Inspirations: Vintage Books no.4

I found this charming book a few months ago in a used book store and couldn't resist picking it up. It's called The Story of Zachary Zween by Mabel Watts, with illustrations done by artist Marylin Hafner, from 1967. I really enjoyed seeing London landmarks depicted with simplified shapes and colors. This book reminded me of work by Mary Blair, and is a welcome addition to my collection of illustrated books.

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!