a demonstration for a college digital painting class that I'm a guest instructor for. The first image shows the initial drawing and ink wash on watercolor paper, measuring 10" x 17". The second image shows the beginning stages of the digital painting that I'm doing in Photoshop. Right now the flat colors are all painted in and I've started doing some minimal detailing on the face and hair.