real horrorshow

I was approached to do a piece for a Kubrick Anthology being put out by a European publisher, and immediately wanted to do something for A Clockwork Orange. 

Last year, I'd intended to do a book cover for Clockwork Orange as part of my thesis, but I felt like it would be almost impossible to compete with the movie. Also, I've seen some other neat book covers for Clockwork Orange, (here and here) and it was too overwhelming to try and compete with all that. The movie is so engrained in our culture that no other depiction of Alex really felt right (even though he's like 14 in the book and is played by a 28 year old actor).

When I decided to do a piece about the movie, rather than the book, I wanted to do something other than the few famous scenes everyone knows. I didn't want this thing to be a Hot Topic poster, after all. One of the funniest scenes to me is Alex picking up the two oblivious girls in the record shop, and all the ridiculous sexual imagery and sillyness that ensues. Not my usual fare, but I had fun all the same. Enjoy.

err'body matte paint

Someone asked me what a typical workday is like, so hopefully this is an interesting post. I get to work on a really wide range of stuff so there's no short answer.

I work on whatever they throw at us, and in this case, it was matte painting. I didn't particularly like doing matte painting, but it was a learning experience at least, and it never hurts to have another thing in your skillset. It's more photoshop trickery than illustration, but I sure honed my stamp brush skills.

So, it begins with this commercial for Home Depot and Nascar. Pretty standard feel good whatever.

Get it? FANS.

That last 7 seconds when the two people are looking at the ENDLESS HALL OF FANS really looked something like this though

The people were going to be composited in later, so I just had to make it extend 5 times further back in space, fill the shelves with products, lower the ceiling, fix the lights, repaint the floor, add an endcap, and whatever else would make it believable. So we end up with this.

Now, since the people and "Fans" sign aren't even showing, you can see some of the areas I kinda dismissed (check out the extra row of reflected lights, yeeeah). The hardest part was the shelves, as Home Depot doesn't really have a standard way of shelving anything, and having a really limited amount of product photography to work with didn't help. 

Here's everything kinda fake comped together

During this project, we'd have daily meetings where I'd meet with the art director, producers, and inferno artist and we'd nitpick the crap out of this thing until it felt believable. Commercial projects are pretty fast, and it's rare that I spend longer than a week or two on one.

Now that they've figured out that they can use me to do matte painting, I've been painting mountains for a beer ad all week. But, that's been a bit more fun.

Actual art stuffs soon :)

entanglements

A friend's kitchen

This is how the kids dress these days, those crazy kids. I swear I saw this kid at a Starbucks.

Someone asked me to draw a monster attacking a city and it kinda looks like Thiel.

February has been busy and hectic and exhausting, but exciting. 

I've added some more prints to my Etsy shop, mostly book cover work that people had inquired about. 

Hope all are well.

girls n guns

Friday sketch at work this week was "my uzi weighs a ton" and I have little to no interest in drawing guns, so I went to Erin-Default-Awkward-Girls-Without-Pants mode, and voila. 

I'm in the middle of reading Then We Came to the End, and being that it takes place at an ad agency during a recession and layoffs, the issues ring true to my own experience here. I liked this passage-

We had a toy client, a car client, a long-distance carrier, and a pet store chain. We did TV, print, direct mail, and internet. We had a business to business division. We drank too much on the weekends. We had the great fortune and shortcomings of character that marked every generation that had never seen war. If we had been recovering from the aftereffects of a significant campaign, we might have been grateful to be where we were. Eager, even.

Mustache

Friday Sketch at Reel FX this week was "Magnificent Mustache"

Civil war facial hair can't be beat.

Canvas for a cause

I did a painting for tonight's Canvas for a Cause show at Reel FX. Quilts and girls are default for me, it would seem.

all my wherefores and whys

Parka Twins

(about half watercolor half photoshop)

This was my first drawing of the new year, and probably the best drawing I've ever done of Drew. I captured his essence.

