Earthquake in China

This is the final drawing for a new piece dealing with the earthquake that happened in China. The New York Times has had a lot of great articles dealing with the many facets of the tragedy that happened when so much of the news around China has been about the Olympics, and more importantly all of the protests that have surrounded the torch relay. It's an interesting shift to have China go from the stalwart, hardened nation known for its terrible abuse of human rights to a legitimate source of international sympathy having lost over 50,000 people to the quake along with many national monuments and temples. In a response to that I wanted to show a great and ancient nation that now is seen in the international community as injured and hurt.

Relaxations

It's nice that on the rare occasions I can sit down and draw something on nice paper. Just pick an subject and enjoy the pencil and the process of drawing. Their not quite as interesting as a full illustration but then again, hey, they're for me and it's more about the enjoyment I get out of doing them rather than the dual interest-purpose of my more focused work. In anycase maybe someone else enjoys them too. They're simple but the texture's nice in person. They need tiny frames, me thinks. Tiny frames for tiny drawings.

Finally

After so very many trials, here's the final for my frontispiece to my portfolio book. It's simple but has my sense of design, color, and love of nice sunsetty clouds. Enjoy.

Atlantic City Beer Festival '08

Here's a sketch for the AC Beer Festival over in New Jersey. She's drifting on a keg through amber, golden waves holding a beer and a set of playing cards. The origin of the sketch was to do something like a Mucha piece but in the end the idea sort of drifted off and this pseuso-decorative piece came into being. The ornamentation on either side of the piece is comprised of hops, wheat, and swirls. Every year the festival occurs on the weekend neat St Patrick's day, so of course my beautiful lady is dressed in leprechaun uniform. Enjoy!

Happy Mother's Day

Revised

Went forward with the Lovecraft piece, so here we have the final and a detail of the main figure.

Lovecraftian Finish

Here's the finish for my Lovecraft piece. It's sort of the 1st pass at the finish, so there's probably another 10% to go to tighten it up but at the moment I'm really pleased with the way the main action came through, by which I mean the "Oh no! Tentacles!" guy.

In the works for later, yet another but hopefully the last of the frontispieces I have to do. I was fighting the face constantly in the last piece but I finally scrapped that drawing and dove into my sketchbooks to find a great face that worked out perfectly for this piece. It's a simpler design and again, hopefully the last one because I've gone through a lot of different versions of this project.