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 Hello, hello, hello fine people,
Halloween is before us which seems an appropriate time to reawaken the blog from its long relaxing slumber. Doing so with something frightening seems equally as appropriate. Gets the blood flowing. This is a piece for the short story titled “In the Light of the Skeletal Moons” (great title, am I right?) and is written by one Mr. Samuel Marzioli (visit his blog HERE). You can find both story and illustration within the sci-fi, horror pages of Space & Time magazine issue #123. This piece was particularly fun in regards to content (aside from that creepy, protruding eyeball). My illustrative work has a reputation for the representational. However, this time around I wanted to try dipping my toes into symbolism with respect to the depiction of the cascading light and "skeletal" moons - a more graphic, simplistic approach with less realism. Special Insider Note: this is actually Skeletal Moons v2.0. I had some areas I wanted to work on further so I went back after publication and created what you see here. You'll have to pick up S&T 123 to get a glimpse of version 1.0 . Hope you enjoy and I'll talk with you later, Doug  Since Halloween is right around the corner I'm going to continue onward with my more spine-tingling imagery. And the scene from ADRIFT that this concept piece is inspired by is easily the most frightening of the story.
This is the "Abduction Chamber". Originally a form of generator room which has now been revamped to harness energy from a new source. Humans. Each captive is attached via their spine and as the energy is extracted their bodies are left ridged while pulled upwards toward the ceiling. Not exactly my kind of hobby, but hey, that's me. - D  We've begun our journey into easily one of the best times of the year. The month of October. Leaves are changing, a brisk chill is in the air and, of course, there's Halloween. Because of this I'm that much more excited to post this piece - a birthday commission for the son of a good friend of mine. A painting of Alfred E. Newman.
This is in fact the first time I've ever illustrated the infamous character from the long-running and just as infamous, MAD Magazine. And having the request to "zombify" him made it all the more enticing. Being that he's a zombie I found the consistency of paint, and in this case acrylic paint, can coincide rather well with the texture of skin. And skin that's, we'll say, not quite so fresh? Even better. One can loosen the grip on the brush more and allow the brushstrokes to just paint it themselves. Having never illustrated Al prior the more I studied him the more character features began to emerge consistently from cover after cover of MAD. Extremely specific features. From the his well-known smirk & freckles to his slightly less obvious off-center eye. Something I hadn't picked up on before. The guy's a peculiar subject. But a consistently peculiar subject, I'll give him that. I'm also excited to announce I've done something with this piece that I've NEVER done with any other piece of artwork. Though you'll have to wait to find out what that is. Don't fret though, I'll keep you posted. Anyways, hope you all dig it (especially Cobey) and I'll talk with everyone soon! - D  Whatsup everyone!
Continuing my experimentation with the pen & the marker I've recently wrapped up this pen & ink rendering of a home in Towson, Maryland. What I found most interesting about this project was the return to the fundamentals of perspective. After learning the rules I find it's quite fun to break them. So much of the time I freehand the perspective, giving an image a looser organic feel. With this piece though it's more about a grounded solidified appearance to the image. So to achieve this I decided to revisit those basic mathematical rules of perspective. Which meant the horizon line, vanishing points and breaking out the ruler. I also, for the most part, tried to keep the rendering to that of hatching (marks moving in the same direction), with minimal areas of cross-hatching (marks layered over one-another in opposite or various directions). This gives off the feeling of a "traditional" pen & ink appearance, almost similar to that of an etching. Though I still wanted those deep blacks so I used a calligraphy marker to create the foliage in the trees and bushes, also a way to help frame the home. Hope you enjoy and I'll talk with you soon! - D  Whatsup everyone!
Here we have an illustration I did for the company, Social Help Online, a company geared around the wide world of Social Media. This fellow's name is Lindsey Nagy, advisor to SHO and managing director of Nagy Ventures. I did this piece in the similar manner to that of my most recent comic, Last Caress - using a variety of pens with black ink & white paint markers. The results from creating artwork from basic office supplies can be rather surprising and a fun step outside the norm. Especially if you've been wed to the brush like yours-truly. For example, the pinstripe suit was done using a large Marks-A-Lot black permanent marker. The thinner lines were used with a Staedtler pigment liner (drafting pen) and the shadows created with a smaller Marks-A-Lot marker that was on it's last leg. You can get some nice grays with these. Oh, and no worries, despite his slight resemblance to Lex Luther Lindsey's a good guy. No need to fear world domination that I know of. Hope you enjoy and I'll talk with you soon! - D  Whatsup everybody,
Here's a logo I've recently designed for the new company, SHORE PIX. Shore Pix is an establishment on the Eastern Shore of Maryland built around the digital preservation, as well as organization, of photographs new and old. Over the course of my time designing logos I've really become quite found of these types of projects. They're challenging in ways that help your eye understand the subtitles of "design", font selection, color and so on, which can be a slight step outside the peripheral of that of your illustrative or fine art eye. Hope you enjoy and I'll talk with you soon! - D |
