Who needs a drink?

Here is an invitation to a formal cocktail party. Personally, I don’t think there are enough formal parties any more, with a strong emphasis on formal. When I think of formal cocktail parties, I think of a scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I wish all parties were as cool and swingin’ as that one. Letting Holly Golightly influence me for this project, I created an retro-ish illustration based off the part where she unknowingly places her  ridiculously long cigarette holder in another party goers hat and it flames up. Hopefully it was a delightful little homage for anyone who knows that movie.

I used this scene as a reference.

My sketch of the eye patch guy.

And the rest of the scene.

Closeups, showing my inked lines over the pencil sketch.

The final. Just black and white xerox on colored paper, cheap. You can see it changed a bit from the original drawing, different treatment of the flame and smoke—and some repositioning of the characters.

To top it off and add a splash of color, I used a red marker to hand color the flame in the hat on each card.

Annual report time

Another annual report.

Wedding invitations. Mazel Tov!

I was recently hired to design wedding invitations for friends Michael and Rita. It was a traditional Jewish ceremony and it was fun learning about Jewish traditions during the research phase. The couple are also intrigued by Arabic mosques, so part of the influence came from Spanish archway of the Mosque of Córdoba. The Hebrew names on the invitation were tricky and the couple of Hebrew typefaces I tried didn’t have some of the characters just right. There are various subtleties that got lost or changed. In the end I just traced a screen shot of Rabbi-approved text to make sure they were correct.

The wedding itself was really neat and had an Old World feel. It was also very celebratory and didn’t bore my pants off. I like Jewish weddings.

The concept roughly sketched out for all pieces.

Refined a little, with a sampling of the color scheme.

Then I began the final drawing to get proportions and placement down.

Here the art is scanned in and I began tracing it digitally.

All traced and art elements added, it just needs typesetting.

A few posters

Some recent posters I’ve designed for good, local happenin’s.

New Mexico sketchin’

Some sketches from a recent road trip to New Mexico. We meandered through western Kansas, southern Colorado and New Mexico. Oh, and the panhandle of Oklahoma.

Our camp spot area in San Isabel National Forest, in southern Colorado.

Some mountains in NM.

More mountains. The view from a hike I went on.

Ramone, an old artist we met in a little village in NM, at his gallery.

More mountains.

Entrance to the house we stayed at in outside of Santa Fe.

The Prairie Acre CD

I had the pleasure of designing another CD package for another great band, The Prairie Acre.  They play old time music and are highly skilled at it . They may also be the nicest people in the state. Watch them play.
They are also good friends and fun to work with. Meetings were a breeze. We would talk about the design, talk about music, drink some wine. My kind of meetings. Thanks for the libations Greg.

They had hired Matt Needham to take the photos, so it was nice working with quality photography.

Notes after first meeting. Whats this you say? what are these word things in your sketchbook?

Now we sketch.

And sketch.

Here are some of the hand drawn elements after a concept had been chosen.

The art for the disc was based on an old center label of a 78 record that one of the band members grandmother recorded.

Simple invitation

A simple invitation for a fundraising event for the Lawrence Preservation Alliance. I took an architectural sketch made by an Architectural Historian, scanned it and cleaned it up and made it invite-ready. After that, some reserved, clean typesetting. Printing them several up on a page and in classic black and white saved a lot of money on the production end.

The original drawing.

Cleaned up and digitized.

North Carolina Sketchbookin’

We went to North Carolina for 5 days, Blue Ridge Mountains. Mountains are swell. I did a few sketches during my out-and-abouts and while hiking.

We visited a mountain man type, who lived on the mountain for the past 40 years growing medicinal plants. Of course he had a white beard. This is the first cabin he built for shelter when he first "settled his claim." It looks like a cupcake.

A view from atop a mountain.

An old outdoor chimney that was at the top of another hike.

A view from a large porch of where we were staying. The Blue Ridge Assembly was an old YMCA camp built in in the mountains, way back yonder in 1916 or abouts, .

Random people that we met or saw that stuck in my head and I sketched on the flight back.

More randoms.

Sketched on a paper-thin piece of cedar from my cigar. This was my memory of Joe the Mountain Man.

King of the world

A quick post about a poster.

This is the version that the client wanted to use in the end.

This was my favorite version however. I thought the ship being pulled up via seagulls, a la James and the Giant Peach was a nice visual and went with the name of the show. The client wanted the ship to be sinking though. What can I say, I am a the-ship-is-half-out of-water" kind of person.

Lucha Libre La La La

For this project I was to design a poster for a little local music festival, Killkenny Music Festival. It is an all-day event that raises money for the local roots music school, Americana Music Academy. There is a park in town called Southpark, that’s where they get the name, I assume. It seems like the obvious reasoning. This is the 3rd year and they had the theme of “Tres Kenny”. A Lucha Libre mask was definitely called for. That was actually their idea, I like it when the client brings some ideas to the table. I burn less brain cells. I drew everything out, then scanned in the drawings and went from there. My concept had the sewn designs of the mask form the shaped of a guitar and 2 music notes, because it is a music festival after all. It sounds like crazy talk, but concepts are a sweet thing.

2. Up close and personal.

3. I drew all the text out on one page, then I placed it where I wanted in Illustrator.

4. How the mask was "layered" in illustrator after I scanned in the art and separated sections.

5. These 2 parts were combined to create the background.

6. La final.