huge Bulldog

dear blog,

Walking around in Williamsburg I stumbled upon this HUGE (American?) Bulldog. The owner said that this dog was about 30 lbs. bigger than they are supposed to get.

Merry Christmas!

Dear blog,

Here is my first annual Christmas Card! The idea was to get a bunch of the RIT illustration kids to make a christmas card/portfolio piece and send it around. It turned out to be a lot of fun. This was just what I needed to get motivated...A DEADLINE!!!
Everyone I sent cards to got their own individual drawings inside.

Thanks to everyone who participated!

The downside to Product Illustration

Dear blog,

I was standing in line at the food co-op today and noticed these cans of pet food.
Everything seems fine until you look closely at the animals' faces.

Egads! Is it just me, or is there something eerily human about that dog's eye. Or in the elongation of the cat's nose and the shape of its jaw. Getting proportions just right is tough, especially with cats.
It reminds me of the covers of the Animorphs books, right around the last shade of the person becoming the creature.

couch doodling 2

Locked out

Dear blog,

Here are some things I drew tonight when I was locked out until Katie rescued me. I get locked out enough that I think the drawings I do while in said situation warrant their own tag. So here's vol 1 of Locked Out.

couch doodling

dear blog,

Here ya go

Paris Hilton Sketch

Dear blog,

Here's another sketch from the cover of Nylon. This one is of the doe-eyed Paris Hilton. she's actually a lot of fun to draw. The best part is getting to subtley suggest her air-headedness through her blank and vaguely cross-eyed stare.

I'm sure she's a nice girl though...

Home

I went home this weekend

Huge English Mastiff

Dear blog,

I was leaving work today in SoHo and laying on the ground in front of the building was easily the biggest dog I've ever seen. It's an English Mastiff.

To give you a little more perspective, the guy who's standing with the dog was probably like 5"10

Sole gig poster

Dear blog,

Oh how I miss doing posters for the Bug Jar. Cameron is always happy with what I give him and I've often given him some pretty twisted stuff. I like gig posters because the point is to sell the band, but more importantly to get people's attention and look really cool. There are many many means to justify those ends, blog. This drawing took me about 20 minutes because of the deadline constraints I was under.

Check out SOLE. He's a sweet rapper on the experimental hip-hop label Anticon.

Bubbles preview

Dear blog,

Here's a preview of a vector I'm doing of my adorable dog, Bubbles.

Hector, the talking fish

HEY LADIES! Get your own 'Hector, the talking fish' t-shirt.

He's talkin!

I wonder if I'm the only one who finds this funny...

vector obama

Dear blog,

Here's a sketch of Obama I vectorized for practice. I'll think of something clever to add later.

JMP

Dear blog,

Here is a flyer I did for a client of Bernadot Studios. I did a pretty rad comp with roots coming out of the bottom of the buildings, but my director told me that it looked too arty for the client.

JMP is a building company out in the Midwest that toted as being green and Eco-friendly. Coincidentally, they're also on of my father's competitors. Go figure, right blog?

Noble Desktop

Dear blog,

for years I harbored a dark secret. I was not a pro at Adobe Illustrator. It has haunted me ever since graduation and ruined a few really positive job opportunities for me.

Thanks to Kristin Varner and the good folks at Noble Desktop, that is no longer the case! I strongly recomend this place if youre in the NYC area and need to bone up on your creative suite. They also offer tons of free seminars, 6 of which im signed up for next month with classes ranging from Intro to HTML to Advanced Fashion Retouching. Should be a blast

I just graduated from their 1 month Adobe Certified intensive Illustrator CS3 course and I have a strong working knowledge of the program now, so expect to see a lot of new vectors out of me in the coming months.


Here are some examples of exercises we had including one that I took some liberties with. (I hope I'm allowed to post this stuff)

the dog, now in vector

Dear blog,

I finally vectorized the dog I always draw.

productive day

Here's more. The drawing of the girl next to the windmills comes from listening to Boy's Life and Ranier Maria obsessively for the last week or so. It also kind of makes me miss Chittenango a little bit. We have some killer windmills.

more subway sketches

Here's another Alex inspired drawing. I really like the way the sketch came out and I think it's going to turn into a finished piece. Nay, it SHALL turn into a finished piece. Maybe it will even go on some sort of shirt. I got hooked up with a fledgling young clothing company called MischEVEous that is geared toward marketing NYC artists. It's going to be a lot of fun because I get to make clothes that aren't trendy and lame

ie. 90's revival bullshit, Christian Audigear Ed Hardy bullshit.


