2011 YNPN Chicago Celebration

Pictured above is Torey Malatia, a name well known to fans of NPR's This American Life. And the end of every episode, host Ira Glass credits Mr. Malatia for his management oversight of the show, followed by an out-of-context clip from that particular episode, usually designed to goof on Mr. Malatia in the most embarrassing manner possible.

Mr. Malatia was the guest of honor at the 2011 YNPN Chicago Celebration, and one of the people organizing the event contacted me, wondering if they could get a copy of my radio poster to give as a gift to him.

Being a fan of TAL, I was of course thrilled to help out, so I got a print made which YNPN had framed and gave to Torey at the ceremony. As you can see, he liked it!

Spider Lady

This "Spider Lady" piece was the illustration I submitted for a contest, which I mentioned on the blog a few days ago. Apparently, most people who voted didn't like it too much, because it received so many "0" votes (out of 0-5) that it didn't make past the first round of cuts. Ouch!

While I don't think is the best piece I've ever done or anything, I didn't think it was that bad ("0", really?), so I figured why not repurpose it for a faux-paperback book cover?

I never throw anything away!

From The Vault: Aretha - 2003

This was a conceptual piece that didn't quite work, but I still kinda liked it: I pictured the viewer standing on the other side of a recording booth, not hearing the tidal wave of sound being produced by Aretha Franklin's booming voice.

Of course, the whole port hole thing doesn't make a lot of sense, but I just kinda liked the way it looked.

"Spider Lady" Contest Entry!

The t-shirt manufacturer Threadless.com has a contest going called "Noir", where the winning entry is awarded $2,500 in cash and prizes. Above is my entry Spider Lady, so please head on over to the site and vote for my piece!

Note: you do have to have an account to vote, but its very easy to sign up, quick and painless. I'm worth it, right?

The Girl With The Violet Eyes

This faux-vintage paperback book cover started out as a simple tribute portrait to the late Elizabeth Taylor, but I thought it would be fun to turn it into one of those quickie bio books that paperback publishers frequently cranked out to take advantage of current events--the more salacious, the better.

Elizabeth Taylor starred in some of the most iconic films ever made, and won two Best Actress Oscars; but of course a paperback book publisher looking to make a quick buck would only focus on the divorces and the headlines. 16 pages of photos!

R.I.P., Elizabeth Taylor.

From The Vault: Anthony - 2003

I was asked to do this portrait of then-one-year old Anthony Serano, by two of my oldest friends, Paul and Sharon Serano, whom I've known since high school. They were doing a big party for their son's first birthday, so they wanted a nice portrait for the invites.

When I look at this, I sorta cringe because I think I botched it--the face came out okay, but the tones for the wisps of hair are all wrong. They're way too dark and solid and to me it just looks odd.

But this remains, in a way, one of my most significant pieces because I went to the party, something I don't normally do (I don't have kids, so kids parties are kinda ehhhh for me). While there, a friend came up to me and handed me a piece of paper with a name and a phone number on it.

It belonged to her friend Tracy, whom this mutual friend thought I should call. I was a little taken aback, not expecting such a thing. But I went home and after a day or two I did call Tracy.

After talking on the phone and via email for about two months, we went on a first date. That was eight years and eleven days ago, and we've been together ever since. That makes this piece the most rewarding I've ever done, or ever will do.

San Diego Union-Tribune Night & Day Cover

This is the cover to the March 17 edition of Night & Day, the free entertainment magazine that's part of the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper.

There's a new production of Cabaret starting up in San Diego, starring a local theater actress named Karson St. John playing what is usually a male role, that of the emcee. So I was asked to illustrate Ms. St. John in the traditional outfit of the character, using a monochromatic palate.

There wasn't much in the way of reference of Ms. St. John in costume, so I had to sort of splice different elements together and then add in the appropriate clothes. I came up with a couple of different poses, and the magazine settled on this one, with the Emcee looking directly at the viewer.

Once I had that established, putting together the final was relatively painless. It looks very smooth and very slick, and the art director made it even better by coming in closer and cropping the image a bit. All in all, I think it came out pretty well!

Tangled Vines

This faux-vintage paperback book cover started out as a mystery, but as I kept adding elements I realized it looks more like a 70's self-help/therapy-centric novel, like Ordinary People or something.

What the hell--if I can do a zombie romance novel, I can do one of these!

