You're My Favorite 07

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Hi Blog, Happy New Year. 2010 was amazing, and I'm looking forward to 2011 with even more fervor and excitement. Over the holiday break I had time to go back into the series You're My Favorite. I don't know what the ultimate final number will be for this series. I imagine one day when I am an old man I will stare at these existing and future works and feel compelled to make one more.

You're My Favorite 06

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Hey Blog, here's the latest addition to You're My Favorite.

Also, I'm almost off my crutches. Dance floors beware.

You're My Favorite 05 and Recklessness

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Hello Blog. It's Thursday, and along with the latest piece from You're My Favorite, I've taken the liberty to post a few pages from the late Paul Arden's recent classic Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite. I often read it when the ghosts of self doubt creep in, and wanted to share some of my favorite pages from the section "The Case For Being Reckless".

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

You're My Favorite 04

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Hi Blog, I'm finishing the week off right, even if it's one-legged. The one positive with having a broken foot is that my good leg is flamingo status now.

You're My Favorite 03

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Hi Blog, another piece from You're My Favorite.

In unrelated news, I broke my foot on Sunday and will be hobbling around for a while. If I work hard enough, maybe I'll be the new Crutchmaster.

You're My Favorite 02

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Hey Blog. Here's another piece of You're My Favorite.

And check out the new Kids With Candy. Casey and Monique do it big as usual.

You're My Favorite

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Greetings Blog. This has been one of those sleepless kinds of weeks. I've been working on an advertising project, which unfortunately I can not divulge details about. I've still been working on some personal work and started a couple pieces for a personal series called You're My Favorite. This is the first.

The Illustrated Urban Dictionary pt. 2

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Sup Blog. Here are two more additions to the Illustrated Urban Dictionary series. Someone close suggested that I do "swagger", which made me laugh. Enjoy.

The Illustrated Urban Dictionary pt. 1

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Hey there Blog. This week went by at the speed of light. I thought it would have been slower, since Conan is now in exile until September. Anyway, I'm starting a new personal series entitled The Illustrated Urban Dictionary. Basically, I'm cherry picking terms that I like from the Urban Dictionary and illustrating them. It's a great mental exercise and I don't think anyone's done it before (correct me if I'm wrong).

I started out with two random ones (the fact that they both begin with an "F" is a coincidence). Also, I'm not doing it alphabetically, because that would be ridiculous.

Wren Bjorg Preview

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Good evening Blog. I'm leaving for Texas on Wednesday and want to get this post in for the week. I recently joined an artist collective called Wren Bjorg in which the participants start pieces and mail them off to other participants until all the work has been fully collaborated upon. I finally found a moment to begin my pieces and work on the ones sent to me (Thanks Shannon!). So here's a preview before I mail them off into the ether. The black & white drawings are my starters, while the others were initiated by the wonderful Shannon Rankin, which I subsequently worked on.

Also, I must thank the lovely and freakishly talented Gina Shiappacasse for being so generous and patient with me while drawing, and for putting up with my crippling indecisiveness.

"Buuut Do You Love Him?"

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What's up Blog. This is a new personal piece, and its pretty big (54" x 70"). For this I was definitely influenced by the looseness of my Jazz & Sketch night drawings. For my personal stuff I tend to let things ride more.

Anyway, I wanted to post before the weekend as I'll be disappearing for a couple of days. Next week is going to be much busier so I'm getting my kicks in before the craziness.

Later Blog.

The Least Terrible*

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Good afternoon Blog. Its been an odd jumble these past two weeks, filled with Big Apple Comic-Cons, sustainable parties, and tying up loose ends on open jobs. I'm looking forward to moving onto another big personal piece and some design gigs that just came my way.

The images above are from last night's Jazz & Sketch session at the Society of Illustrators. The awesomely scary thing about being there (and being a young illustrator), is that you definitely feel like you're part of a legacy going back for decades, when illustration was a much more venerable practice (it still is of course, but like everything, times change).

These sketches were done very quickly, with my best effort to quiet my lizard brain. I did a bunch, but I thought these were the least terrible*. Also, I was in the back so I missed a couple of AWESOME angles, but oh well.

