Summer Movie Preview trading cards

God how I love the old movie trading cards of the late '70s and '80s. I love how simple they were, the little logos they would put on the cards and the very cheesy captions they would use to describe what was going on the picture. 
With that little bit of nostalgia in mind, I used it to create trading cards of this year's crop of summer movies to illustrate The Salt Lake Tribune's annual Summer Movie Preview Guide.


Below is the cover. Click on it for a better look:

Just had to throw in a nod to one of my favorite artists Darwyn Cooke with the New Frontier Green Lantern action figure! There was a 6 x 3 ad on the bottom of it, but for this I cropped it off because it was pretty damn ugly.


And here's the gargantuan list of all the summer movies. I was fortunate enough to get a full color double truck this year. That made me extremely happy:

Again, click on it to see it larger.
If you would like to read Sean P. Mean's stories for the summer movie guide, click here.


It was a lot of work making the cards, but since it was such a geeky thing to do, I had a blast doing it.
Here are a few of my favs that I did. They are sized down to trading card size so feel free to click, save and print them out on a nice card stock for yourself. Collect them all! 

Oh, and by the way, the card numbers on the Thor, Captain America, Green Lantern, Super 8, Rise of the Apes, Cars 2, and X-Men cards are Easter Eggs. I tip my hat to anyone who can figure out all of them!

In This Week cover — Spring Arts Preview

Had a lot of fun designing and illustrating the cover for In This Week's Spring Arts Preview. There will be a lot of Shakespeare going on this spring so we decided to stick with that theme. 

Pin of Art 2011

It's that time of year again — The Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Utah are holding another Pin of Art auction benefiting their wonderful organization. For those that don't know, they auction off retired bowling pins that have been painted and decorated by several artists from across the country. All the proceeds for this auction go directly to BBBS of Utah.
I outdid myself this year with my entry "The Art of Adoration." It took me the better part of my spare time in February to make it and I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out.
If you are interested in bidding on it or any of the other pins up for auction, go here to find out more about each one. The auction starts on them today (March 11) and concludes March 18. Good luck and happy bidding!
Here are several shots of my bowling pin, featuring a love struck robot wooing a space cadet with his artwork. My apologies, I didn't do a lot of behind the scenes photos for it, but if you'd like to learn about my process check out my blog entry about last years piece.

I did the Space Cadet's arms out of Sculpey and the Robot's arms out of dowel rods and PVC pipe connectors. 

Sundance Film Festival Illustrations

For this year's Sundance Film Festival tab put out by The Salt Lake Tribune, my boss Colin Smith came up with a fun theme that would play right to my style. The idea was to make the Sundance survival guide look and feel like it came from the "Duck and Cover" era of the '50s and '60s.
Through my boss' art direction and design, the theme is brilliantly carried all the way through with articles supported by a lot of illustrations I did for it. I don't have PDF's of the pages just yet, but I'll post them as soon as I do.
In the mean time, here's a few of the illustrations I did for the section. It was a blast to help put together.


Here is the cover illustration I did with Festival Man atop a pile of the poor folks that didn't read the Survival Guide: 

And here is the final cover with Colin Smith's type treatment:

Below is Mr. Reel and Miss Direction. They gave tips on how to survive the festival throughout the guide.

And of course the main reason locals go to Sundance is to see celebrities. Because, you know, it's not like there's films to watch or anything like that there. *sarcasm*
On our celebrity watch page, I created a few portraits based on celebs that are expected to be a the festival. I decided to make them slightly more realistic than the rest of the illustrations so they would be recognizable at a small printed size. 

Paul Rudd

Zoey Deschanel

Rob Lowe

Jeremy Piven 

Emily Mortimer

Elizabeth Banks

Toby Maguire

There's a lot more stuff I did for the guide too. One I get PDF's, I'll do another post about it.

Raiders of the Lost 'Raiders' painting

I thought I had lost it for good. Accidentally thrown out and gone the way of the landfill. But I was wrong. Right before I went back home for Thanksgiving, my mom and daughter found it. It was hiding underneath the dark, treacherous and claustrophobic cavern simply known as "under the bed." The long lost object that I had desired and thought to be gone was my "Raiders of the Lost Ark" painting that I had started my freshmen year in college but abandoned because of the lack of time to finish it. I found out very quickly how little spare time I would have while earning a BFA and ended up using it to concentrate on my portfolios for school. After school, life continued to be busy and I kinda forgot about it. When I remembered it  several years later, it couldn't be found. Mainly because we were looking for it in the wrong places. The whole time it was sitting underneath my old bed in my old bedroom, which is now occupied by my daughter when she visits and has dubbed it the "Princess Room."


