Party like it's 2012

This is an oldie, but a goodie. Happy New Year, everyone!

Interpretive Album cover

For Stephanie's birthday, and in honor of the interpretive dance party she's having for it, I bought her this album as a gift. HOWEVER, I was not able to find it in any of the stores around town and had to purchase it online. I wanted to give her a present on her birthday so I drew up a mock cover and put it on a random album we had and wrapped it up. Kind of the same thing, right?

Luckily the album came in the mail the day after her birthday.

Kite Flying Society

This is from a picture of my Dad and I that I thought would look good as an art piece. For some reason I came out looking like a zombie though.

Crosshatched Oldies

Here are a few more sketches from sketchbooks past. The top one is my attempt at comic book style illustration and the bottom is an old sneak a sketch from the MUNI in San Francisco. New sketches coming SOON.

Fanciful Toad and Quail.

So like I said the other day, I stumbled upon some old sketch books and thought I would post a few of the images here. Ones that I think could inspire future work. Here are a few that I did around 3 years ago.

The Great Bill Murray

He's always been one of my favorite guys, so I thought I'd take a stab at a portrait. It was also good watercolor practice!

Vacation Finds #2: Awl of Me

Also found at the Santa Cruz flea market. Awl's can prove surprisingly useful when you least expect it, and I love the durability of old tools that you can now only find second hand.

Vacation Finds #1: Dino belt buckle

This is why the Santa Cruz Flea Market is awesome. Will I ever find a cooler belt buckle? The answer, of course, is no.

Dylan in the Movies

I know I'm a day late on this one, but as promised here's the further worked on Dylan. I think my favorite part is his right hand.

Don't Look Back

We watched this classic Dylan documentary the other night, or rather I should say that we tried watching it. I fell asleep during the second half, but I DO plan on finishing it. It's interesting to see first hand footage of what he was like during that time and contrasting it with the Dylan that we've all made up in our minds. Kinda surprised to see how bratty and full of himself he was back then, but I guess he was just a kid.

I always like the idea of doing really simple line drawings like this, but I can never fight off the compulsion to keep working on it.



Kind of like this.



Though if you want to see what I did to it afterwards you're going to have to check back in tomorrow. Happy mid-September, guys. Let's put out good vibes for a few more weeks of summer.

Action Jackson

I guess I forgot to post my final piece for the Michael Jackson group show that took place at the Emerson Space Case in July. Well here it is, folks! I was also working on a scratchboard version of this that I'm more excited about but I never did get a chance to finish it up. Maybe on some rainy day I'll get around to finishing it, but for the moment let's enjoy summer while it's still here.

And speaking of enjoying Summer, check out the Emerson Space Case blog to find out how you can take part in the BEST SUMMER EVER! Events are happening at the space every Saturday for the next two weeks. This Saturday is a bake sale/swap. See you guys there?

Of Mermaids and Greeting Cards

And here's what I promise will be the very last post related to my installation. This was the final sketch of the mermaid centerpiece before I made a giant version. I'm hoping to turn it into a greeting card.

At Long Last : Window Installation at Tender Loving Empire

I know I'm about a month late on this one but I finally got around to editing the photos from my window installation at Tender Loving Empire which is STILL UP in downtown Portland and available to be viewed.

For those of you who don't live here or are just too lazy to go down there here are some pictures of the whole shebang.


The scene from the sidewalk.


Figure one: SEA CREATURE


Figure Two: Mermaid


Figure Three : Ship


Base Detail 1


Base Detail 2


Base Detail 3


Part of the purpose of the art is to help sell their locally made merchandise, so Stephanie and I picked out as many nautical themed pieces as we could find. This treasure box worked perfectly.


As did this creature.


Close up of the Sea Creature. I really wanted there to be 4 tentacles, but time only allowed for 3. The detail in his mouth nearly killed me.


Definitely the most difficult one to cut out.


What map is complete without a compass?


And of course a friendly greeting.


This was one of my favorites.


Some more of the merch we're hawking.



And that's it! I think it's going to be up for a few more weeks so make sure to head down to Tender Loving Empire at 412 Southwest 10th Avenue, just a block and a half south of Powell's!

Tender Loving Window Installation

Sorry about the long blogging hiatus folks, but with the opening of my last show, out of town guests, summer fun, bbq's, bike rides, day jobs, my birthday, vacation planning, and an upcoming window installation at Tender Loving Empire I've been pretty busy!

I don't want to divulge the whole thing just yet, but here's a concept sketch I did a while ago for some elements of the window installation. I'm installing this Saturday and then two days later it's vacation time. Awwwwwww Yeaaaaaaaah.

Spider-man Unmasked!

Here's a warm up I did for the Michael Jackson inspired group show we're having at the Emerson Space Case. (Opening Tonight)

Family Portraits art show is UP

Well, a lot of work went into the art show last weekend, but it was all well worth it. Thanks to everyone who came out and made the opening what it was.











And if you weren't able to make it the show will be up till the end of July, so get your butt down there and buy a mango.

Cherry Sprout is located at 722 N. Sumner St. Portland, OR 97217
(Directly off Albina between N. Alberta and N. Killingsworth )

Cafe Amor

These two gentlemen were actually sitting on opposite sides of the coffee shop I was at, but I thought they should meet in a drawing. Now they're in love.

Book Cover #2

This was actually my first design for the book cover, but it felt more like a poster than a book illustration and the class liked the other one better. So there you go. I debated for a long time whether to keep it like this or more simple like the one below.

20,000 Illustrations Under the Sea

I recently finished an illustration fundamentals course taught at PNCA by local artist Ryan Bubnis. We were given many options for our final project and after much deliberation I decided to go with designing a cover for a classic novel. Curiously I decided to do 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. Curious because I've never read the book. I decided that this was to my advantage, recalling Eastern European film posters for American movies that I've seen. You know, the ones where it's obvious that the artist has never seen the film? These often yield spectacular results, so I thought the same could be true for mine.

Part of my reason for taking this class was to push myself to think about art and illustration in different ways. To get out of my comfort zone a bit. Having always loved the simplicity of mid-century book covers I decided that I wanted to take a stab at it for myself. This really forced me to boil down the plot of the book to it's core elements, and play with those to maximum effect. Below is my final piece:



There are a few different incarnations that I'll post in the coming days, but ultimately this is the design I settled on. If I had more time I would have liked to play around with rendering it in more traditional media, but for now this is what I have. What do you guys think? Would YOU buy this book?

Ilan Schraer Illustration

For the last 7 weeks I've been taking an Illustration Fundamentals coarse at PNCA, as part of their continuing education program. The class turned out to be much more focused on the business side of illustration than I anticipated, but I've still been learning some good tips about the illustration world and how to better present myself as a professional. One project we've been working on is developing a "brand logo" for our illustration business.; an iconic image that we can put on business cards, letters, merchendise, etc.. I've already created something like this for my etsy store, but I thought it would be good to have another one for freelance work. Here's an idea that I've been tinkering around with:


I've used the walrus several times in my work so I thought it was a fitting icon, but I'm curious to see what it would look like in watercolor or an ink wash. I'll probably mess around with that a bit later, when I'm not swamped with work. Keep the faith dear readers. Summer WILL come!