Andy Bernard Sketch

Ed Helms as Andy Bernard. "Big Tuna!"

Toby Flenderson Sketch

If you look up the word "gross" on Wikipedia you'll find some words that have to do with the "Economy" . . . boring right, who needs to know anything about that? But more importantly for our topic, you'll find this descrtiption . . . .

"Gross", a slang term meaning "disgusting" or "grotesque" EXAMPLE of GROSS - The actor, "Paul Lieberstein" better known as "Toby Flenderson" from "The Office".

Need I say more?




Quick sketch while sitting at Starbucks.




A very quick gesture sketch, again while at a Starbucks.

The birth . . . my first paintings.

I've been really busy lately, currently working on a few illustrations for KING magazine as well as some other paintings . . . on top of that I critique students work every week for Schoolism. It might be a bit before I can share some of that work here on my blog and I haven't had much time for extra sketching . . . so I decided to share a bit about my beginnings.

I have two daughters, Isabeau who is five and Ava who is nearly two. Before Isabeau was born, I was working as an illustrator but not really sure how to get where I wanted to go. I was always going into book stores and finding caricature and illustration work in magazines that I really liked and telling myself I'm going to need to compete with these people if I ever want to make it. I knew that the one thing these artists could do and I couldn't, was paint. I had always been afraid, I think I thought I would be horrible and just wouldn't get it . . . painting is something I still work hard at, and something that I now understand will be an area that I can always improve in. My Dad once told me that you need to do a few hundred bad paintings to begin to get it, or to do one good one. That may be a bit extreme, but it is true that in order to become better you must get the "bad ones" out of the way.

Anyways, to explain this Owen Wilson painting . . . .

I was interviewed recently by the ISCA for winning The Gold Nosey and the story of my Owen Wilson painting came up. I thought it would be a good thing to share here.

Five years ago, the night my wife Kat went into labor I did my first "real" painting. Up until that point, I had only messed around with paints, but mostly did pen and ink with watercolor washes, tried out some airbrushing, and did a lot of color pencil work. To make a long story short, my wife started to have contractions and was in a seperate room with her friend going over the breathing and all that "fun" stuff. I was in another room and I began to panic. All of a sudden it was really happening, this was for real. There's really a baby coming! And I FREAKED! I started worrying about anything and everything you can imagine . . . will I be a good father, do I know anything at all? What do I know, what can I tell this kid . . . etc . . . Then I started to freak out about my art, and started to think about all these other artists out there who inspire me, thinking about how all of them can paint and I can't. Then I realized, I'm never going to make it as an artist if I can't paint . . . I'm going to be a father, and I can't even PAINT!

So with my wife huffing and puffing away with her friend, I grabbed some watercolors and did my first real painting, no other mediums to cover up my mistakes, just raw and honest watercolor. And that's what this Owen Wilson painting is, my first "real" painting. And I haven't stopped ever since. My wife's contractions died down just as I was finishing this painting . . . an hour or so later it happened for real, and the next morning my beautiful girl Isabeau was born!






This Nelly painting was done a bit after the Owen Painting, you see, I had to build up enough courage to work with acrylics. With this painting I watered down the acrylics until they felt like watercolors . . . from there I built everything up until it was opaque.

So there you have it, my first paintings, or "real" paintings, as in I was trying to "really" paint!

Phyllis Lapin

Her name really is Phyllis, and I have the feeling she's not an actor . . . just being herself. The Office is such a great show!

Jeb Bush for The Weekly Standard

This was a one day turn around for The Weekly Standard. I started with sketches around 8:00 a.m. Friday morning and finished with the painting around 8:00 p.m. that night. With a quick job like this, I have to pace myself . . . I need to spend a certain amount of time on each part of the painting, face, hands etc . . . if I don't do this, I end up spending too much time in one area and not enough in other areas.

I find that hands take me just as long to draw and paint as the face, hands are just as important as the face to get right. So for this piece I wish had more time to spend on the hands but because of the tight turnaround I decided to focus more on Jeb's face . . . once I got it to a certain point I began to loosen up towards the edges of his face and continued with this throughout the rest of the body.

For the background I would have rather had a lighter and brighter blue sky, but because of type reading well against the background, I had to paint the sky much darker. Because of this, the background ended up a bit gloomy compared to what my first intentions had been for the piece.

Overall it was a fun piece to work on, Jeb's has an interesting face. It's similar to his older brother yet has its own interesting qualities, somewhat like a heavier George Bush.





Quick sketch . . . working out an idea for the body type.






Starting to block in the idea given to my by the a.d.




Making adjustments to the tree line and composition . . .

Jim Halpert

Last night I watched some more episodes of "The Office" with my wife and did this sketch of Jim.

Stanley Hudson Sketch

This morning my wife had an appointment so I stayed home with my girls. They played and watched Dora the Explorer, while I cooked up some lunch for them. While cooking, I managed to squeeze in a quick sketch of Stanley from the show The Office. I paused a scene from one of the episodes and sketched on my laptop using Sketchbook Pro . . . This guy has such a great face, it would be fun to do a few more studies of him, there's so much you could do with this guys face and character.

Starbucks 11-29-08

It's been a while since my last post, so I thought I'd post a couple sketches I did this past Saturday. My daughter has a 45 minute art class on Saturdays, so I sit across the street at Starbucks and sketch a bit while I wait. I love sketching like this, real loose with a prismacolor pen on paper . . . no erasing, just observing and drawing. The older guy left after about two minutes of me sketching so I left it as is was.

I'm currently in the middle of a few paintings in acrylic and oils which I'll hopefully be able to share soon. I'm also in the middle of a few publication jobs that I will share as soon as I have permission to do so!