Mort Drucker - Masters Series

Mort Drucker, world famous caricaturist and humorous illustrator best known for his work in MAD magazine has made an exclusive, never before seen tutorial film about his process and life experiences. Presented and interviewed by Stephen Silver. To watch the 2 hour and 15 minute film go to www.schoolism.com and click on "The Masters Series" banner located on the bottom. The film will debut starting January 2oth 2010.


Click here to watch video.

Ross Perot Jr. for Dallas CEO

This was a spot illustration I did a few weeks back, another one of those day and a half turn arounds . . . never seem to have as much time as I'd like . . . but that goes with the job I guess? This was a fun piece to work on, and the A.D. is great to work with which is also a bonus!

I decided to rely more on expression and posture rather than gags and so forth to tell the story. Also, I felt that the colors used could really help set the mood, for that, I dipped into the film industry for inspiration. I always loved the look of the first Matrix movie, the colors, the mood etc . . . I didn't watch the Matrix, or look at any references of the Matrix while working on this piece. Instead, I kept that feeling in mind while painting . . . I wanted the mood, the color . . . besides this guy and Keanu
could be twins . . . just kidding.

Congrats to Carlos!

Carlos Rubio won the Chiu-stream contest back in December! Congrats Carlos! Carlos did a beautiful digital painting of me, and his prize is this original sketch.

A lot of things have happened to me both personally and professionally since my live interview on Chiu-Stream, so it took a bit of time for me to finally draw this . . . thank you for understanding Carlos, and congrats again buddy, you deserve it!

IN OTHER NEWS!
I'm currently working on a book cover for Penguin Group, won't be able to share anything on that until December of 2010.
Finishing up my acrylic of the Red Queen for my show coming up in L.A.
Also in the process of working on a poster for a film due out this spring . . . more info on that in the future!

Moss Oil

Oil painting of my friend and cousin Brian Moss. The painting isn't quite finished, but it's close. When it is finished, I'll have high res images to share the detail.

Animal Drawing Workshop with David Colman!

Hello everyone....well its time again for David Colmans Animal Drawing Weekend Workshop....Winter semester 2010; Sat Jan 30 and Sun Jan 31st from 10AM-4PM. All the info is on the attached flyer....For those of you who have taken the class before don't fret; this class will focus on DIFFERENT animals and DIFFERENT demos....Some of the demos will focus on personality too and not just studying from life and understanding technique. For those of you who havent taken the class its an intense 2 day workshop over a Saturday and Sunday. First day is a 6 hour course spent studying bones and skeletal structure @ the La Brea Tarpits in which you will learn the basic inner structure of quadrapeds. David will be doing a one hour demo study of one of the skeletons. The rest of the time will be spent giving 1-on-1 critique and instruction with EACH student. Several handouts and samples will also be provided.The second day will be 6 hours spent @ the LA Zoo in which you will be studying about 5 different animals(predetermined ahead of time) throughout the day. Then David will be doing another one hour demo(possibly two...)of a life study of one of the preset animals. This class will also consist of 1-on-1 critique and instruction with EACH student. Several handouts and samples will also be provided as well.

The first 5 students who sign up will receive $25 off the full price of $200.00. So sign up today!..... The class is going to be tons of fun and guarantee you will get plenty out of it. A more detailed syllabus and supply list will be distributed to those who sign up closer to the class date.

The demos from the last workshop are posted on David's youtube channel @ the link below. Check them out!

http://www.youtube.com/dcolman27

email David here: dcolman27@hotmail.com to get the payment details and additional information.

Painting the Red Queen for Upcoming show.

Working on an acrylic of the Red Queen for an Alice show at Gallery Nucleus. Acrylic on Birch.

George Lucas 2010

I've been so busy lately with several projects and haven't had much of any time for myself. I need to just draw something for myself and have some fun . . . so last night I did a quick sketch of George . . . I liked the light sketch and decided to paint it a bit . . . ended up spending an hour and a half on this . . . I'll probably use this for something and eventually finish it, perhaps with an entire scene or something?

It's amazing what one can do when painting digitally . . . I have grown to really enjoy painting digitally. For years, I didn't really enjoy it much at all, I'd always preferred painting traditionally. And I still would rather paint traditionally, but digital painting has grown on me for a few reasons. It helps that I have developed techniques and ways of painting that make it feel more like traditional painting . . . I could never paint something like this George as fast as I did, using acrylics or oils or watercolors. There's no way. Painting digitally is so easy in comparison. When painting with oils or acrylics you spend way more time mixing your colors and values together . . . also, with acrylics more than oils, the colors always dry a bit darker in value than when you first put them down. You don't need to worry about this when painting digitally. Also, things like softening edges and blending colors is TONS FASTER . . . so being that I paint either traditionally or digitally just about every day, painting something fast digitally is no longer that difficult, depending on my mood and what the subject is.

New Village Voice Cover

My first cover of 2010 and the first cover for Village Voice of 2010! This was a bit nuts to pull off under such a tight deadline, so I'm very pleased with the end result. I only had one day to complete this painting, as I was on holiday when I received the job and there wasn't any way I could work on it until the day before it was due. I was able to squeeze off a quick sketch over the weekend and get it approved for painting.




I started work around 4:00 a.m. Monday Morning, and painted all day, took a dinner break and then worked until around 9:00 p.m. I then woke up at 4:00 a.m. Tuesday morning and painted until the deadline, which was 8:00 a.m.

This was a fun piece to work on, I really enjoy working with the Village Voice! The idea behind this cover is simple, a parody of "The Odd Couple" movie poster. If I had more time, I would have liked to have played around with things a bit more and have a little more fun with posture and gags . . . but being as I didn't have much time, my main priority was to draw Bloomberg and Thompson's face with the exact angle and expression that I needed. I had to make up their expressions . . . to do that, I took pictures of myself making the exact expression that I needed and from there I made the rest up.

For the rest of the painting, I tried to capture the feeling of the original painting, adding small things of my own here and there . . . the important thing for this cover was that the "parody" read well, so I couldn't stray too far from the original.



Detail of face . . . I tried to keep it fairly loose and painterly . . .





Pic of inside spread by Hermann Mejia.

XFUNS Interview as well as Free iphone apps!

iPhone apps for artists on www.artistsketchbooks.com is officially opened! Comment on this post and let me know which Artist iPhone App you'd like and random commenter's will receive promo codes for free Artist Sketchbook iPhone Apps throughout the week!



I was interviewed this past Fall by XFUNS magazine, the last two images are in English.

Red Beard Digital Painting Demo!

This is a painting I did a few weeks ago of my friend Zach Stuka as a step by step demo for the book, "Digital Collage and Painting, Using Photoshop and Painter to Create Fine Art - 2nd Edition - Focal Press"

The first edition sold worldwide, with even translations into Chinese and Russian. There were 20 artists chosen to share their techniques in painting digitally, I was honored to be one of them! The book will be available in October of 2010. I'll be sure to remind everyone when it's available to buy.






Detail.




A "tease" sample for "some" of what you will see in the book by me.




COOL NEWS to start off the new year!!!



My painting of Elvis Costello is a Silver Award winner in the Entertainment/Visual Development category of Society of Illustrators L.A. Illustration West 48!