2015 United States Capitol Ornament

This is the 2015 United States Capitol Ornament. I initially designed this based on artwork from Constantino Brumidi paintings within the capitol. The sheer amount of work from Constantino within the Capitol is truly inspiring. Additionally, the undertaking of restoring the artwork within the Capitol is equally impressive. This ornament as well as the 2016 and previous years ornament can be purchased here, United States Capitol Annual Ornaments.

This as well as the other ornaments that I have worked on require a true team effort. Several hands along the way help create the final ornaments.

UVA vs VA TECH Battle Bowl Animation

Here is another animation that I worked up for our company's Rivalry Week Sale for the Commonwealth Cup. I primarily used Cheetah 3d for modeling and rendering. Final finishing work was mainly done with Photoshop. Another huge learning experience. There were so many curve balls thrown at me, I was not sure it would get done in time. Just had to find solutions and put in tons of work to get it done. Sounds were made primarily from free sound effects with adjustments and enhancements in Audacity. Another learning experience in a quick amount of time. Normally I would have used Final Cut Pro to piece it all together, but I had to do with what I had at the time and make it work. iMovie did the job. Gotta make it work to make the deadline.

Animation was made for Rivalry Week Special 20% off Virginia Tech & UVA Big Sport Party Bowls! You can see a much better quality version of the video at the link below.

http://bigsportgifts.com/pages/20-off...

Check out http://bigsportgifts.com/ for other schools too.

Big Sport Party Bowl Animation - University of Washington

Here is the first cut of an animation I made using Cheetah 3D and Photoshop. Most of the work was done in Cheetah 3d with finishing touches and additional animations done in Photoshop. There are some trouble areas that I would like to fix up at a later date. Great re-learning experience. Some of the things you would think would be so easy were the most time consuming and difficult. I'm sure with time and additional tools it will become easier. 

This was done in order to provide promotional content for our companies new line, Big Sport Gifts. Additionally some of the product renderings used throughout the website were also done with Cheetah 3d. For the price it is a pretty robust and useful program.
 

Poseidon Illustration

This was another one in a series of 3 images. Mercury, Poseidon, and Atlas. Done for Overnite shipping through Wilson West Livesay Advertising. This one was also done with Acrylic, Airbrush, and Colored Pencil.

Callaway Gardens Butterflies Illustrations

This was a series of digital illustrations for Callaway Gardens in 2002. They were done as porcelain magnets and ornaments. The main challenge for this project was in achieving the desired through decals. All of the butterflies were approximately 3 inches or smaller. Very fun series to work on. The butterflies for this series were of the Adonis, Blue Morpho, Doris Longwing, Emerald Longwing, Lacewing, Monarch, and Swallowtail.

Colonial Williamsburg Grand Illumination 2014

This was a digital illustration for the 2014 Colonial Williamsburg Grand Illumination. It was used across a grouping of objects including a porcelain mug, ornament, and tote bag. This year the main theme was the Capitol Building. I had never been to the Grand Illumination, so I decided to go this year to take pictures. It was quite an experience. Very cold but very fun. I can see why this is a tradition for so many. If you have not been, keep it in mind near the beginning of December.

Texas Jakes Lenticular Postcard

This was an animated lenticular postcard I conceptualized and rendered for Texas Jakes located at the Stockyards Station in Fort Worth Texas. Flashing neon, bucking bronco, dangling spurs, Fort Worth Herd cattle drive, and more cowbell! This was a fun one to work on. If you would like a custom lenticular image you can find out more at Design Masters.

2013 Biltmore Estate Annual Ornament

This was a rendering of an 2013 annual ornament concept for the Biltmore Estate. It initially started out as a pencil sketching on vellum and then I brought it into the computer and completed the rendering in photoshop. This rendering process has evolved over 13 years and continues to be refined. The challenge is always to give the closest impression to the final product, whatever the material may be. If you happen to be visiting or staying on the grounds, this ornament as well as the current years annual ornament can be purchased in their gift shops. They also can be purchased online at shop.biltmore.com.

Hubbell Lighting Inc. Architectural Line Illustrations

During the Pencil Pushers days, we would tackle some projects together. In this case, Pep Freeman and I worked on a large grouping of lighting illustrations for Hubbell Lighting Inc. This is a cover from a brochure folder that showed a collage of a few of the illustrations. At first we established a sort of assembly line process. Pep would start the pencil line drawings and I would add forming color with airbrush acrylic paints. We both worked on refining the illustrations with colored pencil, brushed acrylic paints, custom rub on transfers and additional airbrushing if needed. Challenges included pre-mixing paints that would match the across all products, maintaining a similar style, and time frame. This series also led to some additional work involving lighting products.

Richmond Braves Multi Game Ticket Stub Illustration

I found this digging around for some printed samples of my earlier illustration work. This was another quick baseball illustration I knocked out for the 1996 Richmond Braves through Taylor Weirup Marketing. They had worked up the concept and I finalized it. It was another small size piece in order to make make sure that I didn't spend too much time getting caught up in the details. Acrylic, Colored Pencil, and Airbrush.

