New Angeles

I recently finished up a job for the July edition of the New Angeles Monthly. The story is about South Central and how the cops are cleaning up the streets and kicking out the homeless and the drug users. The story is told from the perspective of an ex heroin user who misses the realness of how it used to be. He also thinks the original inhabitants are being mistreated and that South Central belongs to the homeless. This is the rough sketch that I sent in for approval. The author of the story definately takes the side of the people who live in South Central so the cops developed into a more ominous presence. I liked the idea of have the cops using syringes to fumigate the city with money.



This is how the final turned out. I didn't realize how much was really going on in this illustration until I began painting it. Everything for awhile was screaming on the same level and it took a lot to create a clear hierarchy. The radioactive green helped to center the illustration around the cop while the rest of the piece was painted with more muted colors. The homeless at the bottom of the page or more of an afterthought rather than the main focus as they could have easily become.



Here is what the final layout looked like.

New Content Soon

Thought I would let everyone now that my website is being tricked out so that I can finally update it on the fly without my web programmers assistance. It is something that needed to happen a long time ago and now that it has expect to see regular updates on my main website from here on in. Above is a pianting I worked on just for fun. His name is Blake and he is addicted to creation and destruction.

Music Showcase 2008

I thought I would show a little of my process for this one. This was for the Pitch Music Showcase that happens every year and I was asked to submit some ideas for it. The Pitch asked a few other illustrators to submit as well and they decided to go with my idea. The sketch on the left was what I sent them originally. My concept was to create a music goddess in the stylings of Vishnu. I wanted every aspect of her to have something to do with music like her piano skirt and the bells in her head dress. They liked the concept and asked to see another with her facing forward instead, hence the sketch on the right.



After being given the go ahead I went ahead and refined the drawing and blew it up to its full 18x24 and got to work on drawing the final. All color and effects were done in Photoshop. This was a very elaborate piece with a lot of detail requiring me to take extra care in making sure that everything worked as a whole and that no elements seemed distracting or unneccessary. I'm very please with how the final turned out and I can't wait to see it as a full sized poster. Click to enlarge the image to see a more detailed version.