Graveyard Book, The IMC

 I attended this year's Illustration Master Class in Amherst, MA. It's a week long intensive, painting-based illustration workshop focusing mainly on narrative and adventure illustration. Many instructors are old friends, so it was a very fun week.

I also worked my ass off on this painting, inspired by Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Because of the fancy camera work by Irene Gallo and James Gurney, it became my most documented painting. Irene got some progress shots and Gurney caught me starting the paints in a very cool video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9ZcVBo0S3o&feature=c4-overview&list=UUTIoOLzT1jbxAcPW99xn0zQ

 Hope you dig it!
-S

Scientific American's Skeptic column

Scientific American has a great skeptic column, usually dedicated to the various ways the human brain can malfunction and create one effect or another. There are great illustrations that go along with each article, and the subject matter is an illustrator's dream. Juicy stuff like why our brains deny/distort clear evidence, or how the brain creates consciousness.

I was lucky enough to be tasked with illustrating the recent issue. The column was skeptical of a brain surgeon's assertion that, during a near death experience, he'd had a glimpse of heaven. Seemed a sensitive issue for my normally irreverent approach to drawing.

Pretty much two approaches to the same idea. The 2nd beat of the image would show you that the brain is the culprit. 

Playing off the evidence and hallucination ideas, I thought it would be fun to draw pink elephants. I found out later they are pretty  much exclusively related to alcohol induced hallucination. Oops.

I knew going in that this was my strongest idea. It wasn't as goofy as the others and the relationship between brain and vision of heaven was more subtle. Using color to tie the elements together is somewhat new for me and I'm glad it worked out as well as it did. 

The Wreck of NFIP

quick ideas for sad and concerned fish

Rough value sketch, before picking a better fish

Color sketch with type placed

scanned finished paint, pre-photoshop

Finished painting with photoshop finishing touches. 

This was an overnight gig for The Weekly Standard. More of a feat of creating believable atmosphere than anything really clever, but super fun to work on nonetheless.
-S

Month of Love

Myself and 19 damn fine artists are contributing drawings/sketches/experiments to a daily sketchblog for the month of February. Everything is love themed and on certain days need to match a set phrase. Go on and take a gander at Month of Love

Header designed by my old chum, the lovely and talented Jeanine Henderson

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

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.

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.

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.

Exposing myself, Vol.2

My Photobooth library was getting overcrowded, so obviously it is time to share some reference shots. The majority were spent on a project I still can't fully share, but there are some sneak peaks here, as well as many photos of bed head and neglected shaving.

One project, The Silence of Eggs, had it's own personal collection of weird. Nailing just the right variation of psychotic focus took a bit of work.

Note use of tools on rare occasions when my face is not elastic enough.

And, by the way, I own these pants.