Sappy

A lil' pinecone.

That is all.

Indian Paintbrush

Quick little gouache sketch of my favorite alpine flower. Wish Mt. Rainier's snow would melt a little faster...

Close Up

Two one-hour studies with acrylic on masonite. Didn't get everything quite right, but I think they represent time well-spent. Click to enlarge.

Night Lights

A couple of my friends thought it would be a fun challenge to create a quick single-page comic. I realized this was the perfect time to finally make a piece about this odd, spooky childhood experience that I'd never forgotten.  You see a lot of weird stuff in the woods in WA.

Designing for one page is tough, because there is a lot to convey, and very little room to do it. I'd cluttered up the whole panel with lots of exposition and explanations, but it wasn't adding anything. I realized that there was not point explaining the encounter when the whole crux of the story was how unsettling the unexplained can be, so I cut out nearly all the text. Now it's pretty lean, and leaves things very uncertain, but I think that better serves the mood I was going for.

If you are the kind of person who likes ruining mystery, or just a science geek, this is what I think we saw.

Back From The Dead

I haven't posted any of my newest work for ages, so this blog was due for a resurrection (just in time for Easter.) I've had some adventures and created all kinds of cool new projects in the last months, chief among them was the new Mural On Morgan. If you are in Chicago, stop by S. Morgan St. and W. 15th Place to check out the mural. It's 100 feet long so you can't miss it.

That area has a long history as a rail depot and open air market. More recently, a developer transformed the massive railway depots into hundreds of new apartments. But not everything was retrofitted, and the hundred year old retaining wall from the railroad was looking pretty shabby:

Tired of seeing ancient, rotted paint flakes flapping in the wind, residents of the University Commons, The University Village Lofts, and the University Village Townhouses worked with Alderman Danny Solis's Art in Public Places program to clean up the wall and create a unifying piece of art for this new neighborhood. That's where I came in.

The project started with a huge amount of research. I worked with the Mural on Morgan committee and local historians to better understand the themes they were going for. Then I worked out a design concept that layered significant data patterns, historical figures, and vignettes of their daily work. I scrounged around the Chicago History Museum's archives for all kinds of neighborhood maps and surveys. It reinforced just how awful my handwriting is...

These old drawings provided me with beautiful, meaningful patterns for the architecturally-themed background to my mural. Check out the stunning detail on the hand-drawn insurance map below:

I also dug up some old Eastern-European posters, which were great resources for some of the text that I used as graphic elements. The open air markets had large Jewish, Russian, and Irish populations at one time, so I wanted to use those foreign alphabets to invoke the signage of a busy multicultural market.

With all that historical information, I built up a visual timeline with the different layers showing people, their work, and the resulting development of the whole neighborhood. The whole area grew from the rail yards, so the first of the work images was a settlers cabin (eventually cut from the design,) followed closely by the rail lines:

Here is the final design (split into two halves.)

Finally, it was time to paint. A lot. You can see the completed 'work/activity' imagery below, which I painted into the silhouettes of the historical figures who made these things happen. The line work for those figures came next, and the background blueprint elements were last.

This great photo was taken by Margaret Vincent. Check out her work!

After burning through every single episode of Snap Judgement and 99 Percent Invisible ever released, I finished it up.

It was a great way to spend September, especially given the brutal winter that sucker-punched us soon after. I'm glad I used bright colors...

Thanks again to the Mural on Morgan committee, and the many supporters and donors who funded this project! More of these big works are coming soon...

The Big O

At Platform Studio's we've been busy getting ready for our May 11 opening. Having an Oprah Network film-crew do a segment about us certainly doesn't hurt! Pretty funny to hear the great and powerful Oprah talking about our figure drawing group (shameless plug: 7-9:30 Tues. Wed. Thurs.)

Check it out here.

Here are some images for a mural proposal. Funny thing about moving into the big city is that suddenly I am interested in landscapes...

Click them to see the full-sized foliage.

Ink and brush work.

The South-Lawn Icon

Hello 2012! I keep hearing that this year is our last, so I figured I'd look back a year, rather than forward...

I was invited to participate in The Callbox Project in Washington D.C. a while back. I'd been fascinated by the religious tradition of icon paintings for a while. This project was the right opportunity to paint some icons of my own.

I'd once met a young man who spent a while in prison. He didn't turn into an animal, join a gang, or hatch a "so-crazy-it-might-just-work" escape plan. He taught himself to read so that he could help his daughter with school once he returned. He kept is head low, got out, and was living a very normal life when I met him. I was deeply impressed by his accomplishment, which he achieved despite his deeply unhelpful circumstances at the time.

Kate Clark, the formidable artist and project curator, installed my work across from the White House...not bad! Thanks Kate.

One box is closed, and one box is open.

Yep. That is a Top-Ramen offering.