Bookstore drawrin

A girl in a pleated skirt

I drove about 2500 miles in the past 3 weeks. Dallas to Florida. Port Richey to Orlando, a handful of times. Florida to Dallas. I did not find myself dreading the time spent on the road. I welcomed the chance to clear my mind, put on some music, and do a thing that had to be done. Florida was good to me and I was sad to leave this time. But, I feel recharged, and ready for these next few uncertain months.

either or

  

Few little sketchbook watercolor things.

I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas. I'm looking forward to getting some new work done and enjoying the mild Florida winter for a few weeks.

Merry Christmas Y'all

This is a long drive for someone with nothing to think about

Sketchbook page

Have you seen the thumbs commercial? I got to work on our pitch for the thumbs commercial, it was entertaining to say the least. Weird to see it on tv though. It's as creepy as I expected.

These are all from a project I can not talk about but I'm allowed to show some stuff. This is about 1/50th of the amount of work I did for this project, and it was all in illustrator. I learned a lot about illustrator. Anyhow, soon enough you'll probably see more of these, for now, enjoy

 

Not even an hour after this was posted on a Publisher's Weekly blog, I sold out of Penelope prints. A couple people mentioned that they were librarians, and a few asked me to send the prints to their library. Having been a librarian for 4 years, I was happy to oblige. I've put the shop on vacation though, I'm driving to Florida tomorrow and can't take all my printing/packaging stuff with me. Hope everyone has a great holiday. :)

flamenco

Reel FX had a flamenco dancer model last night at figure drawing, I like drawing big ol' poofy dresses. I tend to draw quickly and get impatient, so I drew the above pose a few times.

Towards the end of the figure drawing session, it started sleeting, and finally, snowing. They don't warn you about how surreal post-college life is. All of sudden you're in Texas and it's snowing and you're drawing a flamenco dancer. Life is pretty strange.

In other news, if you aren't done Christmas shopping, I'm selling some prints on Etsy :) If there's something of mine that you like but that isn't on there, shoot me an email. Take care!

Thai

Spring Rolls - I didn't get a picture of the one I made because I ate it :]

So, yesterday I took a Thai cooking class at Central Market in Dallas. I've always loved Thai food, and I've attempted making a few things at home but nothing ever came out great. The class was so much fun, and now I feel like I can make this stuff with more confidence.

Red Curry with duck, eggplant, tomatoes. 

This is a shot of the kitchen where we worked, this is only about half of it though. The mirrors up top were cool because we could easily watch everything that was going on.

Clockwise from upper left, two woks of pad thai, panang beef curry with homemade curry paste, tom ka gai, and the red duck curry. We also made spring rolls but like I said, I ate mine before I got a shot of it, so I had to do a watercolor in homage. And to justify posting all of this on an art blog :)

It's starting to really cool off here, and cooking always makes my apartment feel cozy.

How to fix our troubled economy...

I recommend printing a bunch of these and trying your luck.

To explain... I can finally show you something I did at work because this was cut from a commercial I worked on. 

We were doing a series of stop motion animation commercials about recycling, and so logically, me constructing tons of paper props was the best way to be environmentally friendly :) Since I think it's illegal to scan and print money, (even as a prop?), I did a cartoony one to fit the style.

The stack down there is about 1/10 of the amount of tiny fake money I made... printed... glued, bound, and then glued into stacks, and then the client decided against it, so... I know how animators feel when their shots get cut. But, at least I was left with stacks of tiny fake money to leave on co-workers' desks.

And then... cats.

My sister is getting married in June, and I've agreed to do all her wedding stationary, starting with Save the Date cards, which will feature her and her fiancee's three cats (yes seriously). I wanted it to not be crazy cat lady-esque, hopefully I succeeded. This is just what I have done on the kitties.

And, a sketchbook page/lil painting.

specificity

Emma - digital

I don't think this is quite done yet.

Sketchbookins

Also, this is why I don't get more done at home. I bring my tablet home to do some work and there is always a kitten on it. Dawwww.