Anyway, the painting:
"Raiders of the Lost Ark" is by far my favorite film and not having a Raiders poster, I decided I would just paint one. I wanted to do it in a bit of an homage to Drew Struzan, but add my own touch to it. I started it with gesso on illustration board (24" x 36") and then used acrylic for the rest. Here's how the painting is today, unfinished.

Indy looks kinda freaky with just the one eye painted there, doesn't he?
Here is the painting with the "Raiders" title card that I redrew and planned on using it as a template:

Here is a detail pic of what is the "most finished" portion of the paining:

I do plan on finally finishing it, now that I've found it. With time permitting, I plan on finishing it next year for "Raiders" 30th anniversary. Looking at it now, there's a lot of changes I want to make to it, like stuff to add to the background and also I found a pic of Indy I like better for it. So yeah, I'll be completely repainting him. While photorealistic portraits aren't a constant part of my style I can still do it, and I had forgotten just how much fun I have doing it. Finding this lost piece has given me some new inspiration, and new ideas for more Indy or "Raiders" paintings I'm jonesin' (*snicker) to do in the new year. 

Audrey Hepburn piece for my niece

My niece Katie graduated high school as valedictorian back in May and went on to attend Texas Tech this fall. I was unable to make it to her graduation, so I wanted to do something special for her. Especially since I dared her to end her commencement speech with "May the Force Be With You" and she delivered big time. "I would like a piece of your artwork to hang in my dorm" she said, when I asked her if there's anything she wanted.
I was more than happy to oblige.  I decided to paint a portrait of her idol, Audrey Hepburn, in my comic art style with minimum color. Since the one color I did use was pink, this is probably the girliest thing I've ever painted.  

Needless to say, she was very surprised when I finally gave it to her over Thanksgiving: 

Congrats again on making Valedictorian Katie and all of your success! 
We're very proud of you!

When We Last Left Harry Potter…

It's been a long time since I had done anything photorealistic. So when I originally pitched the idea to paint the cover to The Salt Lake Tribune's Harry Potter section instead of photoshopping it, I thought I had bit off more than I could chew. Fortunately, it was just like riding a bike — you never forget.
I had a blast painting it — even though I was working with a nasty cold at the time. It came out far better than I had hoped. 


Below is the finished piece, by itself. It's 15" x 20" acrylic on illustration board. The pictures after it are minimized step-by-step of my process.

The basic idea of the painting was to give fans and readers a short rundown of what happened at the end of the last movie, but in the style of an old pup fiction novel or serialized movie poster. Props to my wife for the idea!


First, after I figured out the size, I did a very (VERY) rough comp of how I wanted to compose the images. I went through several sketches before I decided on this one. Then I scanned it in, colored it and added text in Photoshop.

Then  I did several pencil sketches of Hogwarts, Harry, Ron, Hermione, etc., scanned those in and composed a tighter comp to use as a guide. I also used photos for certain elements like Draco, who was a last minute addition.

Then I printed out the comp and projected it onto a gessoed piece of illustration board. I lightly drew the basic features so I wouldn't get graphite smudged all over the gesso.

Then I proceeded to paint it using thinned acrylics. 

And here's the how the final piece appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune's special Harry Potter section. The final layout was done in InDesign.

Purrcasso Art & Craft Gala pieces

This year I've donated 2 pieces of art to the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society's 5th Annual Purrcasso Art & Craft Sale & Gala . The pre event gala will be held Saturday, November 6 fromm 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and the Art & Craft Sale will be from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, November 7. More info on the event that benefits the shelter and how to get there can be found at their website here or at the Purrcasso site. 
First is an 81/2 x 11 piece done in watercolor, gouache and ink on watercolor paper called "Astro Cat Turns His Enemies into Kitty Litter."

I also did a companion piece made from a Munny World DIY Vinyl toy.  He's called "Astro Cat in the Third Dimension." He stands about 6" tall.

A silent auction and art sale will be held Saturday night with music and entertainment and more arts and crafts will be sold Sunday. If you live in the San Francisco area, please be sure and check it out. You could get a really cool piece of art and help out a great cause at the same time!