I was recently commissioned by a Biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She asked me to do a total of four pieces based on animals that are protected yet still being hunted for their fins, ivory and so on. All of the below pieces are 16″x20″ mixed media on paper. They were a lot of fun to do and it was bitter sweet to see the project come to a close. Click on images to enlarge.
Stan “THE MAN” Lee. I’ve always credited other artists as sources of inspiration but truth be told a lot of them wouldn’t be around if it weren’t for this guy. I’ve been wanting to draw him for quite some time and finally found the spare time and scrap of paper with which to create it on. It’s done with a brown ballpoint pen, spray paint, guache and some china marker on 11″x16″ toned paper.
Here’s to THE MAN. ‘Nuff said.
This just came out yesterday. You can now get a digital download of my 96 page art book for cheaper than the price of a beer (plus you don’t have to tip!). It’s a great collection of some of my older works which help shaped the artwork I make today. There are paintings, comic pages, magazine covers, process shots, Dutch, an in-depth sketchbook section and so on. To find out more go HERE!
Here’s a look at the cover as well as the intro by my main man, Victor Dastardly Llamas III…
Here’s a little step-by-step on how to bring that dumb bird back to life…
1. Pencils
2. Inks
3. Make a mess
4. Make it pretty
Last week I asked fans on my Facebook page which animal I should draw next. I got a flood of responses and great suggestions but the animal that got the most votes was the dodo so I had no choice but to do it up. I decided to have some fun with it and paint it rather than ink it. This illustration is roughly 16″x19″ and is comprised of acrylic, ink, markers, spray paint and color pencils.
I was recently invited to take part in a group art show in L.A. @ Known Gallery. The theme of the show is Sesame Street and part of the sales from the show will go to benefit City of Hope’s Department of Pediatrics. Aside from it being a very brief exhibit (April 28-29) there were a lot of guidelines to the artwork. That means no violence, sex, politics etc. It can be hard for me to hold back at times but this seemed like a worthwhile time to do it.
I knew I wanted to do a Cookie Monster piece so I started chopping away at ideas…
I started jotting down some ideas on some scrap paper while having a drink in the Upper Haight area of SF.
Late one night while hanging out I decided upon drawing Cookie Monster breaking a giant cookie over his head in a somewhat grand way. I never intended anyone to see this “drawing”, but here it is…
After the above mess, I composed myself and knocked out the below sketch with a sumi brush around 3am. I got up in the morning and first thing I did was to check the sketch and make sure it wasn’t a complete disaster. At that point I knew that this was the direction to take it.
I took that rough sketch and did a refined ink drawing on 11″x14″ Bristol board.
From there I had my foundation for my painting which is mixed with too many mediums to count. I even used some of my grandmother’s pastels. This final painting is 11″x14″ and is titled “Cookie Crumble Rainbow”.
Lastly, we have the show flier. I will not be at this opening but I’m sure it’ll be a fun trip down memory lane.
I finally got it all together and running… I think:) It’s a little later than I had hoped to post it but I had to make sure it was all polished and ready. Feel free to pass it around. Just follow this link…
http://www.n8vandyke.com/temp/N8_Sale.pdf
Thanks, everyone! Hope you find something you like.
Just a little head’s-up! Monday morning I am opening up my art sale that I’ve been mentioning for some time. I got the sketchbooks from the printers and they look great! REMEMBER… the only way you can get one of these 15 signed/numbered/custom illustration sketchbooks is by purchasing something from the art sale. It comes free with any one purchase big or small. It’s 40 pages full color and slammed full of goodies. Where else can you find a limited sketchbook like this with Smurfs, a Liger and a whole ton of other cool shit in it? Yeah… here. It’ll be a first come-first served art sale. E-mail me what you want, secure it with me and it’s all yours.
It’s been a long weekend. I was hired along with a handful of other artist friends to do live painting for JUXTAPOZ at this 3-day music festival. I ended up painting with my buddy, Sam Flores on a couple murals. We ended up working on Friday and Sunday (resting on Saturday).
We got there before it all opened on Friday so we could set up and get a feel for it before all the crowd got there. We were set up on the Polo Grounds in Golden Gate Park here in SF. It was your typical festival with big crowds, constant music, more port-o-potties than I’ve ever seen in my life, $9 beers and so on.
We had a wall set up near these huge windmills which made for a pretty cool entrance.
The walls we were painting on were laid out in a triangle shape with artists on each side and each wall measured 8′x24′
The day before I decided I’d do a drawing, take it to Kinko’s to blow it up, wheat paste it and then just paint over it. I knew it would be hot and crowded so I didn’t want to have to think too hard there and rather have fun. I ended up doing a drawing of an orangutan hunched over and drawing on the ground.
I pasted it up and made Sam sweat a bit because by posting up the drawing I had instant results and he got to play catch up. The idea I came up with was this orangutan is drawing a bunch of chicken scratch but what he sees in his head is beautiful (Sam handled what he saw in his head). Here we are getting it going.
I didn’t get as many progress shots as I’d like because it was so easy to get caught up working and talking to people. SF Gate did, however. They are the local newspaper website for the SF Chronicle and they got a progress shot of it when they were covering the festival.
Here it is pretty much wrapped up…
Now for the finishing touch…
We almost always had a decent crowd around us hanging out and watching the progress..
On Sunday Sam and I returned and collaborated on a whole new wall. I stuck with what worked and made another orangutan poster. I stuck with the orangutan because people seemed to dig it and… because I had plenty of orange paint left from Friday. I didn’t get any progress shots on this one. We’ll fast forward to the end result…
Sam did a girl with a dragon head dress behind it.
Here was our view of the main stage.
More. People.
I mentioned a while back that I was lining up penciling/inking/cover duties for a Image comics one-shot. Well… the first glimpse of it is starting to emerge. It is written by Mark Kidwell with colors by Jay Fotos (with Nat Jones on the alt. cover campaign). I’ll be getting to work on the interiors shortly. We had to get the cover done first for promotional reasons. I don’t want to give away too much about the script but I’ll tell ya it’s gunna be a shit ton of fun to draw. Zombies and Vietnam… ’nuff said.
Now to show the goods. Here we have the final mock-up for cover “A”…
EVERYONE seems to love a look at the creative process… so why not keep that tradition alive? So… before I could really start in on the cover I had to design the star character, Jungle Jim. Here we have some early studies…
After toying around a little bit we decided to trade up his cloth mask for a gas mask. The cloth mask just kept looking like a face diaper of sorts.
I figured I was now comfortable enough to start in on the actual cover after feeling confident in his design. Here we have the REALLY rough pencil scribbles as I try and find a design I like. These aren’t intended to be shown but it is a part of the process so I gotta suck it up. I settled on him hiding by a tree with the zombies approaching him knee deep in the mucky waters of NAM.
Next came the full-sized ink cover rough.
Once I got the above sketch approved I started in on the final cover. I traced it onto a new piece of paper using nibs and sepia toned ink. I intended for this stage to be rough because it is going to help give me those nice brown undertones and work as a guide for the paint-over.
Add a bunch of paint and there you have it. The final cover.
N8VanDyke