The folks on top are Tim and Danielle. The bottom was inspired by my new chicken, Suki. What do you mean it comes off as really gay?!? You don't know anything about art, blog. yeah, now that I look at it more, that guys left shoulder is way off. it should be more toward the front of his body. Sometimes though, you have to break the laws of anatomy to draw a nipple. AND THAT'S THE MAGIC OF ILLUSTRATION! Cha cha cha!

Suki and me

Dear blog,

Here's just a little glimpse of how awesome yesterday was. Ask me about it.

In my village

In my village, crocodiles sing to me.

Alex

The lovely Ms. Szymczak

From the plane to Chicago

some advice.

Feeling reinvigorated

Deer blog,

I had a great weekend. Here is a happy deer to commemorate.

Moleskine subway scribbles

Dear blog,

Here are some stream of conciousness scribbles I did while I was on the (2) train to 72 street to see THE DARK KNIGHT AT THE IMAX!!!!!!!! Yes it was sweet, blog!!! Heath Ledger was like >:O) thats his clown face. also, my friend Tim's mother Linda was nice enough to not only BUY my ticket in advance- she also snuck me in a chicken ceaser salad and the strongest Long Island Iced Tea I've ever had. So all in all it was a great night.

oh, and when I was getting off the (2) on the way home for a split second I saw a guy that looked like if Slim Shady and Willie Nelson had a baby. That's city livin' for ya!

Self Portrait + rant

City Livin' part 2

people interacting on the subway

City Livin'

dear blog,

Here are some hilarious drawings that in no way reflect how I felt inside today. Most of the words are from Ranier Maria songs. Yes, blog, I know its gay to write song lyrics on your drawings but I was really into them while I was walking around today after work. Just like you get into your Kenny Winker album. See?

Subway sketches

Dear blog,

I'm going to start sketching more while im on the subway. People are more inclined to talk to you when they see you drawing dogs and cats for some reason. A guy even took my mailer and wants to collaborate on some New Yorker cartoons. He said he'd email me, but you know how those kinds of things go in the big city.

Sunday is Funday

Dear blog,

I was a busy beaver today. I spent most of it drawing with my friends Tim and Danielle across the hall from me. Then we watched the Bob Saget roast on Comedy Central. I thought Gilbert Godfrey was the best, he kept screaming that "It is completley untrue that BOB SAGET RAPED AND KILLED A GIRL IN 1990!!!" No blog, I didn't piss myself laughing, but I did notice my bowels shifting slightly. I even got to collaborate with Danielle on a painting that is now hanging above their bed (no pics of that yet). Here are a couple doodles of the usual; girls, dogs, hearts, introspection. There's even a cat in there to switch it up. Their cat is always in the cutest poses.

more from the sketchbook

Dear blog,

Here's a cute one I drew of Bubbles while on the train. I miss her dearly. The other is of a girl that Tim swears he saw on the subway. Freakish indeed.

also. this day in history. Bigfoot officially discovered. My mind = officially blown.

Daytrotter

Dear blog,


My friend Laura Walczack gave a great tip to check out this website where bands are reviewed / interviewed. It's called Daytrotter and I think my stuff fits in here really well. It's mostly indie rock bands and such.

So I sent my portfolio to Sean from Daytrotter and would you believe it, blog, he liked my work! I'm really excited about this gig, even though it doesn't pay its still going to be a lot of fun and its just another opportunity to get more eyes on my illustration.
It reminds me of doing those posters for the AV Space. That was such a blast.

I'm really excited. note, the one of the guy with the guitar is from a piece about Mike Kinsella from Owen/Joan of Arc/American Football. I would love to be able to draw him and have him use it in some way.

edit: I didn't draw any of these