Occidental College Illustrations

A few months ago, I was asked by Occidental College in California to draw a few illustrations for a recruiting booklet.  The assignment was a fun challenge -- mixing location drawings along with some portraits of famous alumni.

Below are a few of the illustrations I did for this assignment.

This was a very wide wraparound cover for the booklet, featuring the college on the front with Los Angeles visible on the back.  I painted this in gouache and ink on paper - the only drawing I did "traditionally" for this project.

Another view of the campus, this time drawn digitally.  One downside of digital illustration is that drawing foliage takes twice as long as drawing it traditionally!

I drew 10 Alumni portraits, a few of which are shown below.  The fellow with the giant Monty Python hand in the shot is, of course, Terry Gilliam.  They were all drawn digitally.

The Minutemen

Here's a recent cover illustration I painted for DC Comics' Before Watchmen project.  It's a variant cover for Minutemen issue #5.  I had fun playing around with the composition, trying to fit all 8 superheroes into a design.   My personal favourite of the heroes depicted here -- Mothman.  Gotta love a guy with antennae on his head.

This was painted in ink and watercolour , with some colour tweaking and adjustments in photoshop.

Batman take a bow

This was an illustration drawn for Grantland Quarterly, to accompany an article about the end of the Batman trilogy of films.  I enjoyed working a sports metaphor into this one.

This was drawn mostly in ink, with a few tweaks and redraws done in software.

My favourite play is the alley-oop!

Closing out our week of posting NBA portraits, we'll end with the big man, Patrick Ewing of the New York Knicks.  I always liked Ewing's teams of the 80's, even if they couldn't get past MJ and his Bulls.  He also had a pretty cool hightop fade in his day.

And for those who guessed it, yes, the common theme among all 4 portraits is....they all wore number 33.  Thanks for indulging my NBA obsession, folks.

This one was drawn and lettered entirely digitally.

I like slam dunks, take me to the hoop...

And day 3 of our 4 day NBA portraits series brings us to...Scottie Pippen, my favourite "point forward".  

Like the last one, this one was drawn in my tiny sketchbook, in ink and a cheap red marker for the tone.

One more portrait left to go for the week!