Folio Weekly: October 2014

Cover illustration (and some interior spots) for Folio Weekly, Oct 29 - Nov 4 issue, featuring Charlie Crist and Rick Scott.  Design and art direction by Shan Stumpf.

Three Ridiculous Wishes

"Three Ridiculous Wishes" is a French fairytale from the late 1600s by Charles Perrault, as well as the basis for a recent assignment with the Cobblestone group. Long story short, a down-on-his-luck woodcutter is granted three wishes by Zeus (aka Jupiter) and ends up using them inadvertently and foolishly while arguing with his wife at home about the mere existence of these wishes. On the second wish he accidentally wishes for a stifling sausage or black pudding upon his wife's nose (depending on the version) and when all hell breaks loose he finally concedes that he must use his third and final wish to restore his wife back to normal.

Food Illustrations Compilation

Over many issues of My Table Magazine I've been doing a spot illustration for the "Tasting the Town" segment where the author visits five different establishments to order the same thing and write about it. I compiled all the illustrations together and thought they looked pretty interesting side by side - almost postage stamp-like even - and so here they are along with last month's topic "pretzels."

Frontier Kids: Appleseeds Magazine

Had a lot of fun with this illustration so I decided to share it here. In the March issue of Appleseeds magazine the assignment called for a vertical full spread illustration to accompany some informational copy about what life was like for kids on the western frontier and what kind of chores it would have involved. We decided the image should of course depict many of the chores for boys and girls mentioned in the text (chopping wood, tending to animals/gardens, chasing vermin, etc.) as well as be something that would work in a long vertical format.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a serious affinity for the era of American westward expansion. Really, I have an affinity for any era, but the old West stands out to me because of the visuals - it was untamed rolling landscapes of plains, mountains, grasslands, lakes, forests, and deserts engulfing the tiny people and families who endured the hardships in hopes of new beginnings. For this illustration, I wanted to go the opposite, meaning make the kids seem bigger than life against the landscape as if they're overcoming it rather than being defeated by it. Of course once you think about larger than life figures on the western frontier, you immediately think of Thomas Hart Benton, right??

I used Benton as inspiration for this assignment, especially in the way that he composed his murals around the hard right angles of architecture (see image below.) I knew I had to deal with a rectangular box of some sort in the middle of my composition, so it just made sense. From there it was just about adding a modern children's illustration touch to it to help bring to life the text.

Kids on the Frontier

Design and layout by Appleseeds Magazine

Thomas Hart Benton

Charles Goodyear

Here's a cropped portion of an upcoming illustration of Charles Goodyear accidentally discovering the process of vulcanization. Experimented with using more crosshatching on this one than I normally would to give it that look that art reproductions had during the time of the Industrial Revolution.

Ken Griffey Upper Deck Rookie Card

Ahhh, the nostalgia of baseball card collecting. I remember when Upper Deck first came out it was considered high end because it had the fancy hologram on the card. And remember how everyone thought seeing young Ken Griffey Jr.'s smily face appear from behind that foil cover would be the key to their retirement??  It was like winning a mini lotto.  If there's one thing we can learn from the 90s, it's that anything that claims to be a collector's item will never actually ever be a collector's item in the decades that follow. Yes, that means you too, comic books with the chromium variant covers....

Red Sox World Series Champions 2013

Compiled a team portrait after the finish of the World Series. Didn't go to any of the games but I did go walk around Kenmore Square and Fenway before the start of Game 6 just to sort of check out the energy, since I'd never been anywhere that has hosted a World Series. There was so much excitement in the air, kind of reminded me of college at UF on the mornings and afternoons before the big games, which at that time were vs. Tennessee or Florida State.

Prints are available if you're interested!

Recently also discovered a cool blog that collects interesting sports-related design run by graphic designer Tim McCarthy called HEYSPORT. Check it out, there's a lot of really good creative design that goes into sports and sports branding that you probably didn't even realize. Also for you basketball afficionados there's DOUBLE SCRIBBLE (ahh, a nice reference to a game from my childhood...thanks Konami) a Tumblr blog that collects basketball illustrations and sketches.

Knowing Your Client

Business editorial illustration about getting to know your clients ahead of time before meeting them. As with most business principles, it's easier said than done!

David Beckham Retires

Hard to believe today was the last game of Beckham's 20-year playing career - end of an era no doubt.  It's rare to see an athlete transcend pop culture beyond galactic standards, while actually being a significantly, relevant player.  And when you look at clips of MLS from 2007 before Beck's arrival there were just a handful of amateurish-looking teams playing in paltry college stadiums or vacant, oversized NFL arenas with depressing, faded yardage lines.  It was fun, but not many people took it seriously.  Investors, sponsors, casual American fans, and foreign players just kind of wrote it off as minor league in a major way.  To say Beckham had nothing to do with the rapid growth and global interest in MLS over the next five years would be delusional.

It's fun to be able to say I saw him play live once - when the Galaxy played here in New England back in 2011.  To commemorate his last official professional game, I did this quick portrait today.

