Listen.. doo wa oo.. do you want to know a secret? Doo wa oo

Ok, so I play Dungeons & Dragons. Nothing to hide here. I get together with a couple of good friends once a week and roleplay a magic British-sounding bard and fight off forces of orcs and kobolds. I also doodle during sessions - so here is one of those doodles of my character, Cass (named after Mama Cass) holding her wand and lyre:

Mags

So I made a day trip to Barnes and Noble to look through all the magazines and jot down the ones I'd like to send my (soon to come) promotional material to. If you haven't picked up this month's Wired magazine, you're missing out! It features J.J. Abrams as a guest editor and is stuffed with awesome puzzles and mysteries - not to mention a sweet Spock comic!
















I'm heading out to LA tomorrow to start a design internship with Bluecanvas. They're currently working on releasing their magazine (full-circle post, folks!) and that's what I'll be workin on. I'm excited to get some design work under my belt.

Moving Forward...

Something I'm currently working on is trying to develop and cultivate the retro side of my work (and hopefully get some good portfolio pieces out of it).

This is actually a piece I have in my portfolio already, but I've redrawn it and quickly played around with color shape placement. This is definitely something I want to pursue.


















This piece is a work in progress, but I'm having a lot of fun with Painter...
I'm sure I'll change the composition around and add all the fun twinkles of a classic 50s ad.

Newsies

Great news! Woodleg Odd's album "One Step Ahead" is out and it features some artwork I created of one of the band members' awesome expression (Photoshop/Painter).
Enjoy!

Pinup Sketches

One of my absolute favorite classic pin-up artists is Gil Elvgren. I decided before I got to creating new work for my portfolio, I would dedicate time to doing some master copies & studies:

Finished Card

I found some brown recycled paper and was able to print on it with this cute little font! For the pacifier, I used Painter, fixed it up in Photoshop, printed it, and accented it with brown and white colored pencils.

Baby Card

My next-door neighbor, Scott, just had a new baby girl, so I decided to make a congrats card to welcome her home... I was inspired by the never-ending pink and green color scheme of Veronica Mars. It's not quite at a pretty stage yet, but here's the progress so far (Photoshop & Painter):

New Coloring Pages Up!

SmallAnimalChannel (Chinchilla, Hedgehog, Mice, and Sugar Glider)

CatChannel (All)

BirdChannel (Cockatiel)

Now that my internship has officially concluded at BowTie, I will be paying more attention to my blog and my site. I'm currently re-vamping my resume and coming up with a clever promo piece to send to potential employers. I have a long list of to-dos that seems to grow by the minute. My first priority is to get as much advice about beginning a freelance illustration career and making my work up to standard - then I can proceed to network and promote like crazy.

Update

Now that I'm in my last week of this illustration internship, I feel the panic of walking the tightrope without the net. It's hard to believe 9 weeks have already gone by... At least I'll have more time to blog it up.
Lately I've been looking at a lot of my Adam Hughes sketchbooks & doodling - trying to return to one of my favorite subjects: the pinup. I've also been researching everything I can about how to survive as a freelance illustrator. I realize it'll take time ...and really, I'm more excited than fearful.