Night After Christmas - sketches

I have been working on a new picture book of sorts for marketed towards adults for Winepress Publishing since early March 2009. It's called Night After Christmas - A Holiday Paradigm Revisited. by Jim Chapman. It's a take on the poem The Night Before Christmas by an anonymous author first published in 1823. It deals with a modern families struggle of materialism and lost sight of what Christmas was really all about. I did 10 full page illustrations plus a cover in a stylized realism manner. I had lots of fun coming up with the scenery which is loosely based off my own home and family. I had about 3 months to do 11 full blown, full page illustrations with repeating characters and scenes all while teaching 2 classes, taking 1 MFA class and many other freelance jobs. I thought I was done in June and then the author had lots of little revisions to some of the illustrations starting a few weeks ago. I got final approval on all the illustrations just last week! It's due to be printed and in the stores hopefully in a couple of months just in time for Christmas.

I wanted to give you first a taste of the process of some of the illustrations. I always start with pencil and here are some sketches I sent the publisher. The author had some very specific art direction from a Word doc and the story obviously gave some clues to set the scene. I had already done a fair amount of research and photo reference.




So from these I digitally painted the scenes in Photoshop and Painter. The finals are coming in a later post.

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.

Mixed Media Art Contest: 2nd place winner

I was the first loser on artwanted.com! 10 bucks to pay the bills with.

Mixed Media Art Contest: Jun 22 - Jul 5, 2009 | ArtWanted.com

I'm looking for a Summer Intern

I have posted on CollegeCentral.com with SCAD an internship position available at Jay Montgomery Illustration. If interested please apply by email to jay@jaymontgomery.com and send your resume and portfolio or link to your website or samples of your work directly to me.

Description:
I'm an award winning freelance Illustrator for over 18 years and currently a professor of Illustration at SCAD Atlanta. I'm looking for an Illustration, Graphic Design or Sequential major or alumni from SCAD that has a passion for illustration of all types and the willingness to learn on the job. This would be for Monday and Wednesday for about 3-4 hours a day depending on the current freelance workload. Must provide your own transportation to NE Marietta, GA. Tasks include researching for reference, thumbnail sketches, scanning and concepts of real world current freelance jobs. Also, general organizing and cleaning up studio. I have big task of digitally organizing, adding keywords and uploading my 500+ stock art collection to an illustrator friendly stock art web site. Learn hands on about the business being a freelance illustrator; negotiating, pricing, client communication, promotion and having fun! To see the variety of work that I do please visit my website at http://www.jaymontgomery.com

Intern skills needed:
Dependable, on time, excellent communication skills, competent on the Mac, drawing skills, Photoshop, internet research skills, Knowledge about Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Bridge, Adobe Flash, Filemaker Pro and Word are a big plus. This internship could be apart of your curriculum at SCAD and is unpaid.

Schedule:
Start ASAP until August 26th, 2009 Most every Monday and Wednesday as needed.

Place:
The home/studio of Jay Montgomery Illustration - 290 Vistawood Dr. Marietta, GA 30066.

Thanks,

Jay

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.