From The Vault: Dorothy Lamour - 2002

This is the last entry in the series of old Hollywood Glamour-type portraits I did back in 2002--Dorothy Lamour!

Ms. Lamour nowadays isn't one of the best known actresses from that era, but I loved her in all the Hope/Crosby Road movies; she seemed like such a good sport. She was mostly thought of her in her trademark sarong; here I glammed her up a bit.

I Married A Zombie

Definitely a change of pace for my faux-vintage paperback book cover series--this time its not a thriller or a nudie book. No, this one is straight up horror!

Okay, maybe not straight up--the title doesn't exactly inspire chills. Laughs, maybe, but chills, no. This came to me out of the blue via the tag line--I got the idea of this publisher wanting to "one up" the Val Lewton classic I Walked With A Zombie, by having someone not just walk with the zombie, but marry it!

So this one was created sort of backwards--tag line first, then title, then image. I wanted it to look really cheap and ragged, hence the (almost) monochromatic color scheme and generally unfinished look.

I originally had the bride character on here, screaming her head off, but it just didn't fit with the rest of the cover--and I just loved my herky-jerky zombie so much that I let him decide the overall feel of the cover. Zombies tend to get their way.

From The Vault: Audrey Hepburn - 2002

This was another entry in a series of old Hollywood Glamour-type portraits of leading ladies past and present--this time going with someone about as iconic as it gets, Audrey Hepburn.

Looking back at this one, I think I went a little too dark on the grey tone, which to my eyes doesn't match with Ms. Hepburn...but I wanted to keep the tones consistent piece to piece, so I was sort of stuck with it. All the white helps with the angelic look, something that matches quite well with Audrey Hepburn The Icon.

The Sunburnt Mistress

This faux-vintage paperback book cover came together astonishingly quickly, even for me...once I decided to give the model a darker skin tone, a decidedly tan one, the title and "story" behind it popped into my head, and the colors were almost a no-brainer, as well.

The original title was The Sunburnt Fool, which was the name of a fake smut book Hawkeye once claimed to be reading in an episode of M*A*S*H. But something about the word "fool" didn't line up with confident woman pictured, so I changed it a bit...which then made the tag line very easy to come up with.

I find doing one of these covers every single week keeps my skills sharp, and some weeks its a really struggle to come up with something that works (or comes close). Other weeks its like falling off a log...this was one of those!

From The Vault: Charlize Theron - 2002

This was another entry in a series of old Hollywood Glamour-type portraits of leading ladies past and present--this time going with someone current, Charlize Theron.

There were a couple in this series I thought didn't work at all, but this one's not too bad--I wanted Ms. Theron to look sexy (that's not difficult), but I didn't want the portrait to look too out of place with the old-timey style I was aiming for, nothing that would stick out alongside portraits of Crawford, Hepburn, etc.

ESPN Head Shots 2

This was the second batch of head shots that ESPN magazine asked me to do for their "Scale of 1 to 10" feature--fortunately this group saw print, in the 2/21 edition.

Because these portraits are running so small (each is about about 1.5" high), I could leave some detail out, which not only helped make sure I could get them done on time, but gave them a slightly different look than a lot of my other portrait work.

These were fun to do, I hope I'll be hearing from ESPN again soon!

Banned in Boston

This faux-vintage paperback book cover is just me purely goofing around...even though the font is really hard to read and I would probably never use it on a real job, once I tried it on the title I was determined to make it work. You can judge whether I pulled that off.

The "Boston" part of the title has no significance, I just liked the alliteration. Banned in Boise just doesn't have that same snap.

Hollywood Glamour: Joan Crawford - 2002

I did a series of old Hollywood Glamour-type portraits of leading ladies past and present in 2002, starting with this one, Joan Crawford--not sure why, since I was never that big a Crawford fan (compared to, say, Myrna Loy, Rosalind Russell, Theresa Wright, etc.). But start there I did.

After doing a whole run of these (which I'll post on subsequent From The Vault Fridays), I decided the design I was using was too ornate and busy, so I stripped all that out and went with this approach--just the name in simple type, white and grey, strategically placed. I think this worked much better, and put the focus back where it belonged--on those amazing faces.

Strip Till Dead

This would normally be where I'd post one of my faux-vintage paperback book covers...except this time around I'm posting an actual book cover!

This is Strip Till Dead, a crime novel by author Mike Gerrard. Mike contacted me a few months ago asking if I was interested in doing one of my vintage-y covers for his book, since that was the kind of look he wanted for his book, involving murder in the world of stripping. I said sure, and had the pleasure of reading the book while trying to come up with a concept.

This idea of the stripper's shadow being a police tape outline hit me a few chapters in, and at that point I was just finishing the book for pure pleasure, because I was pretty certain I knew this was the way to go.

Mike liked what he saw, and before long I had the finished version, which adorns the book. You can purchase it as an e-book on Amazon, which I recommend to anyone who likes a good old-fashioned crime thriller.

The Misadventures of Valentine Vickie

"I'm not sure, but I'm betting I'll have to come up with another one of these for Valentine's Day, the smuttiest of all holidays."--me, 12/6/10.

Well, here we are, and yes, the third of my trilogy (such a high-falutin' word) in my "Misadventures of..." series, which started with Halloween Harriet and then Mistletoe Missy, is here in time for Valentine's Day.

My first instinct is to say this is the last in the series ("Independence Day Irene" just doesn't have that alliterative snap), but of course I've said that so many times before I wouldn't trust me on that. I don't.

From The Vault: MBA Jungle Portraits - 2001

These are three portraits of a series I did for MBA Jungle magazine, back in 2001 when that mag was still around (from top to bottom: Jerry Stiller, Tara Reid, Bill Paxton).

They had a regular feature where a new celebrity each week would pick stocks, and then the magazine would measure those stocks' fortunes against other celebrities. Maybe it was this kind of "its all a big game" attitude toward our financial sector that got this country in the trouble we're in. But I digress...

Anyway, the feature was fun, and it was one of the first regular assignments I had gotten in this style, so it taught me a lot about getting things done on time and looking consistent. When I look at these now, I'm generally unhappy with them: the grey tones are too heavy and hard-edged, giving the likenesses a rockier look than I like. But, like a lot of things, it was a learning experience.

I did something like a dozen of these (some of which I have on my website proper), and then the magazine decided to drop me in favor of another artist. Eventually, MBA Jungle went belly up. Coincidence?

Charles Schwab On Investing - Winter 2010

Every time I post a project I did for Charles Schwab On Investing magazine, I always say the same thing--it was an enormous challenge and it was drastically different from all the other pieces I've done for them. But those cliches were extra true this time around!

I was asked to do four sports-centric illustrations for the Winter 2010 issue, using football, soccer, hockey, and sports-stadium-centric images to represent each of the articles' points. It required a lot of pre-planning and prep work to put together all the various elements, and since the images were all different I went for a cohesive set of colors for the minor elements and background, figuring that would help the four pieces spread across the article feel like they were of a piece.

The hardest one to do--and the one that was most satisfying when finished--was the last one, with the jumbotron. I generally don't get asked much to draw objects, or scenes like this, but I thought it came off pretty well.

I'm hard at work on another piece for CSOI, I'm happy to say!

Pick Your Poison

Another faux-vintage paperback cover, this one's just a crazy jumble of images--kind of like how you feel after you drank too much the night before AND EVERYTHING JUST SEEMS TO BE SO LOUD!

"Liquor and women...both led to death!"--one of my favorite taglines, if I do say so myself.

ESPN Head Shots

I was commissioned by ESPN magazine to do these eight portraits for their "Scale of 1 to 10" feature, and because of the MLK holiday it was a bit of a mad scramble to get them all done in time.

Because the final illustrations were only going to run at about 1.5" high each, I didn't have to get into as much detail as I normally would have, which helped getting them done on time and presented me with a challenge--capturing a decent likeness without being able to represent every little color and detail found in real life.

In the end, I thought they all came out pretty well, and ESPN was happy with the results. Unfortunately, as it was explained to me, the subjects of that week's installment changed and none of these illustrations ended up being used in the magazine! So it was either post them here or never let them be seen.

Like I said, ESPN was happy with what I did, so much so they commissioned me to do another set, for the next issue, which I'm hard at work on as I type this. I've done stuff for the magazine before, but its been a long while, so let's hope there's no last-minute snafu and this second set actually shows up on your local newsstand!

Peep Show

I've been wanting to do this sort of regimented, Mondrian-ish approach for one of my faux-vintage paperbacks, so it was just a matter of finding the right subject--both in model and book.

I normally don't have any sort of explicit nudity on these things, but it seemed appropriate for this cover, and when rendered in the extreme blacks and whites it felt more artsy than cheaply titillating--although that's the whole point of these, isn't it?