So that's about it. Later Blog.

* Two things I constantly ask myself are "Is this terrible?" and "How do I be less terrible?".

We're All Guilty Of It

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Hey Blog. I'm kicking a minor cold that I had all week, but I'm pretty sure I'm over the hump. I have to work on a poster this weekend so that's good news. Also, I finally saw Moon, directed by Duncan Jones and starring Sam Rockwell. Great flick, it really hearkens back to a 60's vibe. Great stuff.

Today's drawing is just a thought that I had yesterday while in a conversation. Done very quickly, that's pretty much the point.

I'll see you next week, hopefully with a head less full of phlegm.

*update* If you're curious, I did adjust the image (Probably because I was thinking too hard about it).

Forget It, Forget It, Forget It

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Sup Blog, evening post apparently. I'm working on a couple of branding jobs right now and am trying to find time to do more personal work. Here's a piece that I recently finished (and actually put on my Altpick site first). Its a large piece, and measures 60in wide x 38in tall. I'm making it an imperative to work larger as this piece is meant for exhibition. Its titled "Forget It, Forget It, Forget It", and feel free to make of it what you will.

In other news, its hot in NYC.

The Money Shot

Hi Blog. So this Thursday night is the event at Die Fabrik (38 Howard st. & Broadyway, 5th Floor). It's gonna be a lot of fun and I'm going to put up my Let There Be Stuff series, along with a couple of other pieces. I wanted to make a new piece for it so I hammered it out over the last few days and I'm pretty proud of it.

When I was a kid, I would always try to draw hot chicks, but they never turned out right. So usually the drawings I would make were Marvel Handbook-esque drawings of superheroes more suited to display their costume designs than their inherent ability to kick ass. I digress. For a while now I've just wanted to draw a hot chick, so I'm using this show as the forum for that, or maybe I've been spending too much time with Ray Jones.

It's really colorful but simple and kinda dirty without being overtly dirty. Or maybe it is overtly dirty and I'm not acknowledging that. Also, its 30in x 49.5in, so its also pretty big. I'm looking forward to picking it up from Duggal tomorrow.

So that's about it Blog. I need to get back to a job and I'll see you on Thursday.

R.I.P. Vibe Magazine

Happy Daddy Day

So its Sunday and it started raining again?!? What the hell?

Quick bloggin' today. Its Father's Day here in America and in honor of that I'm posting some drawings me and my dad did at a restaurant yesterday while taking a break from looking for a poker table and drinking copious amounts of booze (ya know, typical son/dad type stuff). He's an architect for a large architectural firm in NYC and I fondly remember him sitting at his drafting table hunched over some blueprints while chain smoking. At the time I was probably 7 years old and cracking up at the Tracey Ullman Show. Although my comedic tastes have changed (Matt Groening, you smart smart man), I still think that image in my head is infinitely cool.

My dad's drawing of his 'dream house'

His portrait of me.
My portrait of him doing a portrait of me.

Happy Father's Day!

Some Pictures of Somethings

Hi Blog, quick entry today. I am notorious for not being a "photo guy" in that I rarely ever use my digital camera. Only recently have I started using it for things, like my roadtrip (photo albums available Here and Here). Anyway, here's a small number of pics from the gallery where "Let There Be Stuff" is hanging as well as the SVA portraits.





I know, I'm terrible. Anyway, that's it. I finished a piece for Business Week recently and I'll be posting that soon. Also, the Altpick Decks are here! So as Jack Donoghy would say, get yours.

An M.F'n.A. Preview

Sup Blog, its going to be a harrowing next few days. What with getting ready for the SVA MFA Illustration Thesis Show and everything. I've seen the test prints from Duggal and they look pretty great. These are the biggest I've ever worked, with a couple of the pieces being around 20x36in. I'm going to attempt a sixth piece, and hopefully I can get it printed in time before the gallery doors open on May 1st. My series is called "Let There Be Stuff", and its about a lazy deity. I don't want to say more because I want people to pull out from it whatever they want. Many thanks to Mario Hugo for his incredibly discerning eye. He was a great resource during this entire process.


