John

"John", acrylic paint on wood, 20" x 28".

This portrait is based on an old photo of my grandfather in his Lafayette College football uniform.

Caden

I painted this watercolor portrait of my nephew Caden back in December as a Christmas gift for my brother and sister-in-law. This portrait measures 9" x 12" and can also be viewed on my portfolio website.

Audrey Hepburn

It's been a productive art weekend for me! I started this picture last night and finished it this morning.  I drew the portrait of Audrey Hepburn on watercolor paper using both a micron pen and a brush with ink.  After scanning it and bringing the portrait in to Photoshop, I added the color as well as the flowers that I had drawn and scanned separately.

This portrait is now available for sale right here in my Society6 shop.  It's available as prints and also on t-shirts, iPhone and iPad cases, throw pillows, and more!

Sherlock

I painted this Sherlock illustration over the weekend. I absolutely love the BBC show and I can't wait for the third season.  I've been meaning to make a Sherlock picture for a while, so it felt good to finally get around to it this weekend.  

The whole thing was painted in watercolor, but painted as separate elements and then assembled in Photoshop.  Sherlock was on one sheet of paper, the clock face of Big Ben was on a second sheet, and the London skyline and the 221B were on a third sheet of paper.  It made it much easier to paint the washes and details that way, since I didn't have to worry about things bleeding too much.  It also allows me to save the separately painted elements to play around with later for future designs.

You can find this illustration right here in my Society6 shop, where it is available in a variety of print sizes and other products.

EDIT: A special promotion started today on Society6!  Use this link to get free shipping on your order. Offer expires January 13th at Midnight Pacific Time. If you had your eye on my new Sherlock illustration, or anything else, now is the perfect time to snap it up!

Lady Mary

To celebrate Downton Abbey's return to US television for its third season, here is a portrait of Lady Mary Crawley.  This was drawn with Micron pens and black Prismacolor pencil on Bristol board, and then painted with ink washes.  The final portrait measures 9" x 12".  Prints of this are available through my Society6 shop.

James Dean - Block Print

This block print portrait of James Dean is based on a pen and ink illustration that I made years ago.  I actually like it better as a block print, with the slightly rougher lines from carving and the texture from the printing block.  I'm thinking of going back and turning some of those other Hollywood ink portraits that I drew in to block prints.  

This artwork is also available through my society6 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.

Poppa Sullivan

I painted this portrait recently as a birthday gift for my Dad. It's based on a photo of my grandfather, John Sullivan, in his World War II uniform. I snuck a quick photo of the original photo last time I was at my grandmother's house to use it for reference for this. The painting was done with acrylic paint and measures 9" x 12".

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!

New watercolor in progress

I've been working on a new watercolor painting today, a portrait of Zooey Deschanel. I'm taking a break for the rest of the night while I decide on what I'm going to do for the background. While I mull it over, I thought it might be fun to post some progress photos here on my blog. The photo above is what the painting looks like at the moment on the art desk, and below you can some photos that I snapped quick while I was working on it.

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!

Commission: Castiel portrait

Two fans from Portugal commissioned me to draw a portrait of the character Castiel from the television show Supernatural. I'm not totally up to date on the show, so I'm only slightly familiar with this character, but it was still a fun commission to work on.

This was done with brown and white colored pencil on tan Canson paper, measuring 14" x 11".

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 continued

I've continued experimenting with monoprinting. I received a suggestion to soak the paper in water before trying the print transfer, so I tried that for this print. It definitely helped in that a lot of the detail and the darkness of the ink and paint transferred much better. The paper started sticking to the glass a bit too much, causing some of the paper to pull apart a little bit when I pulled the print up, but I think that's just because it wasn't a heavy enough paper to hold together once it was soaked in the water (it became a little too pulpy in some patches). I still haven't gotten the hang of painting/drawing on glass yet, but I'm getting a better handle on the whole process.

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.

Judgment

I should have been doing homework, but I did this instead. It's been waaaaay too long since I had time to just play with art that wasn't related to school. I'd gotten an idea in my head after watching the recent Lost episode "Dead Is Dead" and had scribbled out some thumbnail sketches in my notebook during class in the evening. This week off from school seemed like the perfect opportunity to do some art for fun, and I had some digital painting techniques I wanted to mess around with, so Ben got to be my test subject.

This originally started out as a dark brown and white colored pencil drawing on gray Canson paper and gradually morphed into this as I started painting it in Photoshop. The textures used in this digital painting are a combination of ones I made on my own (by painting and scanning ink washes on watercolor paper) and textures from CG Textures. The final picture measures 9" x 12".

EDIT: This picture received a Daily Deviation award on deviantArt - what an exciting surprise!

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".

Audrey Hepburn portrait for classroom demo - Part II

This is simply another part of the digital painting demo that I've been using for the AP Drawing students.

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".