From The Vault: Bruce Hornsby - 2001

I don't remember the particulars of this piece, other than musician Bruce Hornsby was running a contest for artists to design his next tour t-shirt (I think) and the winning entry would get free tix to a concert and some other freebies, not to mention the chance for their work to be seen all over the country, if not the world.

I designed this piece, very soon after I started doing all my work digitally. Looking back over it now, it seems like a pretty weak illustration--not enough detail, and I don't know what the hell I was thinking not coloring his left sleeve, that just looks weird--but at the time it was where I was at. So I was happy with it, and sent it in.

A few weeks later, I was told that I didn't win the contest, but Bruce Hornsby was so impressed with it that I was sent an unscheduled, unplanned "second prize" award, which was free tickets to a show. To say I was thrilled was an understatement!

I never ended up claiming the tickets, because I never was that huge a Hornsby fan (I saw him once live, and while it was a fine show--he even whipped out a Dylan cover--it didn't inspire me to go see him again). But that vote of confidence (Bruce Hornsby made the extra effort to say how much he liked what I did!) really helped me keep going during that dark time in my career when I wasn't landing any work, and wondered if I ever would.

Thanks, Bruce!

The Mystery of the Violet-Eyed Girl

The inspiration for this faux-vintage paperback book cover was a photo of woman named Tallest Silver, who is an expert cosplayer (the photo was taken by a friend of mine, and another master cosplayer, named Roxanna Meta).

There was something about the look on her face--half-scared, half-WTF?--combined with the cleavage that made for a wonderfully scary yet sexy image, and would be the perfect subject for a mystery novel cover.

I wanted this one to be a lot older in feel, like one of those spooky drawing room mysteries of the 1920s. There are elements on here that don't really line up with that, but I don't let that kind of thing stop me anymore: I just go ahead and make the thing!

From The Vault: Hey Mister - 2002

Okay, this one probably needs a little explanation.

Back in 2002, I was single and desperately unhappy about it. A recent relationship had imploded and I was in a really bad place in my life. I was also feeling the pain a lot of single guys know--seeing women around that were really cool and yet were with guys that didn't seem worthy of them.

I was feeling that exquisite pain over a woman who I was just completely smitten with, but had a boyfriend who I thought was a slimy, cheesy worm. I couldn't understand how this quirky angel was involved with a guy like this. So every time I saw them, I went home feeling frustrated and angry, bewildered at what kind of man the women I was attracted to in turn found attractive: it sure as hell wasn't me.

So one night, in a fit of pique, I did this piece, one of the few (only?) times I've ever used any sort of profanity in an illustration. I imagined this amazing woman dumping said worm and finally seeing the truth--that I was worth her time. Not only worth her time, but the kind of man that would drive a woman into a sexual frenzy, so much so she would say something as porn novel-ish as what you see above.

Color and design-wise, this is a much more punk-y piece than anything I've generally done before or since, and I think that must have to do with the fractured state of mind I was in that night.

Burnt Rubber

This is a rarity among my faux-vintage paperback series, in that its a sequel to a previous faux-vintage paperback cover, Hot Rod.

I used a lot of the same design elements, and even the same model as the main character. Its probably a little too reminiscent of the original to really stand up as its own piece, but it was fun to do nonetheless.

From The Vault: Sci-Fi and Fantasy Titles - 1999

This was my proudest achievement during my year Koen Book Distributors, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Titles catalog.

I had been given a list of all the catalogs I would be designing shortly after I started at Koen, so I knew when the Sci-Fi one was coming and I had always planned to make it really special. I would work on it in bits and pieces in between other duties.

I wanted the cover to be a rip-of...er, homage to my favorite movie poster of all time, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. I even grabbed a piece off of that poster, and used it as the crowd running amok in the foreground. I took the monster from some old comic book ad, and then dropped all the Koen-specific text on top.

I wanted some sort of graphic theme to run through the whole thing, so I had clumps of little flying saucers streaking through the text, as well as brief intro about the wonders of science fiction on the inside cover. The final page even featured the classic "The End...or is it?" gag.

When I look back on this now, of course I think I could do better, but at the time this was fairly ambitious of me to put this much thought and effort into the design, and I was really, really proud of it. We got some positive word back from some customers saying how much they liked it, and that meant a lot to me. It remains the highlight of my time and work while I was at Koen.

The Bride Wore Red

Another faux-vintage paperback, and as you can see from this and last week's, I'm kind of in a more graphic, more abstract sort of zone.