This was another rough illustration concept for a White House Ornament. It was done with a combination of traditional and digital illustration. Certain liberties were taken for the sake of creating an image that would work within a specific form. Decor was based upon a lot  of historic research. The fake mat framing was purely for presentation purposes. These type of roughs are enjoyable to work on. Even more so if and when they go to final. Even in digital illustration, the process can take quite a time. The ability to go tweak, move and adjust perpetually is one of the biggest advantages of working in the computer. 

Executive Education June 1998 Cover Illustration

This was an illustration for a cover done in May of 1998 for a June Issue. Straightfoward airbrush, colored pencil, and acrylic. I can guarantee that this was pretty much done on a cold press illustration board, frisket and a huge cloud of acrylic from airbrush in the studio.

Club Commons Wyndham Pocket Watch Illustration

This illustration was done sometime in the late 90's. I am not positive who this was through, but I believe it was Taylor Weirup Marketing. The only portion I did was the illustration of the pocket watch. It's use in a marketing brochure is also shown above. Going through my earlier work I often come across examples of the tools that were primarily used during that time. For instance, the pocket watch was primarily done in pencil. The face of the watch was a custom rub on transfer. I also remember the dread of using a bone burnisher to transfer this using enough pressure to transfer the art while not denting the illustration underneath. Then came the moment of pulling back the transfer carrier and hoping that small pieces did not stick or edges did not rip or tear. Still at that time, it was our go to method for adding typographic or logo elements to our illustrations. I used this same method for adding logos to bowling balls for the Dragon Bowling Ball and Warhawk Bowling Ball poster illustrations.

Make-A-Wish Foundation Annual Reports

While working at CommuniQué Marketing I was offered the chance to do some pro bono work for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Periodically one of the designers would layout the foundation's annual report. For the years 1999 and 2000 I was fortunate to work with the foundation in designing their annual report. The images above are scans of the actual covers. I remember these projects well, as these were the first multi-page layout design projects that I took from start to finish. While it helped the foundation it also helped me gain a better understanding of laying out multi-page documents as well as seeing it all the way through to final press run.

Digital "Pencil" Portraits

I noticed today that this would be my 100th post for this blog. I have posted here and there since 2006. The first post I made was regarding a computer pencil technique I was working on. 4 years later, I ending up figuring out a method I liked that married the technique that I was doing along with another tutorial I had stumbled across. The first time I enacted this technique was for an anniversary present for my wife. They were of the top 3 portraits of our boys. The images were done and framed as a grouping. Those portraits drew interest from her co-workers and friends and eventually I ended up doing several more. 

United States Capitol Porcelain Bowl

This is a Revere Bowl that I worked on at Design Masters. It shows the four stages of the United States Capitol Building. This was pretty much a straight forward digital design. At the time, I did not have access to a 3D program so I used the built in 3D revolve capabilities of Illustrator and mapped art to the shape. It had it's limitations and hurdles but I was able to find a way to make it work for the conceptual rendering that is seen at the top. It gave me the ability to see and adjust how the art would look on the final bowl. The actual bowl can be purchased from the United States Historical Society. Additionally it was bonus that I noticed while binge watching the Netflix series House of Cards that the bowl I worked on was being used as a regular prop. Some of the scenes are posted below the conceptual rendering of the bowl.

The Getty Villa Acanthus Rosette Magnet

Here is another project I worked on at Design Masters. It was a sculpted magnet based on a ceiling rosette. The top image shows the packaging from the concept. It was not fully fleshed out at that point and during final art we moved in a slightly different direction while still keeping a similar feel. The magnets were carded so that they could hang on pegs.

George Washington's Fan Chair Ornament

This is one of the first packaging illustrations and packaging layouts I did for Design Masters. The ornament was a 24kt Gold Finish representation of George Washington's Fan Chair. This started out on vellum. For George and the chair I used ink. Coloring was all done in the computer. This was around the very early 2000s and I remember being amazed at construction of the ornament. At that point I had no knowledge of how to make one of these. Making these type of ornaments present their own set of challenges but really shine when done right.

CWF Emoticon Dog Tag Necklace

At Design Masters, we are constantly reinventing ourselves, coming up with new imagery and products. This dog tag necklace is a part of our Q3 line, a semi-custom product grouping offering High Quality, Low Quantities, and Quick Delivery. Shown on this one is a design I worked up based on text emoticons. 

Gateway Arch Painted Image

This is the LONGEST post I have done yet. This was a picture that I created for the Gateway Arch. This was all digital involving both Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. The long image shows how the image started and evolved to the final image which is shown below the long image. At first I wanted to do something that looked like a travel poster. During that process I worked up another version that was received better. Soon I was working on versions where the angle of the arch changed, colors changed, positioning of elements changed. It was truly a collaborative process. In the end it was used across several products. 

Purchase of the products can be found at the JNPA giftshop. One of the products using the final image can be purchased here Arch Skyline Ornament. Other products can be found through their online gift shop shop.jnpa.com. Puchases made help provide educational programming, exhibits and site improvements to JNPA partner locations.