Beezbop and other old sketchbook scribbles

Another long neglected period for my blog. Time for an update - some update, even if it's old stuff. So, here are some more blasts from the past...all are taken from sketchbooks c.1988-1989.

sketch stretch

I had to turn off the NY Mets game A week before the Playoffs and they're getting shelacked by the Braves and Pedro is getting rocked..not fun...just too painful. I thought I'd do something a bit more constructive than the urge to throw empty water bottles at my TV, so here's some recent and not so recent sketches. The sketch signed 'Lefty' was drawn with my left hand. I've got a few drawings I've done that way. Some people will likely say I should try to just draw better with my regular drawing hand, but sometimes switching things around frees you up a bit.

Lady Of The Waters

We've gone in a bit of a different direction lately at work, away from some of the novelty looks and more of a fashion sort of feel..with that move, I've been given a bit of free reign to design some more graphic design oriented prints and screens. Here are two...the one with the lady has a sea theme, but the one with the dog is more about pure design than anything...no hidden meanings...just a bunch of disparate elements juxtaposed together.

Tongue In Cheek

It's been awhile since my last post and this follow-up is not yet the painted story pages promised back in July. I discovered there was more work that needed to still be done on that stuff, so hence the delay. In the meantime, here's a few misc. recent sketches.

An Illusive Reality preview

An Illusive Reality was one of two short, painted comic stories I worked on while in my first and second years at the School of Visual Arts, in 1990/91. (The second, The Vicious Cycle, was a vampire story and will appear on this blog later this year). All the art for both books was done on 15"X 20" Bainbridge Illustration board in mixed media...pen and ink, oils, pastels, pencil, photographs...

Back in school I color xeroxed the entire thing (11 pages, plus cover and interior front/back covers for each) and made a little book, complete with a spine and bound in string. Looking back on An Illusive Reality with 2006 eyes, I saw things I wanted to change or fix, so I've gone into the pages, in Photoshop, and done some 'remastering'...some pages have gotten entirely new panels, others have had texture added, or certain parts repainted and cleaned up. I've also rewritten some parts.

Here's the cover for An Illusive Reality. The full story will be up soon.

sketches on the side

Some of the stuff I do at work while something's printing, something's saving, I'm bored, etc...

Monsters, I say

A few slightly unsavory fellows, except for maybe our alien friend, at the bottom.

Spray It, Don't Say It

some sketches and finishes for recent graffitti inspired designs...

Cobra Strike

Here are the elements for a new boxer...soon to be in a store near you! (well, maybe next Spring).

Kung Fu Theater!

Some more work related art...I've been able to do some fun stuff the last few weeks, working on a new Walmart Urban line and then the next batch of Family Dollar designs, which gives me a fair share of freedom to do what I want. The only major limitation is in the number of colors we're able to use - we're limited to six. You have to get a bit creative in how to go about using those six. If this design were colored in any sort of realistic manner, and you wanted to add a bit of shading, you'd quickly run out of colors, so my art director suggested I do it in hues of monochromatic color. This is a slight reworking of a graphic meant to invoke the feel of an old Kung Fu movie poster, but with a bit of an updated feel. The larger Chinese characters for the title translate to '3 Warriors', my imaginary title for this movie...the smaller characters above the warriors heads says 'Fighting Action!'..that line was taken directly from an old 70's Hong Kong movie poster.

"People hate, as they love..unreasonably"

A painting from the archives, based on a quote by William Makepeace Thackeray. Mixed media.

Recent work stuff

Some notes...the cracked helmet Little League design was rejected....too violent, plus the wood bats had to be replaced with alluminum bats. Upon looking at this design again, I've gotta wonder...'what the Hell was I thinking???" sheesh! The flaming baseball had the comment that it looked Satanic, but was still allowed to go thru. Trick'd Out (final design was repeat) and the turntable DJ (Mix It Up) are designs done for a Walmart urban line, though I don't believe either were picked up.