One of the things that's continually bugged me about my own style is sometimes I find the final result to be too stiff, too clean. Trying to be messy and unruly sort of goes against all my internal rules I have in my head when it comes to illustration and graphic design, so its a constant fight to let myself go and let things look messy and unruly.

So while I had a bit of that last week, I really tried to push it further this time around, stripping it almost entirely of niceties and detail, and just going for big slabs o' color.

From The Vault: Civil War Titles - 1999

This was another catalog I did for Koen Book Distributors, since it was such a narrow field of books the catalog itself was only about 16 pages; leaving not a whole lot of room, time, or motivation to get too fancy with the design.

The thing for me that really brought this off was the paper--I mentioned the feel I was going for to the outside printer we used (a delightful man, always a blast to have around, full of great stories), and he suggested a sort of parchment paper they had in stock that wasn't too expensive.

My boss ran the numbers, okayed it, and so the whole catalog ran on the type of paper you might have seen during that era (though not as fragile, of course). I was thrilled with the result and even though the graphic design by itself is nothing spectacular, it all came together perfectly.

24 Nudes A Second

Another faux-vintage paperback, this piece started out as just an artsy, messy shot of the woman, very hand-drawn looking...but of course there is no illustration I can't slap text on top, behind, or next to.

The "plot" came together rather easily, given the somewhat shamed pose; this girl came to the Big City, got caught up with the wrong people, needed some money, was desperate...you know the rest.

I think 24 Nudes A Second is one of my better made-up titles, if I do say so myself.

The Black Box Club

Thrilled I finally get to show this baby off!

This was a poster I did for The Black Box Club, an online horror radio show that just went live on January 1st! The BBC has seen my horror stuff and thought I'd be perfect to create some sort of poster art for them, and of course I agreed knowing how fun it would be to work on.

I originally had a whole other design and portrait in mind, and I worked up another shot of Christopher Lee as Dracula which I thought came out well. But there was something about the whole thing when finished that left me unsatisfied, so as a lark I worked up a second version, using a portrait of Lee-as-Dracula I had done years ago but never really did anything with.

For whatever reason, this second version really came alive for me very quickly, and I decided then and there to drop the previous work and use this. I tweaked it a bit,. sent it in to the fine folks at the Black Box Club (who wrote the tag line), and they really liked it, using it as part of their online advertising push to announce the unveiling of the site!

From The Vault: "Loose Canons!" - 1999

This was another catalog I did for Koen Book Distributors during my year there as a graphic designer.

Loose Canons! was Koen's big catalog of the year (half-year, actually, since we did two of them)--a hodge-podge of books from all different genres, a lot of marketing and sales effort was put into it, so much so a Koen employee who was some sort of alt. book specialist would come to NJ twice a year to help guide the catalog's creation.

For all the eyes that were on the catalog, the overall graphic design was surprisingly little commented upon--maybe because everyone was so busy worrying about the rest of it. This was the second of two Loose Canons! I designed, and by this point I was sort of punchy so I decided to just go totally goofy and make up all sorts of crazy fake newspaper-style stories, most of them featuring in-jokes that only other Koen employees would get (click the image to see a readable version).

I remember submitting this to my boss at the time, who laughed a lot and said he loved it (not a total surprise, since that's his daughter pictured at bottom). It then went to the head of sales, who only had one small revision, a joke I had made at a competitor's expense. I thought that was eminently reasonable and changed it, and the cover--and catalog--went out just like you see it.

A Bullet For Betty Lou

Another faux-vintage paperback, this one took a while to get right in terms of the text (title, author, and tagline made up by me). I started with it all on the background behind poor dead Betty Lou there, but it never quite looked right. But I had a ton of other stuff to work on, so part of me was ready to get close to "right" and then move on.

But before I did that, I thought why not try something else, and see how that goes--and once I did, dropping a box on top of the picture and then adding the title, it clicked immediately and after some minor dabbling with colors, this baby was ready to go!


On a side note: I think my favorite element is the feather pattern on Betty Lou's shawl or whatever--it just sort of screamed 50s showgirl to me. But as much as I liked it, I had to admit that the composition worked best with most of it covered up. Oh well...

From The Vault: Gay & Lesbian Interest Catalog - 1999

I thought I'd cast my From The Vault net a little wider again this week; digging up a graphic design piece I did back when I worked at Koen Book Distributors, doing design and layout work for their marketing department.

