TOM - A couple Sundays ago I was in Philly with James and Steph enjoying a day of
art,
tattoos, and the sun. The next day, in the midst of moving into new apartment and finishing up pieces for a show (which I will post about soon), I got a call coincidentally from
Philadelphia City Paper to do an upcoming cover for them. They had a pretty wacky idea for their Book Quarterly issue which seemed like it would be an interesting challenge for me since I don't normally incorporate animals into my illustrations. They wanted the animals to look like animals but be dressed and acting like humans at a cocktail party. I wound up having a lot of fun and got into drawing each animal's different human-like qualities.
This is my third time doing a cover for Philadelphia City Paper and they are super laid back and easy to work with. Above is what the final print version looks like. Some slight changes, but I'm still very happy with the way it turned out.
And here are some process shots. Above is the black and white version. I wanted to keep it as clean as possible at this stage with very little shading and spotted blacks, because I knew I was going to take care of that when I stared to color. Also, the grass in the background was done separately in acrylic, then added in Photoshop.
And here is the original sketch. It was based off of a rough sketch that the designer sent me. There was more of a pyramid composition going on at this point. As you can see, there were alot of changes made between this point and the final, but this definitely helped me visualize it early on.
Well, that's all for now. If anyone out there lives in the Philly area, don't forget to pick one up!
TOM - Here are some recent illustrations from a weekly gig I've been doing for Nerve.com. The feature is called "My First Time" and every week someone submits a piece about how they lost their virginity. They're all really short and to the point, so they're worth checking out. AND, if you have a funny, or somewhat interesting story about how you lost your virginity, send it over to Nerve.com and I'll illustrate it. Yippy! The above image is my favorite so far, it's from week two. I had alot of fun with the guys tattoos. Below are the rest of them.
Week one.
Week three.
This week.
