Big THANK YOU to all our backers!

We hit and surpassed out Kickstarter goal for A Brain is for Eating! It will be a real thing, stay tuned for more brain-flavored fun.
-S

A Brain Is For Eating -Kickstarter campaign

I'm working with some awesomely twisted folks to created a children's book... written for young zombies. The content is right up my alley, even if it may be a bit dark for some (my fiance is fully creeped out, despite enjoying the artwork).  The illustrations are from the viewpoint of a zombie illustrator, so the humans and environments are very much secondary to the all important undead protagonists. People, obviously, are just packaging for food.

If you or someone you know enjoy young kids learning where to find and eat delicious brains, maybe pitch in and see if we can get this thing going. I'm completely biased since this is a hell of a lot of fun for me. Learn more here: A Brain is For Eating.

A brain is for eating
yes, that's what I said
They come in all sizes
and hide in the "head."

The package is different
some big and some small.
Some packing has two brains
and some none at all.

There are packages in boxes
that move on fast wheels.
But find one not moving
and you'll have many meals

If the package is old and lying in bed
you may not have long to make it undead...

Some exploration when figuring out a look for the story. Not a big jump from what I usually put in my sketchbooks.

Thanks!
-S

The Weely Standard- RNC edition

I got the opportunity to do a Weekly Standard cover! I'd heard their deadlines were kinda bonkers and this was indeed brief, but considering I got to draw elephants on a beach, it felt relatively painless.  The AD, Philip Chalk, wanted to mimic a vintage tourism postcard retrofitted for the recent RNC in Tampa, complete with hurricane warnings.
   
Big thanks to Philip for the fun gig, and equally big thanks to Chris Whetzel for helping a brother out and sketching the the convention crowd for me when I was running low on time.

The Jersey Devil

 My good friends, theater trio The Berserker Residents, asked me to produce a set piece for their camp-horror-sideshow "The Jersey Devil."  They needed an arch to frame their stage that kept the tone of the show. That tone being funny, yet dark and oddly entertaining.

The first handful of ideas ran the gamut of very literal scenes from the show to tragic takes on classic fairy tales, to scenes depicting the terrorized denizens of the Garden State.  The final illustrations of doomed circus performers seemed to capture the tone best.

Thanks for reading!
SB

Unlucky Mariners

This was a great assignment for Amanda Wilson at Seattle Business.  Apparently, the Seattle Mariners are the unluckiest team in the major league. And, by the way, their mascot is a moose. Due to my severe lack of sports knowledge, both these bits of info were completely new to me, as was the proper stance for a batter.  Cat silhouettes, however, I could do from my head.

Here are a couple of the runner up ideas for the image (my personal fave being the moose drinking his troubles away)...

A Doubletake

Another peek into my ongoing project.

To the moons, NASA

Fun assignment from Michael Mrak at Scientific American to illustrate the funding cuts in NASA's planetary exploration programs.

I was initially worried that the probe wouldn't read clearly, so i sent a couple other options. These two other sketches were well received but Mrak really dug the original idea.

Waking Prince continued....

A follow-up/addition to/companion of The Waking Prince is in the works. This time as a very cool app for the ipad.  Here are a some peeks into the new artwork that will be included...

 More to show soon. -Scott

Clark Gable sketch

 

On 20468 Petercook

Illustration superhero and pal, Irene Gallo, asked me to whip something up for this short story by Andy Duncan about the comedy duo Dudley Moore and Peter Cook.  I have to admit that I was shamefully ignorant of their existence before this assignment. My mom thought Dudley Moore was the cat's pajamas and I vaguely recalled he and Kirk Cameron trading bodies some some awesome 80's movie. But, Peter Cook was completely new to me.

After watching Bedazzled (oh that movie with Brendan Frasier? ...no ), I found I'd missed out on a plethora of awesome. And discovered just how hot Raquel Welch was in her prime. The movie on Netflix, I highly suggest you get there. 

    Duncan's story made a lot more sense after getting familiar with the source material, obviously. Being very British, the plot was mainly the two characters chatting over tea, in a ship, in spaaaace.

 

Many bad likeness sketches later, I had a couple arrangements I was happy with. I dug the idea of them orbiting each other, or in a very sterile overly lit clean room with space portholes. And the more I could hint at the 60's/70's idea of the future! the better. Irene loved the first sketch since they were drinking tea while wearing helmets, something that didn't actually occur to me while drawing it.

 

Netflix helped me out again with easy reference screen grabs. And a some quick searches led me to the supremely campy jumpsuits from Lost in Space.

