More Critters, Another Show

Here are 3 new animal scratchboards completed for a show in Scranton, PA that just came down this weekend at New Visions Studio Gallery.

I also did a live scratchboard demo at the gallery where I scratched a goose from start to finish.

Here are some articles that have been written about the show:
The Electric City: The Artists' Studio
Go Lackawana: Artist at work

 Big thanks to everyone at New Visions for their help with the exhibition and to everyone who came out to see the show.

KINGS

This is a poster for the band KINGS, a queercore alt-country trio based in Brooklyn. Please do yourself a favor and listen to their music. I have heard every recording and have seen them play in the flesh -- they are truly incredible. Special thanks to my long-time friend Robert for asking me to make a gig poster for his amazing band.

Double Dog Dare

Lacey, one of my dearest forever-friends, commissioned me to scratch these dachshund portraits for her husband Jarod. She sent me reference photos of their pups Charlie and George, and I did my best to capture their personalities. The portraits are ink on clayboard panels with wood cradles, so they can be hung side by side without glass. I love drawing dogs, so I had a blast drawing these guys. Plus, I even got to meet Charlie and George when I was in Oklahoma over the holidays. Thanks, Lacey!

Polar Bears Love 3D

Any time I get the chance to draw an animal, I am thrilled, and a polar bear with 3D glasses? Well, you can imagine how much fun I had with this job. This little character was used for a holiday e-card for the magazine AV Technology. Thanks, AVT!

Dog Park

This is a series of dog scratchboards that I exhibited at the FIT Museum to mark the culmination of my MFA in Illustration. I received an MA from FIT in 2007, and went back to grad school for one year as they expanded the program to an MFA. That added "F" marks the terminal degree in Illustration. Thanks to everyone at the museum, my incredible classmates, and the amazing program chair Melanie Reim for a great show.








From my statement:
Dog Park is a visual exploration of the canine companions who fill the negative space in our urban environment.  In a place where both private and public space are coveted, many New Yorkers find ways to fit dogs of various sizes into their tiny apartments, jam-packed daily routines, and the densely woven fabric of the city itself.  In the midst of tall buildings crammed together tightly, sections of outdoor space are preserved and left empty for dogs to run, play, and engage each other while embracing their intrinsic dog-ness.

On seven kaolin clay panels of various sizes, life-size illustrations of dogs twist, skitter, leap, and crouch, as they individually inhabit a portion of empty space in their own unique way while interacting with each other across the wall. Executed using a self-generated approach to scratchboard, ink is splashed with a brush into black silhouettes on the clay surface. After the ink dries, white lines are carved into these flat, dark shapes to build dimension. The two sides of the process come together to create dogs that move organically in ways that both defy and follow their form, dripping, splattering, and shattering to life.

Black Badger Book Club

This is a project I did for the Black Badger Book Club. They needed an illustration of an angry badger reading that they could incorporate into a logo, and I was thrilled to oblige. I designed the character, and created three versions, one with a book, one listening to an audiobook, and one on an e-reader, while maintaining the same basic character. This was a very fun job -- thanks, Aaron and Marlee!

Bark for Life

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with Stephen Gardner, Alison Stephen, and Joan Chiverton drawing dog portraits at the Society of Illustrators volunteer table at the "Bark for Life" fundraising walk for the American Cancer Society. For whatever reason, I decided I would try doing scratchboards on the spot. I've never scratched from life before, but It was a blast. Here's some photos from the event, thanks to Alison for sending some of the photos she took!






Big thanks to Sigmund, Bruce, Woody, Dori, Lola, Amber, Lucy, and Oscar for all being such great models.

Scratchboard Menagerie

These are 13 large (18x24") scratchboard panels that I made for a gallery show in Oklahoma that just finished up. This was my first time exhibiting original scratchboards. I really enjoyed making these images and exploring ways I could imagine animals moving. My favorite part of the gallery opening was that so many people wanted to tell me which one was their favorite. It was a blast.

Henrietta Skullclucker

This summer, I started going to grad school at FIT again. I graduated with an MA in Illustration from FIT in 2007, but they have since expanded the program to be an MFA. Past graduates were given the chance to complete the extra courses during a bridge year, and I jumped at the opportunity. One of the classes this fall that just finished was a character design course. This is a character of my own devising named Henrietta Skullclucker, and, naturally, she is a rough and tumble chicken on a human roller derby team.

These thumbnails were the start of the character. From here, I did the scratchboard illustrations, where I really started to get a feel for her.





These initial illustrations provided a point of departure to start thinking about the character in 3D. To start this process, a clay maquette was made from tinfoil, wire, mesh, and super sculpey. I had never done anything like this before, and though it was a struggle, seeing things in 3D helped me to start thinking about the structure of her face. It's far from perfect, but it provided enough of a foundation for the next step.



And that next step was to build a 3D model in ZBrush. I sculpted this in zbrush from 5 spheres (her head/neck, each eye, helmet, and chinstrap) that were then pushed, pulled, added to and subtracted from until it got to what you see here. I really
enjoyed ZBrush -- it was easier and much faster than working with clay, probably because we had an incredible instructor (thanks, Michael!). Here is a video of the sculpt on a turntable.



I'd love to go back now and make some new illustrations of Henrietta that reflect some of the things I was able to resolve in 3D.

Horsing Around

One of my favorite things to draw are my family's quarter horses. They have quite a herd (nearly 40 horses), so I always have plenty of models when I go back to visit Oklahoma. Here are a few of the horses: Brandy, Sooner, Chance, and Beau.




These are ink drawings I did for a solo show I'm having at the moment in my hometown at the Ponca City Art Center. All of these drawings are on 18x24" paper. There were many family friends at the opening who have spent time out at the ranch, and I loved that they were able to recognize who was who in my drawings. I also did 13 large scratchboard panels of animals for the show -- I'll post those soon.