Lucha 2 and a West Side Story...

Here's an alternate version of "Lucha' with a more cinematic feel.
Initially I was thinking of a background image (maybe a knife fight or urban fire-escape etc ) and pulled up some gang movie clips on YouTube for ideas, including a few from the film adaptation of Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. Instead I ended up keeping it simple and just floated everything on a black background. Maybe there will be an updated 'Sharks and Jets' Bad Vamp image in the future. : )

Speaking of the West Side- No, I wasn't part of a gang , but I did meet Leonard Bernstein once. When I first moved to NYC I shared an apartment on the West Side at 105th and Bway- (not exactly Shark and Jet territory anymore) and my roommate Leslie was friends with him through her boyfriend who was one of his protégés. Coming home late one night I walked down the hall into the living room and there was L.B. hanging out with them. True to his extroverted nature he got up and greeted me like he'd known me for years. A few years later my wife and I went to an engagement party that he hosted for Leslie and Michael at his apartment in the The Dakota, which was very cool.

Pixels on the Track...

This is a fun project I did last month for an IBM publication. It was a cover and inside illustration with a transportation/travel theme - which I always like. The story had to do with servers, 'storage engines' and open source applications, with names like SugarCRM and Joomla. I tried to style the train to be a cross between a freight train and a more streamlined passenger train. The inside piece featured the train pulling boxcars featuring made-up product logos that symbolizing the different open source applications.

Some of the other train images I've done include a poster for Air France and a logo for Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train, which if you watch the movie to the very end you can briefly see after the credits roll. : )

Ride the Wild Surf...

In between illustration and design jobs ( which I'll be posting soon) I've been working on an alternate version of my Bad Vamp 'Wanton Wave' poster. I mainly reworked the colors and moved some elements around. I like the new night-time surfing theme of this version and right now I'm leaning towards getting this one printed first.

In non- illustration news, I went up to D.C. this past Saturday with my friend, and fellow illustrator, Kelly Alder to see the Raveonettes. I saw them last year in Baltimore as a 3 piece band, and they put on a great show, but I have to say that this show was an even better and definitely worth the drive, and navigating the pre-inaugural D.C. traffic.
Here are a few videos - vid 1 , vid 2 ( I won't subject you to the pixelly footage I shot. These are from the same show- different angles and definitely higher quality)

Toast Post...

Between a sudden burst of work and the usual holiday chaos I haven't uploaded anything to the blog in awhile, but I wanted to close out '08 with a post. This art was for a story on Virginia wines and being that I don't have any recent champagne illo's I figured I'd substitute a glass of chardonnay to say cheers and wish everyone a Happy 2009!

Sketches...

Collage made from preliminary sketches for 'Lucha de Gato!'.   I started working out different parts of the Bad Vamp #5  illustration this week. 

Planning on spending some time this weekend experimenting with Photoshop filter tricks.

Showing Some Ink

An 'other stuff ' post. A friend recently sent me some samples of work by Mexican artist/tattooist Dr Lakra who reworks vintage magazine covers and photos from the 50's with tattoo designs and other graphic icons.

Waters Edge

 I did this illustration over the weekend for my portfolio. The figure (and inspiration for this piece) was reworked from artwork I had done a few years ago for a story about spray on tanning that ended up not being printed.

Pulp Fiction

One of my hobbies is collecting "Good Girl Art" paperbacks. Above are a couple of new additions to that collection that I snatched up on a recent book excursion to Charlottesville VA.

The term Good Girl Art (G.G.A. for short) is collector's lingo referring to the art rather than the seductive and often 'bad' girls illustrated on the covers of these pocket sized pulps, which were churned out by publishers during the 40's - late 60's.

Also attached is a video I made with some of my covers showing the variety of great illustrations and varied genres of these covers. Enjoy.
( I'd never tried iMovie before, but had fun learning the basics while creating this)