Atlanta From Above

I went on my first helicopter ride on April 27th for an illustration I'm working on. The Creative Director wanted me to go up and art direct the photographer, Scott Johnson, to take the photos at the right angle and elevation for a new building coming up in Buckhead called Mansion on Peachtree. It was quite incredible and enjoyed every second of it. I took my camera and snapped away until my fully charged battery went dead. I got several photos for hopeful future references. One photo I have already used for reference for another job I'm working on. It really came at the right time it was quite amazing.

I flew it all by myself and took pictures at the same time!

Savannah College of Art & Design - Atlanta, Where I teach.



Go here to see a select group of untouched photos.
I'll be sure to post the final illustration once it's done in about 2 weeks.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Movie backgrounds

It was well over two years ago when Art Director, Bob Pettitt, contacted me to see if I was interested in doing some movie backgrounds for this movie. At that time I had never heard of Adult Swim much less Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The show and movie is admittedly not for everyone and it's main target market is teenagers who like dark alternative, and crude humor. So be forewarned! Anyway, all they needed were some layered Photoshop backgrounds that they could mess with to create scenes for this 15 min Adult Swim show into a full length movie. Over all I did 7 backgrounds for my first movie art experience. Well, I had to keep it quite until now. With the many delays and postpones of the premier it now finally here and I can show the stuff I did on the web. I'm going to be attending the ultra exclusive movie premier on April 9th right here in Atlanta and the Plaza Theater. I'll try my best to not trip on the red carpet (it was green carpet actually) and smile for the deluge of paparazzi and interviews. Click this link or image to see page I created with the backgrounds and be sure to zoom into each image to see all the hard work.


I would LOVE to hear any comments on these and the movie here on my blog or my news page. Make sure you go see the movie starting on Friday the 13th, April 2007 at a local theater near you.

On the cover and inside my alma mater

This month I am proud and honored to be featured not only on the cover with one of my illustrations but on the inside with a one page article about me in LaGrange College's Alumni Magazine - Columns. I graduated with a BA from LaGrange College, LaGrange, GA, in 1992. Studying there played a huge part in who I am today. Majoring in Drawing & Painting and Graphic Design, in a liberal arts college, I learned the base set of skills that made this illustration for the cover. Even though this cover was not originally done for Columns, the Editor, Dean Hartman and Designer, Stacy Jackson, thought it would be appropriate subject matter and concept for this issue. I originally did this for PTO Today magazine in 2003. I tweaked the layers a bit so the Stacy could separate the people on the inside spread. What's even more interesting is that I was found by the creators of Columns from the LaGrange College alumni website where this very blog your are on right now is listed as one of the blogs that all alumni can see. Dean and a photographer, David Beard, came to my studio for an interview and photos. It was a good experience all around.

Click to enlarge and read.
The article is a good representation of who I am.

SCAD's got me real busy!

Since starting to teach 3 classes at Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) at the beginning of the year I've been really busy driving back and forth, doing lots of demos and having to still do a fair amoutn of freelance illustration work. Sorry I have not posted in a while. It will probably be a while until next post, but ya never know.

This was a quick demo final I just did for my materials & techniques 2 class at SCAD. I used the CF Payne mixed media technique. I documented the step-by-step process and hope to post it eventually here.

Illustration Friday - RED

IllustrationFriday.com entry for "Red". Approximately 12" x 16" on illustration board. Oils and color copy painted on top of with oils. Done back in 1993 at Portfolio Center for a class taught by Illustrator extraordinaire, Bill Mayer. It was for a magazine cover article on Florida's excitement about getting casino's in there state. Click images to see larger one on my flickr account.




The cards were designed in Illustrator then printed out and sprayed with workable fixative and then painted on with thin layers of oil. It seems to still be holding up after 13 years.




The illustration was not originally for Poets, Artists and Madmen but they liked it enough to put it on the Nov. 1995 cover. The color here is a good indication of the poor newspaper print quality.