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Willamette Week's Cheap Eats Cover

2008-04-15T11:40:00.001-07:00

Destined to inspire the consumption of low-quality meat, dirt-cheap burritos and greasy pizza before collecting dust on Oregon coffee tables.

weekly illustrations

2008-04-15T11:22:00.000-07:00

These are three recent illustrations for the willamette week. All ink wash on watercolor paper, drawn with a fine watercolor brush. A simple, clean style works very well for their final presentation on newsprint. I'm particularly fond of the image in the middle, for a pho tasting, and the skull form lurking in the background. I'm a pho fan, but the illustration is supposed to account for the anxiety of trying new food.

EcoTrust!

2008-04-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

Deborah Kane contacted me through Threepin.org to complete a series of line drawings in under a week on the history of food in the schools, leading up to the present moment. It was a very interesting learning experience to see how we have changed so dramatically in this area as a country, from digging up baseball fields to plant gardens in the hopes of fattening up our young soldiers, to seeing school lunches as a way of getting rid of surplus food produced in the marketplace, to coming back to gardens and cooperation with local farmers. Happily, at least in Portland, this series ends with a positive. Deborah puts out a great quarterly, Edible Portland, worth checking out if you are up here in the Pacific NW.

Walk There!

2008-04-15T10:50:00.001-07:00

I'm working right now on a cover for a walking guide of portland and the surrounding areas that Metro is putting out to encourage people to be more active and to explore some interesting sites in the area. Hot Pepper Studios is putting the book together and have been a joy to work with on this one. I'm also illustrating the book, with a series of six line drawings. The image above is the rough color version of the cover, which will change somewhat before we are through.

Warts

2008-01-05T16:27:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy couple of months working on animated commercials. At this moment one of my character designs will be transformed into a moving, shouting puppet WART for an upcoming national spot for a certain WART creme. In the end, the final WART design was the product of a series of over 200. I'm looking forward to seeing the final edit in the upcoming weeks. This is the second national spot I've worked on, the other being an ad for Ring Pop, and the first where I designed all characters. Stay tuned!

guitar labels in place

2007-07-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

Saul sent me a picture of one of his ukuleles with the label I designed in place. Thought I'd pass this along...

political illustrations

2007-06-28T01:09:00.000-07:00

I'm delivering this one in the morning to Peter, owner of the Bipartisan, the newest cafe in my neighborhood. Peter came up to me while I was working on an illustration in his cafe over a year ago and hired me to do an illustration of famous leaders eating pie together. This is my second piece for the cafe, with a different subject: famous assassins. It's not my usual style, but I enjoyed working more realistically with cross-hatching, and the piece fits in perfectly with the propaganda and other political art that decorates the Bipartisan Cafe.

Great stumptown coffee, too, and pie, if you are ever in need of something sweet in the Mt. Tabor neighborhood, SE Portland.

koll guitars labels have arrived

2007-06-26T22:38:00.000-07:00

This was a fun job that came up through an article written about my work in the Portland Tribune. Saul Koll builds guitars and was interested in changing the certificate pasted inside his instruments to something more akin to a limited edition print. We are doing three of these in all. Although there are things I really like about the color version, we ended up going with the neutral version because it was important for him to have it look like a certificate. The image depicts an anthropomorphic band saw cutting out a guitar.

metro site coming... soon

2007-06-26T22:23:00.000-07:00

I've been working with Brad and Eli on the redesign of Metro's website. Looking at the work of Chris Silas Neil, I've been inspired to represent the figure more literally. This illustration captures something of the style the website is taking as we compile a series of spot illustrations the color of coffee.

Willamette Week

2007-06-26T00:24:00.000-07:00

I just finished the Willamette Week cover for this week's issue, my first cover for them.
I thought I'd post some drafts of the issue since it is the second largest paper in Oregon, which is something. This one has a certain alt-weekly flair to it.

