Martin for The Bloomberg Market!

This was painted and published three months ago for The Bloomberg Market, but because of certain legal agreements, I was asked to not share the artwork until three months had passed. I only had one day to do this piece, from sketch to final, took about ten hours in all to complete. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, especially with the hand. I was told that the printing size for this would only be 2"x3" the size of a business card, so I simplified the brushwork a lot more than normal. The cool thing about simplifying my normal approach is that by doing that I realized for my own benefit that I don't always need to paint everything so tight and so detailed, that brushwork and keeping things a little more simple can not only save me a little stress, but also looks good too.




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Gordy's waiting for the bus!

Last night I went for a walk with my two daughters and on our little stroll we walked past "Gordy". No, that's not really his name, but he looked like a "Gordy" to me, so for the sake of the story, we'll call him "Gordy". I had to stop and take a few pictures, it was a must. When I got home I shared the pictures with my wife, she told me that I was cruel to have a laugh at this man's expense. Fair enough, but in my defense, I'm not interested in this guy's appearance because he's over weight. Yes, his shape did intrigue me, however it was his posture and stressed face that interested me. I found the man to be an interesting character, the way his body swayed back and forth and every once in a while he would bounce up to tip-toe position almost like a ballerina, it was great. My three year old Isabeau asked "Daddy, what are you doing?" I told her I was taking pictures of the interesting scenery, she then said "Oh, but daddy, look at the funny man." She found him interesting too.
Yesterday when I was painting the EL tracks at Leland and Broadway a women asked me why I was painting that? She said that's not beautiful, or worth painting! I told her it was beautiful to me, it's so much more interesting to me to paint how it really is, and what I'm really surrounded by. Anyways, enough blah, blah already.

The pen sketches were done in one of my sketch books very quickly, I used a blue Jetstream uni pen . . . permanent, however if it's held in one place for too long it bleeds everywhere . . . fun for quick sketches though. The pencil sketch was drawn a little bit different then how I normally sketch with pencil. I was influenced by my friend Tom Fluharty's stlyle of sketching. I sketched very quickly and didn't look much at my paper, looking mostly at the subject, my pencil never really left the paper.

Leland and Broadway

I went out painting today, had a lot of fun! Today I tried to be more bold with my brush work, tried to apply the paint a little thicker and most importantly, I tried to say as much as I could with less strokes! A great learning experience painting in the streets of Chicago. About an hour's worth.

Oil on panel 9x12

Caricature of Hugo

This is one of a few sketches of mine that can be seen in the book "Subway Sketches" by Kei Acedera and Bobby Chiu. The sketch is of my good friend Hugo Thysse from South Africa. Lucky for me he has a good sense of humor!

My Brother Jeremy

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Caricature Class at Schoolism.com

Check out SCHOOLISM for more information.

Plein Aire Painting

This last weekend I was away visiting family and while there I snuck away with my Dad for a few hours to paint! I don't usually get out much to paint landscapes even though I love it and learn so much each time I go out. So anytime I have the chance to paint with my Dad, I take it. We were in Green Bay Wisconsin on some random back road in the country. My Dad chose the location, he really loved the color in the wheat field. He taught me a new technique that I really love, it's a mud palette, basically you mix up a mud color either warm or cool depending on the feel you're going for and then you paint all of your color into that. This creates harmony, and it's a lot of fun too! The colors on my palette when painting Plein Aire are: French Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Lemon, Naples Light and White.

The first painting below was the one I painted with my Dad, and was my first try with this Palette. The painting is a 9x12 Oil on panel. About an hour or so worth of painting. The second painting I did yesterday, right outside my apartment in Uptown Chicago. I only had a little over an hour to paint and I didn't want to venture out too far from home. Not the most interesting scene, so I decided to make something out of the verticals that I was seeing. This painting is also 9x12 Oil on panel.

Online Caricature Class!

A heads up for anyone interested! I will be teaching a course on caricature at Schoolism.com It is a one-on-one video correspondence course, classes with me are now open for registration!

Classes start Thursday January 17th, 2008. There are no pre-Requisites, this course is for any skill level. Register now, there are only 15 seats available for my first semester.

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George Lucas Painting Video!

Jan Op De Beeck

Most of my day will be filled with painting, so I wanted to get a quick sketch out of the way before I got started. The quick sketch on the left was done in about 60 to 90 seconds with a .3mm mechanical pencil. Then I took it a bit further with my .5mm.

Paco

Quick sketch for Paco!

Brian Moss

My good friend Brian Moss and my cousin through marriage. Currently working on the largest painting I've ever done, 26"x36" this is a sketch in prep for the painting.

Illustration for GOLF Magazine

I did this about three weeks ago . . . it's out in stores now, so I've got the OK to finally post what I did. This was done for GOLF magazine, an article on how intimidating it is for other golfer's to be paired up with Woods. As soon as I heard what the article was about, this image of looking up at Tiger from the ball's point of view popped into my head.

I only had one week from start to finish on this piece, so there wasn't much time to mess around. The first thing I do on a job like this, is sketch a bunch of small thumbnails, just scribbles really. The next step was photo reference, so I posed some of my friends, took pictures, and then began sketching. The rough version attached here is what I sent to the a.d. to then wait for an OK before I could continue to the final stage. Once I had the OK, I painted the final with photoshop, it was a lot of fun working on this piece I look forward to working with them again!

CORGAN

I've got a few projects going on all at once busy, busy, busy . . . I'll try to post some new work soon, for now here's a sketch I did this morning with photoshop, I will probably do a painting from this in the near future!