Harrowing Tales from Catholic School

I started to write about my high school Latin teacher as a grad school exercise and it led to this. Click on the first image to scroll through the whole story bigger.

Drunken octopus wants to fight!

An illustrator's dream come true: getting to create a "drunken octopus wants to fight" hook.

Many layers of Shakespeare

Here's a recent assignment that may have broken my all-time record for number of layers. I realize that there are artists out there who scoff at the idea of a mere 6o layers. But they are creating epic, textured, heavily modeled artwork and I am a guy who mostly works in flat color. Shown here are part of the 60+ layers composited into a mere 16. Shakespeare's head alone is six layers.

This accompanies an article about an event where people performed every single one of Shakespeare's sonnets. It was inexplicably NOT PHOTOGRAPHED (in this day and age of everyone having cameras at all times). So they hired an illustrator. Isn't that quaint?

Star Wars Uncut: Director's Cut

Two hours of Sweded Star Wars Episode 4. My bits are scattered throughout: R2D2 and C3P0 climbing into the escape pod and getting launched, Obi Wan, the droids, Han and Chewie sneaking around the Death Star, and the death of Biggs. These three clips are featured in previous posts on this blog, they can be accessed by clicking the hyperlinks. There are many wonders to behold throughout the film, some funny, some ingenious, all sincerely made by fans. Delighted to see my friend's young son made the cut as well.

ASFMWLHG&FH

Back to School

So last year at the summer house I did a quick drawing of my seven-year-old nephew interacting with characters from the Pokemon universe. It was done with colored pencils, took about twenty minutes, and got stuck to the fridge and I kind of forgot about it. Then last week his five-year-old brother asked for a drawing featuring him. He asked to be inserted in the Sesame Street universe. That drawing took more like an hour and was done with pencils and watercolors. Then being good cousins they asked when my own two kids would get their drawings. Never mind that they are jaded teens. So my daughter asked for a Glee-themed drawing and my son asked for Harry Potter. I did the Glee drawing (because I love my daughter) and then went a little overboard on the Harry Potter drawing (because I love Harry Potter. And my son.) Here's a detail. I am always surprised when I get a likeness right in a caricature, as I have no good system to achieve that. Here I got a good likeness of Professor Lupin. He is my favorite adult in the series, so maybe that has something to do with it, but mostly when I get a likeness right it's luck.

The Devil is in the Details

The sketch was done on a plane ride on my way to see my family in Iowa. It was photographed with my low-end camera phone and sent to a laptop where I colored it with Photoshop in a hotel room while my kids swam. Then I did the final in scratchboard, scanned and colored it once I got back home. It doesn't make me miss the good old days.

The article itself is fascinating. It is about the power of the mind on appetite. An experiment was conducted where one group was shown a "sinfully indulgent" treat and one group was shown a "low calorie healthy alternative" treat. Both were the same exact milkshake. The "unhealthy" treat elicited greater feelings of hunger than the "healthy" one, and after consuming the shake, those who had the "unhealthy" treat reported feeling more full and satisfied than those who had the "healthy" treat.