Also, there's another preview up on my Altpick page (cross promotion is a good thing). Speaking of Altpick, the decks are on their way and they should be in the states by next week.

And I know that I haven't updated my main website in a while, but when the insanity of graduation recedes I'm going to do a big update. So look forward to that.


That's it for now blog, see you at the show!

The Handsomeness of Randomness

Hey Blog, what it is. I've been fairly busy lately, yet here we are. The final semester (!) is going pretty well, and I'm onto a good start for the second part of my thesis. I've realized a few things and I've created a loose narrative to focus the pieces more. I'm not going to post them yet, as I want a few in the can before I start declaring them "finals". Also, I've taken on a couple of outside projects that will occupying a decent amount of my spare time, but they're well worth it. One of them is a promotional poster for SVA's MFA Illustration Thesis Show in May. Its a large collaborative effort, and difficult to pull off, but the artists involved are so ridiculously talented that I don't see it failing. In fact, I'm usually dumbstruck as to the talent in the room sometimes. I see this as a last group hoorah before we go our separate ways into the ether of commercial art.

Anyway, since I'm not going to show new stuff at the moment, I thought I'd post a few gems that I've overlooked for this blog due to either time constraints or wrongful neglect.


First up is the spec sheet for the Alternative Pick's annual Double Deck that went out to the participating artists last Summer/Fall. Its fairly simple, but I dig the colors. Also, its worth noting that the type for the cards itself changed during the creation process but definitely for the better. On a sidenote, the previous year's version had MUCH more copy. When I put this together, I forgot about the previous year's copy and almost wondered why I had so much room to work with. However, Maria (Altpick's founder) was all about it fortunately, and added only a couple of essential notes. Once again you're a savior Maria!


This is a piece I did for Timeout New York in October. Once again Jeff Quinn gave me an opportunity to expand the pre-existing image into a much larger panel. There's no punchline, and its not funny, but this might be my favorite of the few Photo Finishes I've done. Also, note the presence of newly elected senator Al Franken (I don't know you Norm Coleman, but Al has given the world laughs since before I was born. What have you done?). Please forgive the scan btw, I was looking frantically for the original file but probably deleted it by accident; but for some reason not having the original makes me feel like a real illustrator.


This last piece goes back to '07, when I was on the train heading to the Big Apple Circus. A homeless man had fallen asleep on the train, and his boots left a large pile of dirt on the seat. I thought the image was too powerful to not capture somehow. In hindsight, I truly wish I had woken him up to show him.

Anyway, that's it for now. The new pieces will be up soon, but until then, peace Blog.

Spittin' Venom for the '09

Sup Blog. I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year. For me, the off-time has been both relaxing and frustrating, as I have a serious love/hate relationship with deadlines. Therefore, with no deadlines there is nothing to love or hate, which sucks. I turn into a fleshy mess of pent-up artistic frustration.

Anyway, I was involved in an annual Secret Santa through elfster.com and my recipient ended up being my friend Dexter. A few of things to know about Dexter:

1. he's hilarious and acerbic
2. he loves glorifying himself in a non-douchey way (b/c he's a really good guy)
3. his ability to NOT be a douchebag makes you want to feed into his self-glorification upon request

So lucky me, he's my recipient. His gift wish was to have a 16 page homemade comic about himself featuring Venom, Snarf, and a celebrity of my choosing. This is funny because I was the only artist involved in the Secret Santa, and I just happen to draw his demanding ass out of luck. So, knowing that I can't simply do a 16 page comic without getting COMPLETELY caught up and anal retentive about it, I opted to do a portrait of him AS VENOM.


I also had no reference other than some high school photos, so he has his old faded buzzcut and hoop earring which, in the 90's, was awesome. This portrait was also weird for me (besides the obvious weirdness) b/c I DON'T do portraits, and I DON'T draw in a comic book style. So there was a lot of artistic fakery going on. But overall I dig it, even though it doesn't feel like I did it.

Anyway, that's it for now, and I'll be back soon with some really serious and artsy fartsy stuff. Because that's whats really important in these gravest of times.

Nappy Yew Hear!