I had a great time working on this commission. I don’t get to draw men as often as I like. The client was very specific, but also incredibly easy going which made for a delightful working relationship. I’m fairly in love with the color choices. I originally have a deep, deep red background, but he asked if it could be made into more of a teal, which looked great. I got to choose the Blade Runner-esque type for an 80s throwback vibe and used a pencil texture to color it, giving it a rougher look.
If you’re a gamer, you can visit Jason on his twitch page: http://www.twitch.tv/xredjayx/profile
Star Girl
surrounded by some of my favorite constellations, {from left to right- ophiuchus, capricorn, ursa major, perseus, aries, and pisces.} our charming alien looks human enough, but her star freckles give away her otherworldly origins.
prints available at my shop
i first showed you the drawing here:
star freckles
she was also used as a poster for novacriminal
novacriminal is coming out with a new cd & asked me to do their cover. i occasionally do posters for them {& their previous incarnation, “whirling dervish”} as well. their drummer, bill brandon, came up with the basic idea of a city squeezed by cars & asked me to run with it.
i have a few books on old 1930s new york so i scanned in a bunch of buildings, arraigned them & squeezed them into shape. i painted the highways, then i scanned in a bunch of car crashes & pulled, squeezed, lightened, darkened, added, & subtracted from them until i had enough cars to create the auto~mess you see. it’s difficult to see but there are tiny car crashes all along the highways. cars are on their sides, some are turned over & others are piled up. i created the clouds from vector shapes & edited them, including one of my favorite effects, “pixilate”. pixilate gives it that fun, old comic book dottiness. the font will probably change. i’m perpetually in love with courier ;D
i went to the levi’s print shop in san francisco & was bowled over by the beautiful screen prints they had there. i was inspired to make something similar with muted colors & simple shapes. please visit novacriminal to see when they play next 😀 http://www.facebook.com/novacriminal.music
my friend jennifer recently commissioned me to make some art for her. she’s an amazing voice artist, in addition to being a great beauty. we talked ideas for a few minutes & settled on her face & a mic. i focused on her green eyes & great mouth. briefly she was a “party princess”, someone who dressed as a disney princess for childrens’ parties. as you can guess, she was a big hit.
the finished piece~
here’s some of the process:
first i sketched her face, then i found a photo of a vintage mic & sketched that as well. then i scanned it into photoshop. i adjusted the levels & contrast so that the blacks were black & the whites were white.
next, i made the line drawing transparent. & using quick mask mode i pasted it into a new layer filled with dark brown. hide or erase your original layer & you’re left with a dark brown outline.
then, i made a seperate layer for every color, that way if i didn’t like something or if jenn didn’t like something it would be easy to replace it.
i kept adding layers until i got something detailed, but not too sculptured. it’s going to be a cd cover so i need it to “read” easily. my color style inspirarion when i wirk in digital colors is herge’s “tintin” comics as well as other european comic artists like francois schuiten & milo manara.
jennifer is also going to put an image on the cd itself.
and there you are! this weekend is the “renegade craft fair” here in san francisco. i can’t wait to see all of the goodies! maybe i’ll see you there – i’ll be the tall brunette girl with the baby 😀
the whirling dervish {update:they are now “novacriminal“}commissioned this drawing from me. their drummer formatted it into poster form.
