Merry Christmas!

This is the Christmas card I designed this year to send out to all my friends. I wanted to do something hand-lettered and illustrative...

Eagle

This is a scratchboard study I did of an eagle. I really love scratchboard because you can get a really nice, sharp detail that gives great dimension and makes the illustration look quite realistic.

Creative Bridal Shower Gift

I had a bridal shower to go to today, and rather than buy something from the registry, I wanted to make my gift a little more unique. So I decided to put together a little scrapbook package that the bride could use to make a scrapbook of the honeymoon. I wanted to make the album cover fun and more personal, so I painted "Our Honeymoon" in a tropical style since the couple is honeymooning in Punta Cana. I love how it turned out, and I'm definitely going to do this again for future showers.

Watercolor Study

Watercolor studying reflection and light.

Jack-O-Lanterns, Take 2

I had so much fun carving the first pumpkin that I decided to do two more. Happy Halloween!

Jack-O-Lantern

Its that time again! Time for some good old fashioned pumpkin carving. Although my experiences in the past carving faces into pumpkins using those carving kits have never fared well. The little knives they give you always break half way through, or you accidentally slip and your pumpkin ends up with a few less teeth than originally intended. So this year I opted for something that I'm a little more comfortable with and feel that I have a little more control over; a linoleum cutter. I love how it turned out.

And P.S. Toasted pumpkin seeds? Yes please!

Road Less Traveled

I wanted to fool around with some fun hand lettering and decided a quote would be perfect for my experiment. This quote has been stuck in my head a lot lately, and it's one that I'd like to practice in own life a bit more...

Little Monster

Starting to fool around with some Halloween characters...

It's My Birthday!

What better way to celebrate than with a cupcake?!

Light My Fire

To go along with my last post: These are two illustration technique studies I did of the one and only Jim Morrison (black ink on illustration board). I was experimenting with different marking styles.

The Kingdom of Beck

I was going through an old tablet of marker paper the other day and found these sketches. They were for a t-shirt design I did for one of the residence halls at Kutztown University. They ended up going with the one with the dragon on it. More t-shirt designs coming soon...hopefully...

Independence Day in the park

Being the Fourth of July, I thought Valley Forge Park would be an appropriate place to go. Plus it was gorgeous out, and Valley Forge is such a nice place to take a walk. While I was there I did a quick chalk pastel sketch and took a few pictures...

Sometimes You Gotta Stop and Smell the Roses

Like I said in yesterday's post, things have been pretty crazy lately. And if you're like me, when you're so busy you think there could never be enough hours in the day, you tend to get stressed and start to forget to keep things in perspective. So today I decided to stop and take the time to appreciate whats around me. It was such a gorgeous day, so I decided to go for a run and do some sketches at Valley Forge Park. This is a sketch I did of the National Memorial Arch, and a few pictures I took in the park.

Viva Mexico

Things recently have been pretty crazy, hence the lack of recent blog activity. I just moved, and while going through some of my art stuff from college, I came across my sketch book from when I studied abroad in Mexico. The trip was a 17 day "sketch book tour of Mexico" with a group of fellow Kutztown CD (Communication Design) students and our professor (whom we affectionately dubbed "Tio"). We visited three cities, Queretaro, Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende, all located in central Mexico, and were submersed in Mexican art and culture. Visiting local museums, restaurants, art exhibits, and even an old mine and Gorky Gonzalez's pottery studio, we got to sketch some pretty incredible things. It was about this time three years ago that I took this trip, so I thought it would be appropriate to post a few of the sketches from my sketch book. Maybe some day I'll get to go back and fill the rest of the book...

Sketch of a church in Queretaro, at "Capilla del Cerro de las Campanas" (the Hill of the Bells)

Sketch of "El Teatro Juarez" in one of the squares in Guanajuato

View from the roof of our host family's house in Guanajuato

I thought the tiles on a table at our hotel in San Miguel were interesting...

The tiles in the bathroom were pretty, too

Sketches from some artifacts we saw at a museum in Guanajuato

More artifacts from the museum...I loved all the different faces!

I Heart Chalk Pastel

I was looking through some old photos today and came across these pictures of some chalk pastels I did a while ago. I forgot how much I love working with chalk pastel, and it makes me want to do another one. Now if I could only decide what the subject of my next one should be...

Tulips

I'm designing my brother's wedding invitations, and they asked for tulips on the invitation. I found a few images in kind of a Dover Pictoral style, but the look of the petals weren't quite right, so I decided to try a few of my own. I think I'm digging the sketchy style...