Portland Mercury in Retrograde

If you live in Portland, make sure to pick up a copy of The Portland Mercury tomorrow, where you'll see an illustration by your truly. It's my first printed illustration by them and I'm hoping the first of many.



This is a concept sketch that I did for the piece right after I got the assignment, so the art director, Scrappers, could see what I had in mind. Stay tuned for the finished version.

Ezra Masliah

I know I promised more of a complete bio for my grandfather, but that's just going to have to wait for right now (sorry Adam). Here's the finished version which I actually did before the sketch I posted earlier. Reading through his autobiography (as far as he got at least) it makes me sorry I wasn't more interested in hearing these stories straight from him while he was alive.

From living in a haunted house in Burma (he saw a chest of drawers levitate over his younger sister), to selling clothes to the prince in a haberdashery, to sailing from Japan to San Francisco on the eve of World War II, losing his house at a trip to the race tracks, and moving to San Diego with my grandmother, mom, and aunt , you can't say he didn't lead an interesting life.

When he first met my grandmother he said "I think you're the girl I'm going to marry ."

Her answer?

"You're crazy."

Just Imagine the Glasses He Would Wear

I 'm really excited about this drawing because it marks a new kind of augmented reality portrait for me (not to be confused with the scary high-tech augmented reality). I'm still working on animal portraits, but I'd love to be able to do some more of these in the future.

Chrissie the Guinea Pig

Here's one that I started a while ago and never got around to finishing. Well I finally dusted off the old gal and polished her up a bit. Will there be a story for her?? Only time will tell.

Of Coats and Wood

My new house is great and all, but being small and cheap there are a few things that one might expect to find in a house that is curiously absent from mine. One of those things is a linen closet or any kind of real storage in the bathroom. Another is a coat closet. Finally tired of seeing my coats all over the leaving room, draped across the backs of chairs and couches, I decided to do something about it. As much as I like feeling like a detective, hanging my coat and hat on a freestanding coat-rack as I enter my house, we really just don't have the room for it. So hanging one on the wall was the only option left. You can attach hooks to anything and have a functioning coat rack so I thought it would be cool to find a rustic tree round, polish it up, and use that as my base. Luckily I volunteer at SCRAP and the perfect piece fell right in my lap.



All I really had to do from there was sand it down and measure out where I wanted the hangers to go. The outer two I picked up at a local hardware store, and the middle one I found at the awesome consignment store ReRun for a buck. After that it was a simple matter of anchoring it into the wall with some plastic anchors and putting it up.



See, it works!

Eddie

I always try to rifle through old family photos whenever I visit San Diego, because you never know what forgotten memory you're going to dig up. I brought back a handful of pictures from my visit last week to use for some new sketches, including some good ones of my Grandparents on my Mom's side. Here's a quick sketch that I did of my grandfather Eddie, an iraqi immigrant born in Burma, and the son of a famed Kabbalistic Rabbi.

That's just a teaser. I'll post a more thorough bio of him with a more thorough portrait.

Etsy: The Return

Remember these lovable guys?







Well I've finally gotten it together and have prints for sale of all three of them, available now on my Etsy page! Frames and mattes not included, but I can give you the measurements of the best way to matte all three of them. The prints are $20 a piece but if you buy all three you can get $10 off. This option isn't posted on the etsy page, but if you send me an email at dailysketch17@gmail.com we can work the whole thing out. Tell your friends!

Cat too cool for 2-D

We decided maybe the Smilodon was a bit too menacing for the fun vibe we were going for so I went back to the drawing board and pulled this out of my hat. If you don't think "good times" when you look at this cat then I've failed. We'll see how much the finished product ends up looking like this. Don't worry, I'll post pictures as soon as I have them! For now, stay coooool.

Smilodon for the Camera

As promised here's another idea for the "clicky-doodle" on our giant spinning prize wheel. I suggested we think of alternatives to antlers thinking they might be too obvious so we discussed the possibility of something feline related. BUT do you know what's even cooler than a cat? A TIGER. Do you know what's even cooler than a tiger? A SABER TOOTHED TIGER! This is what it might look like if a Smilodon got really mad at the Portland Mercury logo.

Giant Spinning Prize Wheel

I'm not sure I've mentioned this on here, but I've got an internship at the moment in the design department of the Portland Mercury, an awesomely bitchin' weekly magazine here in Portland. And it's free! My tasks vary from week to week and some weeks are more interesting than others. For example today our project was to design and build a giant spinning prize wheel. I've been told it's going to be used for various contests and promotions on the blog, but I'm guessing it'll mostly be used to figure out what kind of takeout to get for lunch in the office.

The art director gave me a rough sketch of the design to flesh out and this is what I came up with. I'm not used to drawing without reference, but I think this came out pretty good.


We built the basic skeletal structure today, and will probably end up finishing it sometime next week. It's still up in the air how we're going to decorate the thing (goodbye antlers?) so I drew up a few more possibilities. Tune in tomorrow to find out what they are!