Digital/Analogue Experimentation

A couple variations.

Painted a canal this AM

Got out and painted a canal this morning. Weather's cooling down so we can do this now. Bright sun glaring off water and the new paved bike path. I was mostly concerned about getting a color idea down and an interesting composition.

(shot on site: a little out of focus and some weird reflections that look like pixie dust)

New York Walker

2 sketches from the same reference I shot in New York a few years ago.

Harvest Moon over New York

My friend Brad Teare, art director at the Friend magazine (he's also an accomplished painter with a good blog) asked me to do a cover for their October issue. He said they wanted something that looked a little more urban than their usual pastoral settings. Also, that I might include something about the season.

The Friend is a publication of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (of which I am a member). For their covers, they assign an illustrator a month and let him or her come up with five or so ideas and they choose which one they want. It's not real often that I get that kind latitude. Thanks Brad!

Here is one of the reference photos I took of my grandkids.

Parched. A book cover

Claire Counihan, AD at Holiday House, asked me to do a cover. It's a book called Parched. The world has gone through decades of drought and is dried up, except for a domed city built by some of the surviving people. It has it's own biospher. This is the work in progress.

Superstition Sunrise

Between illustration jobs and teaching, I haven't had much time to paint. So I've started doing quick half our sketches of the sunrise looking east from my neighborhood. 

Circles Records and Tapes

One of the cooler buildings in downtown Phoenix is Circles Records and Tapes. It was originally a Studebaker showroom, built back in the forties. Inside the round glass front was a turntable floor that would go round and round with cars on it, showing them off to the passing public. A good example of streamline deco design, of which there is not much in the valley. Sometime in the seventies, it became a record store. Unfortunately, with the changes in the music industry, Circles finally closed in 2010. The building is still there but is threatened by the fact that the owners have not registered it as an historic building. You can read more about it at Modern Phoenix. This is a small color sketch I did from a photo I took a couple years ago.