Merry Christmas everyone!

The image above is from the cover of the Christmas card I sent out this year. Enjoy!

Last week, I posted my contributions to the 2011 Free Art Show (see here, here and here). Those brush and ink drawings represented one half of my contribution. The second half involved the bookmarks that you see above.

When coming up for ideas for the show, I thought it would be fun to come up with a series of bookmarks that promoted reading in a fun way. After playing around with headlines that were a bit less “family-friendly,” I finally settled on a unifying theme of “Read, Dammit. Read!”

The illustrations for the bookmarks were created in brush and ink and were colored in Photoshop. I made digital prints of the bookmarks. For the Free Art Show, I created five prints each of the three bookmarks.

This was definitely a fun little project to work on, and the early feedback I’ve been getting has been very gratifying. I have already started thinking about extending this series by adding some bookmarks in the future.

If you are around Newburyport or Portsmouth this month, keep an eye out for a Free Art box and some of my pieces!

Final post of samples from my inked drawing contribution to the 2011 Free Art Show. I will be posting the illustrative bookmarks I contributed for the show next week.

If you find yourself in Newburyport or Portsmouth this month, keep an eye out for a Free Art box!

Some more samples of my contribution to the 2011 Free Art Show.

The end of November can only mean one thing…. free art!  For the fourth year in a row, I am participating in the Free Art Show, the brainchild of Gordon Przybyla and Dylan Metrano. In the Free Art Show, local artists give away hundreds of pieces of free art through the month of December. The art can be found in locations around Newburyport, MA and Portsmouth, NH. If you are out and about in those towns, keep an eye out for the Free Art boxes!

I went with a two-pronged approach for my contribution. One half of my 30 pieces were brush and ink drawings (you can see five of those drawings above). The other half of my contribution were illustrated bookmarks, which I will post later.

For the brush and ink drawings, I put my trusty Pentel Pocket Brush Pen aside and brought out a venerable Winsor & Newton Sable Brush (series 07, size 02). I love the Pentel Brush Pen, but nothing beats the real thing. I had a lot of fun whipping these up.

Stay tuned! I will be posting other samples throughout the week.

Another contribution for a collaborative sketchbook project I am participating in. I’ve been on a bit of a Victorian genre fiction bent lately, having reread Dracula and Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Given that, a drawing of Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo seemed like an inevitable decision.

This is a different version of the knight illustration I posted last week. Originally, I wanted to go more for a sketchy, almost line cut kind of feel but ended up going in a more straight forward direction. Still, I like the slightly more abstract nature of this drawing.

The image above is from the cover of this year’s edition of my holiday card. Hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season!

The illustration above is the black and white lineart for a project I am working on for a friend. I may post the final color version when the project is launched.