Orlando Weekly Cover: May 2013

For the cover illustration in this issue of Orlando Weekly, I was asked to bring to life a simple concept: a headshot of a really excited guy with paint splattered on one side of his face and a mini golf course on the other. There's really a whole slew of ways one could go about illustrating that, so as you might imagine I had some fun with this one.

"FRINGE" refers to The Orlando International Fringe Theater Festival which is a "14-day-festival that is founded on the concept of offering 100% unjuried, 100% uncensored, 100% accessible theatre, music, dance, and art to all types and ages where 100% of the box office ticket sales go directly back to the artists within The Fringe. The Orlando Fringe is the longest running Fringe Festival in the United States, celebrating 22 years as “Orlando’s most unique cultural experience”.

(special thanks to Nathan F'in Smith for snapping this pic for me down in Orlando)

NBA Playoffs 2013

Some drawings while watching the playoffs...stay tuned, I'm probably going to do some other teams.

Spring 2013

Spring is in the air, which means NBA playoffs are impending (c'mon Celtics), NCAA March Madness is over (what happened Gators??), Major League Soccer is in full swing (pick up the pace Revs!), and baseball has begun. I follow too many sports already to be able to get into regular season baseball - but I've always been drawn to the look and culture of baseball. Here I was just experimenting with a suuuper editorial style that I never really work in and just did a self-portrait as an old timey baseball player for the subject matter.

Clint Dempsey: USA vs. Costa Rica

In one of the strangest soccer matches I think I've ever seen, the USA played Costa Rica last night in Denver in a World Cup Qualifier in a freakin' BLIZZARD.  It wasn't so bad at the beginning but the it just kept snowing and snowing and snowing with no end in sight to the point where a lot of the players were sporting inadvertent snow afros.  Fortunately Dempsey scored early off an Altidore shot rebound before it got ridiculous because by the second half it looked like the ball was barely even rolling across the field. I did up this little sketch today to commemorate the game.

HBS

Recently did some freelance work for The Harvard Business School by creating a couple series of quick illustrations to accompany video lectures by Clay Christensen. This is just one illustration from a lecture about the theory of flight, and how it applies to business theories. Very interesting stuff actually...reminded me of my old days in business school in Florida.

The Jay Cutler Emotions Guide

Something that came to mind as I was watching last night's Lions vs. Bears Monday Night Football game on ESPN (while simultaneously watching the presidential debate)...

Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan

Just started sketching around and experimenting today with some mark making using Shad Khan, the new owner of my hometown Jacksonville Jaguars, as the subject matter. I had just read the Forbes article about him, his background and his commitment and vision for the team moving forward. I can certainly admire someone who's life story is essentially based on not taking the easy way out and building up things from nothing, and the Jaguars are definitely the place to do that. Jacksonville has all the ingredients to be an internationally recognized city and sports franchise, but in terms of sports mediocre season after mediocre season has just deterred any of that from happening.

In the illustration I gave him an appearance of optimism - the same optimism I share about our team and what it can do for the progress of city that I grew up in.

Euro 2012 Spain Sketches

Did some quick sketches of some of Spain's football/soccer players while watching the Euro 2012 game today vs. France. These are some of the more high profile guys (Xabi Alonso, Andres Iniesta, Gerard Pique, Cesc Fabregas, Iker Casillas, Fernando Torres) but it'd be fun to draw out the rest of the team and complete the set.

By the strangest and coolest coincidence ever, we saw these guys when they were staying in Providence in Spring 2011 while staying in the same hotel as them during RISD's graduation weekend. Of course they obliterated the US team in an exhibition in Foxboro, but we got all kinds of good pictures with the players in and around the Providence Mall during that week.

Cobblestone Publishing: April Illustrations

Late posting! For the month of April I was happy to have produced illustrations for not just one, but two Cobblestone magazine titles - Odyssey and Faces. The Odyssey assignment called for a vintage-looking ad for geomedicine products by mail order. I like to think my general knowledge of science is pretty good, but I'll admit I had NO idea what "geomedicine" was; but I find learning something new is the beneficial side product of illustrating for a science magazine.

Faces Magazine is Cobblestone's world cultures topics publication for kids and was a new venue for me this month to my delight. The gig called for a series of narrative illustrations showcasing three ancient and witty Arabic folktales told from the point of view of a wise old man named Mullah, who also stars in each story as a character. The settings range from a restaurant, a lavish party, and the open desert. When you think about it, it's funny how so many ancient folktales around the world are based on either food or social statuses...

Odyssey Magazine: "The Perfect Storm"

For this month's Odyssey magazine I took on two illustrated stories as part of their "Perfect Storm" theme that ran through their entire magazine lineup.

"My Table" Magazine Spot Illustrations

To give an update on my regular My Table Magazine food spot illustrations, I wanted to post the most recent on in tearsheet form. The chocolate items featured in the article range from cocoa tarts to salt cupcakes, but for the illustration we decided to do a general assortment of lively chocolate products. Robin Barr Sussman writes the regular column, entitled "Tasting the Town." The closeup of the chocolate spot illustration is posted blow, along with last month's deliciously featured item - beef short ribs.