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.