Joseph!

This is a sketch of my pal Joe Bluhm! I love this guy, talented beyond all reason, yet humble and totally down to Earth!

Weekend at my Brother's house!

This weekend I drove up to my little bro's house with my daughter Isabeau. It was a nice visit, hung out with my brother and his wife Ashley as well as my parents . . . fun time for Isabeau. Anyways, you may remember this painting I started a while back of my brother and his wife . . . a wedding gift. I finished it quite a while ago now, just never had pictures taken of it. I'd still like to get some professional pics of it, anyways here's a few pictures I took of it, one hanging on the wall and then outside with some sunlight. Not sure of the size, but it is Oil on Linen.

El Pollo Loco!

This afternoon I took some high school art students to a local restaurant called "El Pollo Loco" and did some live sketching. We've talked for sometime now about going to a cafe or something to draw . . . and boy oh boy were there some interesting characters at "The Chicken Crazy" (as I like to call it).

This sketch is a quickie, took me about 8 minutes. What intrigued me about the "subject" I chose to sketch was not her weight, rather the wonderful shapes and flowing curves . . . . there was in fact food, or sauce dripping out of her mouth.

Teaser W.I.P.s

Here are a couple w.i.p.s for my book which will be coming out in JUNE . . . . sorry for the low res versions, but I don't want to give too much away too soon! There will be more to share soon! Busy, busy, busy!

BTW, both of these are painted with limited palettes.

Tim Burton Painting Video

Hello everyone. A week or so ago, Ryan Wood and Mark Behm shared their painting process on their blog, so I was inspired to do the same. This is a video showing my process when painting digitally. I painted this using a Split-Complementary Palette, a limited palette yes, but you will see that you can get plenty of colors from such a palette, and the nice thing is that it creates a mood as well as harmony within your painting. Hope you enjoy. The music is The White Stripes, I really like their new album a lot. Many thanks to Thierry and Bobby Chiu at Imaginism Studios for helping me get this video up and running so I can share it with everyone here.

McCain's Choice?

This was a piece I did last week for The Weekly Standard. Had a little more time than usual, had half the day Thursday and a full day on Friday, all in all about 18 hours of work. I would have liked to have put more time into the wheel, but sometimes it's hard to judge my time and what I can and can't finish in that time frame . . . some things take longer than you would think. Anyways, attached is the final as well as a close up of the face to show a bit of the detail, almost has a watercolor feel to it. The others are my very quick sketches as well as a quick mock.

The Order of the Green Jacket

I can finally share this. A two page spread that I did maybe a month ago now, you may remember seeing sneak peaks of this a bit ago? I had about two weeks to draw and paint this, was a lot of work, but a lot of fun as well . . . my favorite two to paint were Bill Gates and Buffet, and the kat too.

My Online Class at Schoolism.com

As some of you know I am teaching an online class on The Art of Caricature at Schoolism.com. These are examples the kind of work my students are doing after only four lessons. I'm very proud of what they're doing, it's really exciting to see their growth and excitement. You can check out more of what my students are doing as well as what they have to say about the course on the schoolism blog onlineartclass.blogspot.com

If you would like to know more about my class, please visit Schoolism.com and watch my course trailer. My next class starts APRIL 29th, spaces are going fast!

Norm Coleman or Al Franken?

This is a job I did last Friday for The Weekly Standard. I was called Thursday night and given the concept of the piece, worked out a few ideas with the art director over the phone, then woke up early Friday morning to start with the sketches. Started at 5:30 a.m. and finished around 7:00 p.m. A long hard day . . . these types of jobs are rough, but a challenge I welcome. With two people, full body as well as a quick turnaround, I prefer to paint the illustration as a black and white, focusing only on values. This is a much faster way to paint, the cool thing about doing it this way is that when the black and white painting is finished, I'm about 90% finished, just a few layers of color and it's finished.