Doing the graphic design work for Koen was a great learning experience and one of the creatively satisfying jobs I ever had; my boss had no pretensions about how the catalogs should look, so he simply made sure they met certain standards ever Koen catalog needed; the rest was up to me.

So after a few weeks of getting up to speed, I really poured my heart into making these catalogs as visually arresting as possible--I think I ended up producing about two dozen different ones, and out of that group there's a handful that I think rank as some of my best work, even now.

This Gay & Lesbian Interest Catalog was one of them; I wanted a sophisticated, fun look, appealing to a literate, engaged demographic. This ended up printed on a nice, thick, slightly rough cardstock, making for a really sharp final product.

The Caged Canary

Since my last faux-vintage paperback book cover was set in the bitter cold of the frozen tundra, I thought I'd go the other way this one, which from its looks seems to be set in some always-sunny, always-hot, always-humid location, with lots of people going around half-dressed, dripping with sweat.

The plot for this one--featuring title and author made up by me--is pretty standard film noir stuff: a beautiful woman, a mean and cruel sugar daddy, and the inevitable, aforementioned sweaty young hunk who tries to get the girl away from the old man, with disastrous and violent results.

From The Vault: Drive-In Theater - 2001

Its been a little while since I did a From The Vault segment--Friday kept coming around and I had forgotten to find something, on top of the fact that some of the stuff in the vault is so bad I don't want anyone to see it, even in fun.

I didn't want another week to pass having missed yet another Friday, so I rooted around my HD a bit and found this unfinished piece of business--a flier I was asked to design by a friend who was putting together his own genre film screening program called Drive-In Theater. It needed to have lots of big open space that could be filled by that week's films, so I had to design around that pre-fab area.

I don't really remember whatever happened to DIT--I think it sort of died before it ever got started--but I'm still really proud of the design. I think its slick and sorta grubby at the same time, and every time I look at it I'm sorry Drive-In Theater never became a reality.

Time Out New York: Jeff Bridges

I was asked to do this week's "Hot Seat" portrait for Time Out New York, the subject this time being film legend Jeff Bridges!

It only took a few seconds after finding out who the subject was to decide to do this in the same style as my "Tough Guy" series, since now that Mr. Bridges has aged a bit, he's moved into that sort of phase of his career--plus, he was promoting his role in the new Coen Bros. movie True Grit, and these seemed very True Grit-y colors.

I had fun adding all those crazy strands of hair--it adds a nice looseness to my style, and its really hard to put down a "wrong" line. Overall, I finished this piece pretty darn happy with it.


And that's a good thing, because odds are this is the last Hot Seat I will ever do for Time Out New York. As I write this, the magazine is undergoing a face lift, both in content and look, and from what I understand the Hot Seat feature is going away. Now, I heard that once before, back in the summer, and somehow not only did the feature survive, but I was back doing the portraits on fairly regular basis.

So you never really know, but for now I'm going to assume this is it. This week's Jeff Bridges makes for 275 Hot Seat portraits, an extraordinary run for one client. And while there was (of course) some weeks that I wasn't proud of what I ended up turning in, they were almost always fun and at times the results were some of my finest work. I'm happy to have been such a staple of the magazine for so long.

The Snow Queen

This faux-vintage paperback book cover was created entirely out of boredom--I had a little bit of time on my hands, but not enough to get into working on some client work. All my blogging work was also done (for the moment, which never lasts too long when you have around fifteen blogs), and I always feel a little guilt just sitting around watching TV (even though I had put on a creepy fun movie, The Dunwich Horror).

So I just started messing around with this portrait, and after too long the "story" behind it came into focus--she was some odd being who lived in the snowy mountains of somewhere--a snow queen, that's it!

I had originally done the shadows in heavy blacks, but once I decided to put her in front of this absurdly desolate snowscape, all that went out the window I went with all blues and white. At first I had her in front of the snowstorm, as if she was so powerful it didn't affect her, but then I realized I liked the depth of field you got from having big chunks of snow in the foreground.

I made up the title and author myself, since I knew I wouldn't find anything that matched--this is kind of more of a gothic romance-type book cover than a mystery thriller, anyway.

And while I'm perfectly happy how this came out, I think my favorite part is the author name--"Abigail St. Nicholas", as a name, just sings to me. I picture a little old lady, cranking out romance novels in the mid-20th century, perhaps living down the street from Agatha Christie.

