Decathlon Poster Process

New work!

A 16" x 20" poster I did as part of a demo for my Adobe Illustrator class a Portfolio Center. I just finished it today. I thought it turn out pretty good. Whada you think?

This part was done in Adobe Illustrator CS4.

I then copied certain grouped areas from Illustrator into a Photoshop document and created a series of Smart Object layers. Then I added various textures in the layers masks of the Smart Object layers.

The result is a the marriage of Illustrator and Photoshop. The best of both worlds.
I love texture!!

Prints available here.

Deviant Art Portfolio website

Just created my Deviant Art Portfolio website in about 20 min. Really easy to use, and somewhat customizable. I don't think I would show it to clients for this free version with a sub domain and Deviant Art Link and the bottom. Good option for a quick portfolio for students with no money/time for their own domain name and do not know any Dreamweaver or HTML.

I have some new work on there that you might not have seen.

Check it now.

Spiritual Connections

It's been a while since I was an official student of the arts. Since 2000 I have been a teacher of the arts. Well I started the journey of getting my MFA so that I could have the opportunity to teach full-time at a college level. The logical and most practical choice was to get my MFA from the place I teach, SCAD-Atlanta. I could teach and take classes at the same time all in the same place. Well this past quarter I did just that. I taught 2 classes (Getting Published, and Self Promotion for Illustrators) and took my first class with Illustration professor Julie Mueller-Brown. It was grueling financially, physically, and mentally! During the middle of the quarter I found a more flexible and faster way to get my MFA at Hartford Art School, Limited Residency MFA in Illustration. So I won't be continuing with SCAD for my MFA in Illustration. More on that later.

ILLU 714 Drawing for Illustrators was a great course to start off with and therapeutic in many ways. For the first time in a long time I had allotted time to draw for me. Well, I was drawing for my professor but it was much more wide open than any other paying freelance gig I have done in over 16 years. The 7 other students and I did TONS of drawing inside and outside of class. Part of it was to create 5 personal graphite drawings outside of class. Julie wanted us to just start scribbling on nice drawing paper and see what happened. Below is my journey of those drawings. She is going to use my series of drawings as an example of the process for when she gives this assignment again. I went from literal symbols and words to almost abstract expressionism. Very different from what I am used to and a breath of fresh air.

I would love to get any feedback on these good or bad.

Vote for my T-Shirt Design!

Out With the New... In With the Old!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Here is a blast from the past. I did this illustration as a collaboration with and old buddy and illustrator friend of mine John Nelson. He did the concept and tight pencil and I did the final art. I think we did this back in 1994-5 for a New Years Eve Party we had when we were roommates in Buckhead. I thought it turned out great! Recently we have been toiling around with the idea of starting a new illustration company with the prospects of doing this sort of collaboration again.

I just posted this as a new product offering on Zazzle.com.

Out With the New...In With the Old! Mug by JayMontgomery

4th of July Fun

Had some fun on the 4th with the family doing art through a straw.

We all did a few and then went to see the real fireworks.

This is one I did I thought was pretty cool.


I thought I would try it against the dark sky in Photoshop. I like this one better, but the original in person can't be beat.