Op Ed Ill

I'm taking a great class this term with Brian Rea and Paul Rogers. Brian was the art director of the Op Ed page of the New York Times for several years. In this class, we get one-week assignments to illustrate a current Op Ed article.

First assignment finals, "Follow the Dirty Money":

The second assignment final, "Weird Weather in a Warming World":

Final from "How to Spot a Terrorist," an article on homegrown terrorism:

"Growers First" video

I recently had the opportunity to work with a great organization called Growers First. They help third-world coffee growers become self-sufficient, cost-competitive, and eco-friendly, without giving handouts or making them feel beholden.

The hands in the video are mine! I pretty much showed up and drew what I was told. The creative vision belongs to Andrew Davis.

You can view it on YouTube at Growers First (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5HapSv1ngc) or below.

Inventive Character finals

For Inventive Character class, we got to choose a story, create a special slant/setting for the story, then design five characters. I chose the story of Matilda, by Roald Dahl.

Matilda is a gifted girl who has horrible parents, and an even more horrible arch-rival, Agatha Trunchbull. Miss Honey is Matilda's only support. I chose to set the story in a traveling circus. By the end, Matilda has used her telepathic powers to become the star.

Miss Honey didn't make it to the portfolio pages. People didn't seem too fond of her "Yah-ta-da-da" pose.

Graphic Design for Entertainment

The second project of the term for Graphic Design for Entertainment was to design a series of pieces for the movie, Guys and Dolls. The first portion of the project involved designing a show poster for Miss Adelaide's show at the Hot Box, as well as a menu cover for Mindy's.

The menu cover:

And the show poster:

The last portion of the project was to design a street block in Times Square from the 1950s.

The pencil:

The final:

All Cox, All the Time

Our first project of the term for Paul Rogers' Graphic Design for Entertainment class was to design a memorabilia wall for Dewey Cox from the movie, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. I used Milton Glaser as a design influence and did Dewey Cox takes on several of his well-known pieces.

His Bob Dylan poster became:

His Elliot Gould Time cover became:

And lastly, the famous "I Heart NY" became these stickers:

Digital Landscape Finals

I took Digital Landscape with Mike Humphries during the Spring 2010 term. We painted in gouache on-site at the Los Angeles County Arboretum. When we had a base painting we were satisfied with, we scanned the image and did touch-ups digitally with Photoshop. We also kept a sketchbook, which I'll post later.

Here are my four final paintings.

Some vis dev pencil layouts from Will Weston's Sketching for Entertainment.

Prompt: A beaver dam, as influenced by some form of building style. In this case, shanty town.

Prompt: A submarine built by an extremely intelligent 6-year-old girl, who has scavenged parts from wherever possible to realize her vision.

And a repost of the color version:

Here are a few in-class pen, ink and wash drawings from Gayle Donahue's class, Drawing for Illustration. In her teaching, she really encourages students to embrace freedom of expression and creative flow.

For a third term project in Gayle Donahue's class, I combined the bodies of friends with the heads of their pets. Still one of my favorite projects to date!

More work from last term's Dynamic Sketching with Norm Schureman.

Some fantasy forms and applied textures:

Zoo-based caricatures:

And insect-based character designs: