New magazine cover assignment

Recently, I was contacted by Foreign Policy and offered a job illustrating the cover of their upcoming March/April issue. It was a quick turnaround, but the money was good and it seemed like a good opportunity. This is the first time I've been contacted by a publication like this directly, so that is nice. The image was pretty straightforward, so I just needed to do an accurate rendering and try and make it look cool. Along the way, I learned a bit about UAVs and Hellfire missiles. This particular UAV is a Reaper.

Click here for a preview of the cover at Foreign Policy.

Sample file for the Photoshop class

For tonight, we are going to try some cool stuff. You may need a sample file to start with, so here it is. Click on it to get the fullsize version, then download it.

Teaching this semester

Spring semester has started and I am teaching once again. In addition to teaching Flash and related courses at Santa Rosa Junior College, I also began teaching at Napa Valley College. This is a Digital Art class, DART 130, using Photoshop. Students in this class should download this image for their first assignment, Creating a Face using Selection tools.

Homework is due on 30 January.

Read my interview

Happy 2012! I've got some new stuff planned for this year. Recently, I was given a set of interview questions from the website Exhibitions without Walls, the same site that had me as one of their judges in their last competition. The questions were thought provoking and commercial artists just starting out might find some helpful info.

Click here to read the interview.

Judging for an online art competition

Recently, I was asked to serve on a panel of jurors for Open, the latest photography and digital art competition at Exhibitions Without Walls. All of the work was really good and it was a bit hard to narrow things down, but luckily all the jurors had to do was evaluate each one for points in various categories. The winners were then calculated from the totals. As I said, all of the entries were high quality, so it was tough. Most of the entries were photographic, but there were a few illustrations, so I always like that.

Click here to see the the winners of Open.

My latest work

I recently completed an illustration of the Brooklyn Bridge. The end client is a construction and infrastructure company and it will be used as the header image of their calendar for next year. The final image was 26" long, but not so tall, so it's a hard format to show, but here is a detailed section of it. As you can see, it ended up being very detailed and I had a deadline I was working to hit, but it all worked out. The illustration was painted from scratch in Photoshop and took just over a week of full-time work to complete.

You can see a full-length version of the image on my portfolio site here.

My artwork on a shirt

Remember the very first tutorial I posted? If not, you can see it here. Recently, I was asked to build it into a T-shirt design. I've done this sort of thing before, but not always with the most exciting art. This was one of my favorite images and the final output actually looks pretty good. This doesn't always happen. They've promised to send me my own shirt, but I haven't seen it yet.