Without getting into the article itself, I'm including some drafts that speak to the process of review and working with an Art Director. Maggie is really great and fun to work with, so this was very enjoyable.

Tinder Studio under Construction

2007-06-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

Construction is expected to be final by the end of this summer on the Tinder Studio project. Basically, this has been the process of turning a free-standing structure from 1927 into a modern creative space. The picture above is my attempt to accurately measure what would become two triangle windows above the entrance.

The space at the moment now has plumbing, a loft, five new skylights and four windows, a three panel glass door, wall heating unit and wiring for two track lighting units. A fine space to make a mess in, certainly.

excess for eyes

2007-06-23T12:19:00.001-07:00

My friend CK asked me to put together a flyer for his band's upcoming show. Their music reminds me of Fugazi in its dynamic sound shifting and ecstatic noise offering. This is basically a line drawing with ballpoint pen, based a little more closely on photos than I usually work. In the spirit of good illustration, my style changed to reflect the music it represents.

Bright Red Paper Demo

2007-06-23T11:46:00.001-07:00

The design for the Bright Red Paper demo (2007) was based on the translucent office sticker sheet I found. The version shown is the unfolded version, which I'm including because it conveys the sense of color play better than just showing the cover would. The band used this for their invitation to the New Music West festival in Vancouver, B.C.

weekend sketchbook

2006-10-30T01:13:00.000-08:00

Art Directing a few animated commercials at Bent taught me to be more comfortable sharing raw sketches. Here are a few from tonight and yesterday evening.

acme chalkboards

2006-10-30T00:58:00.000-08:00

I took a break from afternoon projects to do something for Kevin's Acme Lounge.

This is a three-panel, low-fi series picking up on the ubiquitous nature theme present everywhere here, from the buffalo photographs on the wall to the deer painted next to the urinal.

Specifically, I was reacting to a piece on public radio that contrasted the way western science and the native american culture viewed nature. To understand the wolf, native americans would observe the wolf and how it moved through a moonless night and would mimic and "become" the animal in order to better understand it. The program contrasted this with the western practice of dissection.

The three panels depict dissection, attack and mimicry.

Reed College Mural

2006-10-12T12:28:00.000-07:00

Trader Joe's asked me to do a mural of Reed College, to tie in the SE Portland store with its neighborhood. I like Trader Joe's philosophy, which shirks the image of the corporate grocery store as a bunch of cookie-cutter box stores, instead personalizing each store to its own environs.

This is the first 40% of the painting, which will hang high on the ceiling, and be just under 50 feet long. I'm slated to be done with the piece in November and will post more pictures as that approaches.

Providence Hospital Mural

2006-10-12T12:02:00.000-07:00

I was lucky enough to be asked to paint a mural for the brand new Providence Hospital in Newberg, Oregon.

The mural responds to the Healing Garden outside, a place to get away from the hospital environment.

The mural depicts a group of children holding hands in a circle, either dancing or praying, flanked on opposite ends by large plants. For me, the painting came out of searching for comfort with mortality, and finding support for that search in loved ones around me. That seemed appropriate for my experiences in hospitals.

The mural is about 40 feet wide, and just over 8 feet tall. It was painted in sections on small wooden tiles, some recycled from local buildings at the Rebuilding Center, and cut to size in their shop.

New Curtains!

2006-10-12T11:44:00.000-07:00

These are from a banner I did for a local grocery store. After having this around in it's complete form for over a year in storage, this summer I took to it with scissors. Cozies up the window seat nicely.

fall hype

2006-08-15T21:51:00.000-07:00

This is an early version of the fall card that will be going out in late October. I happened upon a few wedding pictures and was surprised by the contrast between the special moment of a wedding dance and the bland surroundings. Bad flash photography lit up white paper plates, table cloth, folding chairs sitting empty. Occasionally, there was cake. I like that people were smiling and intent on each other, not seeming to notice their surroundings.