After a really hectic September, involving a fender bender with an 88 year old man named Ed Butts (pictured here) I am grateful that October has been a little easier to handle. My mom and sister are visiting next weekend, which will be cool because we're going to see King Tut at the DMA. I'm flying to Orlando the following weekend to see Drew, and maybe head to Sarasota for an evening. I wish I'd been at Illest this year, but from what I've seen of pictures and heard from everyone, the show was a success and I'm proud the tradition lives on :)

Hope everyone is well!

eucalyptus

First off, here's a beetle.


Also, a little close up of a work in progress-

I haven't done much stuff for myself lately, busy with the 9-5. Work has been lots of fun though, I can't wait until the stuff is actually able to be shown to other people, we've been on some really cool projects.

Been cooking lots and playing with the kitten. Feels weird, for the first time in 16 years, having a September where I'm not in school.

engines

I finally broke down and got a kitten. 

I was trying to put off for a few months until I could properly afford it (pet deposits, vet bills etc) but there was an opportunity to save a kitten and I couldn't pass it up. Brandon Oldenburg found two kittens in a grocery store parking lot that had crawled up into a car's engine. When the driver came out he said that he'd pulled out 5 kittens earlier during the day, and was amazed that there were still two kittens in there, they had ridden in his car's engine for a few miles and survived.

Brandon couldn't keep the cats, so I offered to take one, and someone at work took the other. When I picked her up, and she was all grungy from the engine, so I gave her a bath when I got her home. This is what she looked like before her bath, but after Brandon's 5 year old daughter started decorating her. Circus kitty?

 
Anyhow, I named her Ginny, in part because I liked the name, and because of her love of engines and tight mechanical spaces. She has already climbed behind my dryer one night, and under my dishwasher yesterday, when it took Sarah and me two hours and a screwdriver to find her. Luckily she was fine, and I've since then kitten-proofed my apartment.



Hopefully I will make some new stuff soon. If anyone has good advice about shipping 13x19 prints, I am having trouble finding envelopes big enough. Trying to set up a way to sell prints. If you have used a service of some sort with great success please let me know. Thanks!

Orchidozer

Small update at www.emcguire.net

Also, I'm in the process of updating my blog so that I can finally have an RSS feed and use/be used by google reader and such. In the process of switching over my links I'm sure some obvious ones were lost along the way. Drop me a line if I've forgotten you.

Two Deities

Two Deities

I did these for the weekly challenge at the 2012 forum. 

These are a bit of a change for me, but I like how they turned out. Trying to incorporate some of the stuff I'm doing at work into my illustration stuff. I really enjoy my job at Reel FX, I feel like I'm learning a lot and trying some different methods, and they seem to treat the artists pretty well. I won't be able to show any of the work I'm doing for a while though, which is probably a good thing, I can brush up my designistrator concept art chops in the mean time.

butternut

This is actually Caran d'ache pastels on gessoed board. They're water soluble pastels and have some neat effects wet or dry. Pratt introduced us to them, I think. They were the only supplies I didn't leave at work over the weekend, and I felt like doing something to unwind.

I really like my job, and I'm slowly adjusting to the 9-6 routine. I am glad to have some good company as I adjust to Texas life. It's a state of mind, I've heard, but I'm still not sure what that state is. I thought that an entire life lived in Florida would make me heat resistant, but it was 105 today, and unlike Florida, there is no afternoon shower daily to cool things off. There isn't the sauna-like humidity as much here, but just a sense that you are slowly dying with every additional second you spend outside. I look forward to seasons.

As soon as I can afford it, I'm going to get a pet, I need a lil buddy in this echoey apartment.

dallas blues

Well, I'm moving to Dallas in a few days. I've accepted a position at Reel FX in Dallas, as a graphic design apprentice, so I am packing up and getting ready for the real life stuff. I'm pretty excited, after living in Florida for 18 years, I'm ready for a change.

Wish me luck y'all.