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

More leaked zombie pics

Hitting crunch time on this, here are a couple newly finished illustrations for A Brain Is For Eating. Enjoy!
-S

A Brain Is For Eating -in progress sneak peek

"So remember these rules, and follow the lead of your big zombie brothers when its time for the feed" 

"When hunting for packages just say with a roar, it's braaaaains you are after and you always want mooooore!"

Stay tuned for more underaged undead in the coming weeks.

-S!

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

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

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

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.

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!