The tightened sketch I printed onto watercolor paper. I recently discovered Marvel badass Paolo Rivera works in a similar method but with gouache. But.. you know, he's a lot better at it.

And just to prove my job is easy, my fiance, Bonnie jammed this out in under an hour. She made a solid point.

Submerged Gothic

Lindsey Burrows at The American Interest got in touch with me looking for an image to convey the current state of the real estate industry. She and her colleagues were pretty set on a parody of Grant Wood's American Gothic, but underwater. I committed to adding my name to the list of artist's who've riffed on that painting (CF Payne, Mark Fredrickson, and a slew of Mad magazine guys are darn good company). 

Conveying the sense of light streaming through water was perhaps the biggest challenge and the most enjoyable part of this painting. I gathered a bunch of reference, only a fraction shown here, and leaned hard on James Gurney's Color and Light to figure everything out.  And, my buddy Lars's kraken painting (above right) was a badass guide as well.

In other news, I recently found out my literate squid painting created for Tor.com's short story "Ch-ch-changes" by Michael Bishop was accepted to Spectrum 19! Huzzah!

Thanks for reading,
Scott

Microvisions!

This is my contribution to this year's Microvisions Student Scholarship Auction.  I can confidently say that I've never fretted and worried over a painting like I did with this. A mix of intense intimidation, seeing the other artists' work trickle in, plus being too busy to start this earlier, and a couple sketch snafu's led quite a bit of self-doubt and panic.

After some exploration, I knew that I wanted to depict a love affair between a gorilla and his banana. I had this whole Gone With the Wind inspired scene, with the gorilla's hair tussled in the breeze, cooing at his unpeeled love. I sent this sketch to Greg Manchess to see if he got the joke and he kindly pointed out that it looked INCREDIBLY phallic.  I really don't know how I missed that. The issue was easily resolved by zooming out and making it very clear that it wasn't attached to the primate's groin. A big thanks to Greg. That could have been awkward.

And here are the rest of the ridiculously gorgeous submissions. From l to r, top to bottom: Rebecca Guay, Brian Despain, Scott Bakal, Terryl Whitlatch, John Picacio, Peter de Sève, Julie Bell, Scott Gustafson, Dan Dos Santos, Chris Rahn and Nathan Fowkes

You can find more info about the Microvisions auction here. It's a great fundraiser for students, and I'm proud to be a part of it.

Alice's tea party and something about sports

David Bamundo of the Wall Street Journal gave me a call with an overnight deadline. Luckily, he had an assignment that was right up my alley, so instead of preparing for a painful night of coffee and paint, I prepared for an awesome night of coffee and paint.

The story was about how Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, created the modern bracketing format used in sports tournaments. Nice and straightforward, lots of imagery to choose from (even if, due to my ignorance of sports, I needed David to send me an example of a tournament bracket).

And as a bonus, it printed larger and better than anything I've had in the Journal this far. 

Also, recently, I had the opportunity to do my very first live demo with my buddies at Awesome Horse Studios.  Feel free to watch me ramble about what I'm doing. A fair amount of my friends chimed in to mock my thumb ring, my taste in music and my existence. It was quite fun.

Here is the result:

value guide on one side, the result of a very distracted painting on the other.

And now I have my Microvision is in the works, so stay tuned...

Thanks!

New stuff and Microvisions!

Between drawings I've been trying to play with different papers, rather than the cheap stuff I'm used to. Here is the result of one experiment with Fabriano 300lb Hotpress watercolor paper. Extremely nice to use, but tends to suck in the paint, demanding more layers to hit darker values. On the flip of that same quality, the variations in value are very easy to manipulate. 

But I digress. I drew the devil, a giant ape, my dog, a lion and other nonsense. Let's not get too heady. 

In other awesome news, I've been asked to contribute to this year's Microvisions auction. I'm honored while trying not to panic. It's not enough that top talent in the fantasy/scifi art field are asked to do these small paintings, but they usually kick major ass. Just a quick google search will show the quality of years past.

Now I just gotta figure out what I'm gonna paint, then not screw it up.  (Suggestions welcome.) 

Some more sketches: Dogs, monsters, ladies and kiddos.

Been messing around in my sketchbook a little bit more recently. Here are some of my better looking pages.

I got to play chess with a class of 2nd graders and managed a couple quick candids. Their heads are awesomely shaped.

Also, Etta James passed away this past weekend. I did a quick sketch in her honor.

Thanks for peepin, more soon.  -SB!