Page and Plant - available at Society6

Feel like adding some classic rock style to your wardrobe? My painting "Page and Plant" is now available on t-shirts, hoodies, and tote bags! Nothing like a little custom Led Zeppelin artwork to spruce up a t-shirt or tote bag.  Click here to see color options in the shop.

Johnny Cash - new painting

I painted this on and off from Tuesday to Friday this past week in my classroom. I was in the mood to just paint a portrait, and my students enjoyed watching it progress over the week. It's approximately 4 feet wide and 4 1/2 to 5 feet tall (it's still at school, so I'm estimating) and was painted with acrylic paint on super thick corrugated cardboard. This picture was taken with my iPhone, but after I take higher quality photos I'll be making prints available through my print shop.

Zooey - a watercolor portrait

I've been practicing some more with watercolor and it led to this portrait of Zooey Deschanel. Over the past couple of years I've become a fan of her music, fashion sense, and acting. I was trying to treat this kind of like an illustration that you would see in a magazine and had fun incorporating the pattern into the painting.

You can see some photos of the painting in progress right here.

The final painting measures 9" x 12" and was completed on May 19, 2011.

Prints are now available through my print shop!

Florence - a watercolor portrait

Yesterday, I decided that I wanted to try doing a watercolor painting based solely on warm and cool colors, which is how this whole thing got started. I chose to do a portrait of Florence Welch from the band Florence + The Machine because I thought her bright hair would lend itself quite well to the color scheme restraints. This turned out to be a lot of fun and I want to try doing more watercolor portraits in this manner. It's a good exercise, if anything.

The final painting measures 12" x 12 and was completed on April 17, 2011.

Prints are now available through my print shop!

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!

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.

Monoprinting experiments

This weekend Jeff and I were trying out some monoprinting techniques. I was using a photo of Andrew Bird from Flickr for reference, making a pencil sketch of that photo to work from.


This was the sketch I made for reference.


My first attempt was done using raw umber oil paint. Not bad for a first try - I was able to get some interesting textures from wiping the oil paint with a paper towel after I mixed it with some turpenoid.


For my second print I used oil based printing ink. Like the first one, there are some parts of it I like, but overall it's more of a learning piece. I think the printing ink is better used for block printing because a lot of the details that were painted on the glass didn't transfer that well. Even though the ink was oil based, it still dried too fast.


I went back to using oil paint for the third print, but I think I used too much turpenoid because it came out much lighter than I wanted. I do like the splatters and the areas where the paint and turps bled.

I definitely want to play around with this process more until I can get it to a point where I feel like I can control the outcome of the prints better. I really like the texture that the transfer process brings out. Once these prints are drier I'm planning to scan them and try combining the prints with some digital painting. These are just photos of the prints. They were all done on 11" x 14" paper.

Recent Sketchbook Pages

Just a sketchbook experiment with collage, acrylic paint, and matte medium.

Sam Beam - for classroom demo, Part II

I've slowly been working on the watercolor painting portion of this piece while it's at the high school so that the students can watch it progress from an initial sketch to a finished piece. I did the majority of the inking in slow steps so that the students could see it progress as well. This kind of work is done during my free planning periods, or after school when the room is kept open for students who want extra time to work. Sometimes I'll bring it home to do work on it if the free periods were busy with other things, because I want there to be something new done on the piece each time the students come into the room. I've gotten into the habit of pinning it up on the board to make it easy for students to see it progressing towards a finished piece of art.

This is a photo of the illustration, so the colors aren't one hundred percent accurate, but you can get the general idea. When I finish this piece I'll eventually scan it to post online. It measures 10" x 16".

Sam Beam, uncolored - for classroom demo

I drew this portrait of Sam Beam, from Iron and Wine, to use for a demo piece in the classroom. I'm going to be painting on it in class, but I want to try doing some digital coloring with it as well so I scanned in the line work. This was inked on illustration board with micron pens, and measures 10" x 16".

The Police

Here's another musician themed illustration, using pen and watercolor on Bristol Board. The final illustration measures 9" x 12".

From left to right that's Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers. Yeah, I know that it kind of looks like Stewart is the lead singer in this picture, but I really liked the photo I found to use as reference. Plus, he's awesome anyhow, so front and center he stayed.

She & Him

I made this illustration of the musical duo She & Him for a high school lesson plan that I designed based around the work of illustrator Joe Ciardiello. This is meant to be an example to show to the class, so it's exhibiting certain requirements the students have to meet, like incorporating lyrics into their drawing. It was a fun illustration to make, but I think I'd actually like to try re-doing it at some point and try out a few different things with it, maybe with some digital painting.

Page and Plant - Prints

The painting Page and Plant has been updated with some new print size options in my print shop.

Bono Vox - Prints

Just a quick post to say that Bono Vox has been updated in my print shop.