Riding dragons, doodling the flu.

For the last three years now, I've been joining a supremely talented group of artists and designers who work in the fantasy genre. By som strange bout of luck, I became the token editorial dude among a crowd of folk who spend weeks making chain mail and dragonscales look incredible.

Among some of the crew are Tor Books art director Irene Gallo, my buddy and ridiculously talented painter Greg Manchess, fantasy art legends Julie Bell & Boris Vallejo (Boris is still the only artist I've met that I kinda mumbled "holy crap I collected your trading cards" when I met him), and fan favorite Dan Dos Santos.

Other regulars and visitors include Arkady Roytman, Scott Fischer, Jon Foster, Dave Seeley, Lars Grant-West, Eric Fortune, Anthony Palumbo, David Palumbo, Ben Foster and Rebecca Guay.

While there, I got a very quick turn around commission for the AARP Bulletin website. So, I spent Monday night drawing the letters F, L, and U lurking in a scary environment (as Eric Seidman at AARP described it "...if you let mold run wild in a closet for 20 years").

Being a tight deadline (10am, the following morning), he requested the letters be a bit more scary and dark, then let me go to finish.
Eric thought it was a bit too "inside of my uncle's stomach" for the readership of AARP and I needed to do it again. I was game, what's my new deadline? "2 hours." Cue me running to my desk.
I'd say it was a pretty good hustle.

Unfortunately I forgot my camera for the week, but here are some links to Irene and Julie & Boris's blogs and flickr pages. Enjoy.

Irene's entry, Irene's Flickr.
Julie and Boris 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Princely Amounts of Graphite

A while back I was contacted by an author in Denver to help her develop a proposal for a series of books she had written. Since I tend to do quick turnaround assignments, spots, and people in suits playing money, this was a great opportunity to play with larger sizes, recurring characters and other things that wouldn't present themselves in a typical editorial gig.

I now have stacks of sketches on my drawing table and possibly a permanent graphite stain on my right hand. Here is a sampling of some of my favorites so far....

Color and Whiteout

Last year I was smart enough to attend the Illustration Academy in Sarasota, FL. Among many many other things I took away from it, I started giving myself a lot of permission to go nuts in my sketchbook. I've been sitting on these scans for a little while. I could describe some of the thought behind a lot of them, but honestly, there wasn't much. Again, my subconscious is a dark and smelly place.

Ballpoint Pens v. NYC

Its a cliche that illustrators draw folks on the train. But here are some of my sniper shots at unsuspecting New Yorkers. A lot of these are ballpoint pen, my weapon of opportunity, although some colored pen and some pencil sneak in. Oh, and some angry rat handpuppets too. Whoopsy.

Summer Travel Guide

Sue Foster at the Wall Street Journal gave me a ring with a quick job for her "Middle Seat" travel section. All jobs for the Journal are quick, since she gave me all of Memorial Day weekend, this was actually relatively generous. The assignment was their Summer Travel Guide, something to describe all their valuable tips about navigating the airlines this season.They suggested an idea with a coach detailing tips to travelers. I think its pretty common these days for illustrators to have ideas suggested to them. Usually I see it as a challenge to one-up them and show I can think as well as draw. So while I followed my orders, I got a bit nutty with the perspective and put half of the travelers in pool gear. Obese pool goers. Genius, Scott.
My idea was a bit more conceptual. A tourist with a grey overcast city on one side of him, and a pleasant beach on the other. A hawaiian shirt with planes to bridge the gap. Maybe a bit off the mark, but I thought it would be fun.

Needless to say, they chose the crowd scene. I get a lot of work for my crowds, it wasn't that big a surprise. But I have no complaints, the finish reproduced great and I had some fun with color and perspective. Thanks again, Sue.

Humble Beginnings

Welcome to Ole Scotty's blog, the official blog of Scott Brundage's illustration. I'm jumping on the blog bandwagon a tad late, but I couldn't sit idly by while everyone misses out on my witty commentary regarding my doodles and paintings any longer.

I thought it would be appropriate to start with my humble beginnings at art school. As you can see, I've taken the liberty to scan some pages from my college notebook. Around September I'd be the studious good boy, fresh from the summer with a real interest in taking pretty notes. This first page is mainly information with some drawing actually worked into the design.Actually looks kinda pretty. The semester would progress and I'd get a bit more comfortable (read:lazy) in non-studio courses and the doodles would start taking more liberty on the page. But I was still invested in recording information that my teachers were spouting at me.
... Then, mid semester comes along and the note-taking begins to take a backseat to my very important doodles.


Even occasionally throwing in a flamingo next to a guy reading the newspaper while suckling on an elderly woman's breast. I actually did pretty well in class. Something about paying attention while my hand did something else. Someone once told me that whatever I drew was my subconscious. This kinda scares me.Eventually it got to the point that there were barely notes. If you look closely, I actually wrote "read up to.." with no page number. Thats some focus.
Thanks for reading. Check back soon for much less important and current work.