Mamma'Zu Anniversary Card

This was done for Mamma'Zu's anniversary party this past January. I'm not sure what this image had to do with Mamma'Zu's anniversary, that's one of the things I love about Ed and working with him.

Keswick Horse Show

These were done around 5 years ago for Tyler Darden when he was still at Virginia Living Magazine. Tyler was always great to work with and as I've stated before I attribute it to him being an illustrator as well as an Art Director.

Tyler thought it might be fun for me to take a journalistic - sketch book approach on this job and attempt to make it look like I drew them on location at the Keswick Horse Show which is just east of Charlottesville, Va. and takes place every May. However I didn not draw them on location. I took my camera and snapped a bunch of photos.

I then selected a few and drew from them directly with a ball point pen so as to preclude me from being able to make corrections in the hopes of giving them a sense of immediacy that you might get from drawing on location.

The ones that are colored were done in photoshop.

What we were trying to do with these was to give the viewer a behind the scenes look at what takes place at a horse in the barns, before the horse and rider make their appearance in  the show ring.

One of my brothers is the course designer and technical adviser for this horse show and this provided me with easy access to anything I needed for this job which I appreciated. Thanks Blake.

Is it Summer yet?

This job was for Justin Vaughan of Richmond Magazine for their summer camp supplement. I did a cover for it that was your basic depiction of kids at camp engaging in fun, innocent outdoor activities and playing pranks on each other. It has an intentionally sweet, retro, sensibility.

A few more pages in there's a corresponding illustration for an article titled "Camp Culture; Songs, Ghost Stories and the Great Outdoors." which provided me with some elements that we're a bit more loaded to play with. Being a kid who loved telling and listening to ghost stories whether or not it was around the camp fire, I decided to focus on the ghost detail and luckily for me Justin was OK with it.

Thanks for taking a look.

Garden City or Bust

This is a spot I did for Lee Hawkins in the most recent issue of R-HOME magazine. The article, by Sara Jackson, is about the "frightening decline of pollinating insects over the last 30 years in the U.S." It states that in Va. alone the  "bee population has fallen nearly 70 percent in the last 30 years, from nearly 100,000 in the mid-70's to around 35,000 in 2011." She then offers 5 suggestions that we as back yard gardeners can implement to lure the pollinators back.

First rough sketch.

Second tight sketch.

Inked line work.

Colored line work.

                                            
                                                                                                                         

Finished spot.

                                               

                                                Thanks for taking a look.