From the Vault #6: John Lennon

Here's another blast from the past. This ink/colored pencil combo was done in either late 2004 or early 2005. It was cold out, that's all I really remember. This John Lennon piece was initially done as a test to just hone my skills a little bit more with colored pencil (still my favorite medium besides the computer). It came out pretty good with some obvious tweaks that would need to be made: his wonked glasses, cigarette positioning and his ginormous sausage fingers on his right hand. Overall I do like how the coloration came out on this guy. At one point I wanted to make prints of this to sell but in the end deemed it not strong enough. My problem is I always think to big, not so much in grandiose ideas but more so in size. I planned to do this as a 16x20 inch (or thereabouts). In retrospect these would probably have made pretty kick-ass 5x7 or 5x8's.

From the Vault #4: Jesse the Special Chameleon

It's been a few days since our last look into the vault so it's time to pull something out that isn't from Mike Bray Cartoon. Here's one that I had totally forgotten about until I stumbled on the files earlier this morning. Back at the end of 2002, a friend of mine had asked if I'd be interested in illustrating a kids book he was looking to write about a crippled chameleon. Yes, a crippled chameleon. I agreed because I figured the children's book market couldn't be too saturated with stories about reptiles with three legs named Jesse. Plus it would be good practice for me to stay in the world of drawing. A few months earlier I had started my career in broadcast news, and there really wasn't much room for my type of doodles on boob tube.


We really didn't get too far on the project. I think maybe three pages and the cover was all that got designed. In all honesty, I don't remember ever receiving the story to work from. Oh well, atleast we got this image (and a few others) to show for it. He was kind of cute, even if his stump leg kind of looked like a penis.

From the Vault #3: Darth Wolicki

Here is the third of three panels in the Bray Wars saga. My friend Mark from college was the lucky one to modeled after the top villian of all time, Darth Vader. Out of the three pieces, this one was the least enjoyable to do, no offense Mark. There is too much black for my taste. One does need a splash of color after all, right? Besides, he's wearing a mask, all facial expressions are null and void, and that's no fun!

From the Vault #1: Bray Wars

The main piece to "Bray Wars" was made way back in May of 2002. It depicts the original characters from Mike Bray Cartoon. For those of you that don't know, Mike Bray is a friend of mine that I went to college with. He is one of those guys that is very gullible, very naive, but would jump in front of a bullet for you to save your life. He'd also remind you of it every day after, "Hey Buddy, remember the time when I used myself as a human shield?" From left to right: Me, Bill Rush, Mike Bray as Yoda's hologram, Nick Giarrusso, Kim Brisson, Tony Vadala, Sid the alligator and Matt Langley as 3PO. This was done originally as a three panel piece, Mike as Yoda on Dagobah and Darth Wolicki are the others. Those will show up on here pretty soon.

Big, But Not So Bad

A couple days ago I posted an image of the first watercolor I had done in nearly a decade. Here is that same T-rex but done in ink. It has probably been closer to ten years since I've done anything with brush and ink, and when I had it was pretty bad then too. I just never had a steady enough hand for it. That's why Photoshop, Illustrator, etc... have really become such a huge crutch for me. They come with a "History" window. If Strathmore wants to corner the market in paper maybe they should invent one of those. Eh, Strathmore? You hear me? Get on it, you'll make a bundle! You may want to cash those checks in Euros though. The American dollar is officially about as valuable as toilet paper.