Paintings

A sampling of some recent paintings created using traditional and digital methods for clients, collectors, and partners as well as for personal expression.

Do you draw these by hand?

Although everything starts with a sketch, much of the work ends up digitally using tools like Illustrator, Photoshop, and Painter.

Sketching

Everything Starts With a Sketch

I have carried sketchbooks around with me since I was a kid. Not much has changed in my career as everything I do, regardless of application design or illustration, begins with thumbnails and sketching.

Painting

Digital, Traditional, or both?

Once a composition has been completed, I then decide what medium to complete the illustration. Lately, I have been working a lot in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop for much of my painting work. This involves establishing a base composition in Illustrator and then painting within Photoshop.

To do this, I often use a combination of custom brushes, my own and ones I have collected over time, as well as painting using XP-PEN tablet and mouse. I will also use channel operations within Photoshop to finalize the illustration, which might include special effects and/or lighting.

Sample Paintings

Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter from the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Portrait of Vision, from the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Portrait of Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley from Alien

Preview image of Brendan Fraser as Rick O'Connell in "The Mummy"

For more illustrations, you can also check out my portfolio dedicated to illustration work here.

vacationality

February 18, 2017

Paintings

October 29, 2020

ibm cloud marketplace

April 25, 2015

Vector Illustrations

October 29, 2020

icons

February 12, 2017

disney vacation account

April 25, 2015

Mobile

February 5, 2014

identity

February 6, 2014

Disney’s Yellow Shoes

February 5, 2014

Ypartnership

February 5, 2014

Vector Illustrations

Vector Illustration

Using tools like Adobe Illustrator to bring ideas to life.

Vector-based tools

There are still very few tools with the depth of the classic Adobe Illustrator, but there is a lot of companies that work with Adobe to extend functionality to their tools and provide greater flexibility to artists.

Vector or Bitmap?

If you can create essentially the same illustration in any application, how do you choose one over another?

Vector or bitmap is a critical decision for any illustration as you consider how the work may be used in the future. Although tools have blurred the key differentiators recently, there are still major differences to the tools like Illustrator or Photoshop.

A vector-based application using mathematical calculations to determine, say the arc of your line-work where a bitmap program uses actual pixels based on where and how long your line may be. If you are planning on using the work for a single intended purpose, this is usually not a concern.

However, if you plan on scaling the work up for magazines, t-shirts, billboards, etc. a vector program provides greater flexibility for using your artwork across these outputs. Scaling a mathematical line will render that line perfectly, regardless of size but scaling a bitmap line will introduce noise to the work and make it appear blurry or dirty.

Vector programs are also used quite a bit for typography and publishing projects. Although bitmap applications can certainly handle fonts, Illustrator offers a lot more control of letterforms for page layout and font creation.

Plugins

Plugins extend the functionality of specific software that enhances its capabilities and helps an artist to remain efficient and effective when producing artwork.

You can find plugins for virtually any industry that streamline the handoff from artist to production staff. I use a set of plugins for much of my work from the great team at Astute Graphics. These plugins range from texture creation to file health and have proven quite indispensible for my workflow.

Sample illustrations