Dressing up.

Here's another part of a sketch I recently finished for Highlights Hidden Pictures. It's pretty hard to make clothes look like they don't fit.

Corner Store.

I'm currently working on a bunch of Hidden Pictures for Highlights. I don't want to show the full sketches until they're approved, but here's a piece of one. 

I've never drawn a Deli before so this was a lot of fun. Growing up in the city we had what we called, "corner stores," which were stores at the end of the block that had all the essentials, including all the typical Deli stuff. I wasted a lot of money in those, I remember stupidly spending a rare two dollar bill to buy a couple of water ices for my friends and I.

I finally replaced that two dollar bill. I found one in Israel of all places, in the valley of the Dead Sea, next to Masada.

Gifts.

Here are some illustrations I did for some friends of mine over the years. The descriptions are above the images.

This was done for a friend's wedding. Joe is a big fan of DC Comics and he introduced me to comics many years ago.

My friend Ramsie always joked that the only man she would ever marry was, well, just read the end.

As a wedding gift to my friend Michael I created his wedding cake topper which had a motorized back that I had made out of an old clock.

Sometimes I get requests. Dianna and Paul asked me to do a caricature of their entire wedding party so they could give it out as a gift.

This one was done for Jeff's birthday I think. At the time he was a security guard at a Movie Theater, so my secret caption for this one was, "Step away from the butter! You're using entirely too much!" Because what the heck is a movie security guard securing?

Tracie asked me to make this for her birthday. She didn't know what she wanted exactly, just a drawing of herself, so I made her rollerblading, since she often did so in the church parking lot on Sunday afternoons.

I honestly can't remember if this was done as a birthday gift for Rich Kirk or his daughter Brittany. I did the Monsters, Inc. parody simply because Brittany laughed just like the character Boo.

I still take requests by the way.

Seek and Find Finishes

I have finally finished these seek and finds for the Maiden Creek Watershed Association. These will be used to educate children on conservation and the environment. As I said before, these were harder than the Hidden Pictures I do for Highlights simply because I had to hide specific objects and illustrate specific flora and fawna as well having a cross section of the creek included in the illustrations. I also had to design the look of the page as well "extract" the hidden objects, something I am not entirely used to.

Philadelphia Christmas Card.

Last card, I promise. I meant to put this up sooner, but I got swamped with other stuff.

Back in 1995 my good friend Ramsie and I entered a contest for the city of Philadelphia's official Christmas Card. Students from all of the art schools in the Philadelphia area entered and Ramsie and I were chosen. We both developed the concept of using the Love statue but I have to be honest and tell you that Ramsie did most of the work. She did the bottom half since she was very good at drawing "small" people and I did the top half because I was more familiar with the buildings of the city. The funny part is that we never meant for this to be the finished art but Mayor Rendell (now the Governor of Pennsylvania) was so pleased with it that they ran with it as is. The print house that was sponsoring the contest (CR Waldmen) loved the card because they got to show off their new 5 color press since we had used Doc Marten's dyes which contain some fluorescents (they run into the fifth color area). Although you can't see it, they also put a UV coating over the Love statue which gave it a glossy look adding to the beauty of the card.

Unfortunately, Ramsie moved to Texas before she had the opportunity to meet the Mayor and have some promotional photos taken so I went alone. Below is one of those photos. Not everyone can say that they got be the Mayor for 52 seconds...

Christmas Card.

Daisy and I just returned from a wonderfully improved non-Italian 2nd honeymoon cruise and I still feel like I'm moving. Now that the Christmas Cards are officially out and about I can post it here. If you'd like one, just email me your address and I'll send one along to you asap.

Merry Christmas.

The inside:

Christmas Cards from Christmas Past

I have never received as much positive feedback from one of my cards as I had with the one above. After this one every card I make seems to feel pretty stupid and mundane.

As for the one below (pictured is the outside of the card and the inside is below it), I am at that age were everyone complains about their weight during the holiday season and I had gotten pretty tired of hearing about it.

There is a funny story behind the card below. I had blatantly used my friend Jeff as the character for the fourth wise-man simply because this is something he would say with his often inappropriate sarcasm. At the last minute I had second thoughts and changed the look of the character so no one would suspect it was him. Well, two days after mailing this card out I received emails from several people asking if the fourth wise man was in fact, Jeff.

I'll post this year's card soon, I just want to send them out first and not spoil the fun.

Gas crunch comics.

I made these sketches in the midst of the gas increase and swore I would take them to finish but I just haven't had the time so here you go.

Willamina and Theodora.

Daisy and I are moving back to PA. We have both had enough of the wonderfully inept NJ government (honestly, the only good thing about the NJ gov't is the DMV). We are in no hurry, so despite the housing market we are both trusting God to move in a favorable way for us. Since we will be showing our house off, we decided to pass my oldest cat, Willamina, off to my Mother for the time being. Our younger cat, Theodora, will be going to a non-kill shelter on Monday. It was a hard decision but one we had to make. Daisy and I are both allergic to cats and with winter upon us it only makes the allergens worse in the closed up house.

I drew the above ink drawing of Willamina when she was a mere 2 months old (back in 1996) and the photo below was taken of her on her favorite place to rest in the house, my light table, while I am working of course. Which reminds me, I need to start a photo blog. This photo just doesn't seem right sitting here. Hmm... blog 31x30? I'll get on it.

Seek and Find 1

I was recently commissioned to create this (as well as another that I am not finished) seek and find for the Maiden Creek Watershed Association of PA. I had to add specific floral and fauna as well the water table, which made this more difficult in composition than the average hidden picture I do for Highlights. I still like it though. That Raccoon makes my day.