Commercial Observer 2021- 4th year in a row
I’ve been fortunate to be able to illustrate portraits for Commercial Observer for four years in a row now. Here are 20 portraits of real-estate bigwigs for their 2021 Lenders Issue
Spiders and meat – recent work
Now that I have your attention with that title…here are two recent illustrations of completely unrelated subjects:
First, an illustration about the habitat of the Western black widow spider and a monarch for the Nature Conservancy of Canada
Secondly an illustration of various meat items for Penn Stater’s Big 3 column.
Recent headshot portraits
Here is a batch of recent portraits I did for various clients:
New Jersey Monthly
Great British Baking Show winners
Commercial Observer
Commercial Observer
Commercial Observer
Commercial Observer
Commercial Observer
Comercial Observer
La Madone des bois
It’s been awhile since I’ve painted on a large scale, so for this piece I opted to go bigger to get all the detail in (16×20″). Inked first then painted in watercolour and gouache.
Lately I’ve been contemplating how humans are so busy being humans, that we forget that we are not the only inhabitants of this place. We forget that we share it with other living beings, and that we should act as their protectors and stewards of their habitat, not as their exploiters. The Great Lockdown has shown that reduced human activity has been a gift to wildlife; locally, from less turtle deaths on the road due to reduce car traffic…to internationally, with orcas being able to communicate properly due to less boat traffic.
Hence this painting, entitled La Madone des bois. It’s inspired by a 15th century Madonna sculpture I saw in Florence last year.
Timelapse video
I’ve been wanting to make a timelapse video for years…but it’s always been complicated; first to film with a decent video camera, then find the editing software that will accelerate the frame speed, teach myself film editing, etc. And then the iPhone 6s came along with timelapse built-in! And the app for iMovie is free. How simple it now is! It condensed a two-hour process into 1:37 minutes. Technology is crazy amazing sometimes.
I thought it would be fun to film myself drawing one of my Victorian Ladies. All my illustrations are basically a five-step process: pencil, ink, watercolour and finally pencil crayon with gouache accents. Hopefully you get a sense of that from this video.
music credit: The Cello Song by The Piano Guys
Final illustration