"Mera"

This piece started out as just a portrait of Aquaman's wife and queen Mera--I just thought it would be fun to do a portrait of my favorite redhead (fictional division), something relaxing to work on in between client projects.

But as I worked on it, I thought hey, it'd be fun to have Mera holding an Aquaman comic book (featuring one of her favorite covers, I'm sure). And then the piece sort of morphed into a First Person ad for Aquaman, sort of playing up that old adage about you can tell how good a guy is by the woman who's with him. And since DC (Geoff Johns, specifically) has done such a great job transforming Mera into a top tier character, I figured an ad from her point of view, telling you how awesome her husband is, would be a good, effective way to promote any potential new Aquaman series.

You're welcome, DC.

The Misadventures of Mistletoe Missy

Not too long after finishing my The Misadventures of Halloween Harriet faux-vintage paperback book cover, I realized that it would be just as perfect to do another cover, this time for Christmas. After all, who doesn't like a smutty Christmas book?

I liked the alliteration of the first book's title, so I decided to replace Halloween Harriet with Mistletoe Missy, which in my mind works even better!

I'm not sure, but I'm betting I'll have to come up with another one of these for Valentine's Day, the smuttiest of all holidays.

Time Out New York: Ewan McGregor

I was asked to do this week's "Hot Seat" portrait for Time Out New York, the subject this time being actor Ewan McGregor!

Mr. McGregor was promoting the long-delayed film I Love You Phillip Morris, so I first thought of putting the PM logo on his t-shirt. But when crop-wise it worked better like this, I added it to the background and faded it a lot so it didn't conflict too much with the central portrait.

Monster PSA: Yvonne Craig

I literally couldn't wait to work on this one!

I got the idea for it while working on the previous Ingrid Pitt PSA, and it was sort of amazing to me I hadn't gotten around to doing a PSA portrait of the lovely (in more ways than one) Ms. Yvonne Craig, who of course hit a double in the Genre Fan Sweepstakes by being both Batgirl on Batman and the Orion Slave Girl on Star Trek.

I had first thought of doing the portrait of her as Batgirl (where she helped usher the young pre-teen version of me into puberty), but that quickly gave way to this more sexy look in the service of promoting libraries, which I thought tied it into the Barbara Gordon/Batgirl thing nicely.


I had the chance to meet Ms. Craig at a comic con around 2000 or so, and she was so sweet as the ten millionth overgrown fanboy told her how important she was to them growing up.

Monster PSA: Ingrid Pitt

This Monster PSA poster was kind of eerie to work on.

Yesterday, I was just finishing up the last illustration for a large advertising job, and as I am wont to do, having movies on in the background. I've been watching a lot of Hammer Films lately, catching up on the ones I've never seen. Case in point, I put on The Vampire Lovers, a sort of lesbian vampire movie starring Ingrid Pitt as the vampire who crosses all sorts of boundaries.

After I finished the last client piece, I decided to do another Monster PSA poster, this time starring the legendary Ms. Pitt--I had not yet given her her own PSA, even though she played both monster and victim in numerous Hammer films. On top of that, because of the big ad job, I hadn't posted anything new on this blog in a couple of days, and I really wanted to put something up.

So just before I started to work, I noticed a friend's Facebook page that said Ingrid Pitt had just died! I did a double take, because the timing of it was so bizarre. I followed the link, and the sad news was true--Ms. Pitt, age 77, had passed away.

Once I read that (and duly changed my FB page's avatar to a pic of Ingrid), I was determined to put this poster together to have it up for the following day.

For whatever reason, this one was a lot harder than they usually are--I tried two different portraits, that as portraits were fine, but once I plugged them into the PSA poster format, they all of a sudden didn't work--something about the lights and darks and the overall shapes. But I refused to give up, finally completing a third portrait that worked when placed onto the Monster PSA poster, which is what you see above.

This poster's message isn't really a PSA--rather, I just wanted to reflect that schism many a horror movie fan felt when they saw Ingrid Pitt in a movie. Was she a victim, or was she the victimizer? Rarely have actresses had the ability to be believable as both, yet she pulled it off.

Rest in Peace, Ingrid Pitt.

ACA at Bark Radio!

My pal (and all-around sweetheart) Laura Menck, creator of the awesome Animal Care for Artists (for which I did the logo, above) appeared on the radio show Bark Radio, and at one point she was kind enough to mention me and my work (aw, shucks!). Go check it out!