One of my responsibilities at this company was to develop ads for several trade publications throughout the year. These are a few, including a few examples of a concept we were developing.
Concept design to evoke more of a mood. This one is "Color"
Concept design to envoke more of a mood. This one is "Music"
Concept design to evoke more of a mood. This one is "Geometry"
Ads showcasing recent successful kiosk designs.
Ads showcasing recent successful kiosk designs.
Ads for trade show industry periodicals.
Ads for trade show industry periodicals.
Ads for a retail store.
Ads for a retail store.
This is a booklet I designed for a proposed feature film named MECHANICA. It was produced over several months from scratch made icons, scanned papers, staged photoshoots, drawings, stage designs, and lots of Photoshop sweat and tears. A lot of the elements used would have been starting points for the actual film design. To date, it is still unfunded.
This is a booklet I designed for a proposed feature film named MECHANICA. It was produced over several months from scratch made icons, scanned papers, staged photoshoots, drawings, stage designs, and lots of Photoshop sweat and tears. This page describes previous award-winning film by the production troupe.
This is a booklet I designed for a proposed feature film named MECHANICA. It was produced over several months from scratch made icons, scanned papers, staged photoshoots, drawings, stage designs, and lots of Photoshop sweat and tears. Here, several staged photos depicting parts of the film.
This is a booklet I designed for a proposed feature film named MECHANICA. It was produced over several months from scratch made icons, scanned papers, staged photoshoots, drawings, stage designs, and lots of Photoshop sweat and tears.
Here is a collection of design sketches, production teaser art, poster design, and other bits of art that I created to help promote this undertaking.
This is a booklet I designed for a proposed feature film named MECHANICA. It was produced over several months from scratch made icons, scanned papers, staged photoshoots, drawings, stage designs, and lots of Photoshop sweat and tears.
This is the synopsis, describing the film.
This is a booklet I designed for a proposed feature film named MECHANICA. It was produced over several months from scratch made icons, scanned papers, staged photoshoots, drawings, stage designs, and lots of Photoshop sweat and tears.
This is a wrap-up of the features that investors would find interesting and worthy of their investment.
This was an independent film producer’s project that I worked on briefly. The film was to be set in 1984, a pivotal year for the world in many ways. The film was about a group of friends and a few people newly introduced into the group of friends, somebody being a snitch. This was the poster, based on the producer’s fascination of artichokes being symbolic of her ideas about the movie, which I transmogrified into an atomic cloud, based on political tensions of the Orwellian year.
A collage of symbols used as part of the proposal collateral for the film. Artichoke image was a rubber stamp I hand-carved. The punk rock Rat was meant to be in the Pat Nagel, Duran Duran style of the day.
A collage of images from the 1980s in a style of the party invitations, posters and club flyers from that time. It made me laugh.
This was a quick one-page comic I produced for the YOTR prospect booklet. The director wanted a silly comic that showed some nerdy character insight. An insight into my own persona? Was that out loud?
Film poster proposal. Showing a dramatic moment during the stage play where Steve Starbuck encounters the Robot atop the Mechanical Planet.
Film poster proposal showing the small-town dreamer girl imagining the people from outer space.
A teaser poster proposal featuring Steve Starbuck rescuing the alien woman, while the Robot charges at them in the distance. This was a watercolor and ink painting.
Another proposed poster, this one done in a limited color silkscreen style. It shows Steve Starbuck rescuing the alien woman, behind them is the reflection of the Robot, reflected in The Eye of Mechanica (a mechanized, robotic planetoid).
A fake newspaper article created as part of the multi-media proposal campaign. Photoshoot of the actors on a porch, Photoshopped with a 3D representation of the stage as it would be in the film (The Eye of Mechanica on the left).
The cover of “Mysterious Worlds” pulp magazine, which features the serialized adventures of Captain Steve Starbuck. The artwork was a mix of a photo of my daughter and a rendering of the 3D model I created of Mechanica, painted to look like a gouache painting in Painter.
The stage design sketches for the Mechanica traveling roadshow.
Over the years I have worked with several companies that designed and produced graphics for a variety of companies. I designed the graphics package for the regional offices of Macerich Retail Management Company. Years ago, United Supermarkets contracted the company I worked for to develop their Market Street concept as well as their hispanic-themed Amigos. I also worked with another firm to design themed graphics for Action Suzuki and gift shops for Busch Entertainment parks.
Design drawing for Macerich regional office decor. This is part of the lobby.
Photo of the Macerich regional office lobby.
Part of the hallway decor layout for the mace rich offices.
One of many graphic assemblies for the Macerich office project.
This is a sign I designed for the lobby of medical treatment center, Protom. They were one of our exhibit clients, and I designed their exhibit graphics as well. This sign is stainless and polished stainless letters, approximately 28" wide.
The prototype for Amigos, Plainview, Texas.
The prototype for Amigos, Plainview, Texas.
Multi-layered signs designed for the original Market Street.
Every department in Market Street had a distinctive theme and signs.
The Seafood department, separate from the Meats Department, was added to Market Street in the third store we designed.
The central town corner.
The Angus Beef section was in the traditional section of the Amarillo United Supermarkets Store, but it was decided it needed a little special "Market Street" style attention.
My original store graphics proposal. It incorporated some of the United Supermarkets traditional elements (the blue and white checkerboard) and added simple iconic vintage-style graphics.
The Pet Center also received special attention. I was given the opportunity to do the illustrations on the walls.
The Tijuana iguana
Hummingbirds can be pets...
I also made illustrations for the hot meals/diner area of Market Streets
The Illustrator versions were ultimately replaced with more organic versions, which I created in Painter.
I also designed more contemporary signs for United Supermarkets Whole Health Centers within the stores.
Set design and photo of final set for Fully Cooked commercial.
Set design and photo of finished set for Bakery commercial.
Bread illustrations made for HEB Central Market.
Bread illustrations made for HEB Central Market.
Bread illustrations made for HEB Central Market.
Bread illustrations made for HEB Central Market.
Action Suzuki was a very challenging project. I helped develop the theme, created points of interest signs and highway signs.
Another view of Action Suzuki.
Before and after shot of the large mural on the back wall. Suzuki supplied me with the promo photo shot in Moab Valley featuring all of their all-terrain vehicles. I had to remove them in Photoshop so the images wouldn’t interfere with the real vehicles parked on the ramp in front of the mural, and I also enhanced the background.
La Creme was a small artisan coffee and tea shop in The Plaza of the Americas, Dallas. I helped theme and made all of the artwork, including the Leaning Tower of Food and various descriptive illustrations on the back wall.
Props for Wes Anderson's feature film, "Rushmore". I made the Aquarium model, a science fair display, and a post-holocaust highway miniature, plus the school's sign.
Set design and scenic painting for "No Exit" at Dallas' Stage Three (actually in Stage Four).
I have been in the exhibit industry for many years, both as an employee of large companies and on a freelance basis. It's demanding but rewarding work. Seen here are but a few photos of some the projects I've worked on.
The Dallas Summer Musicals celebrated 75 years in 2015. I helped Applied Arts Studio design this large lobby monument to commemorate the anniversary season.
Another view of the DSM monument.
I also designed these entry columns for each entrance into the auditorium.
Illustration for entrance/lobby decor I created for a recent Lewisville Education Foundation “Evening for Education” event, based on Alice in Wonderland. Created in Adobe Illustrator and produced as glass clings adhered to doors. A few subtle details include shadows of the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat.
Illustration for entrance I made, modifying a stock illustration, for a recent Lewisville Education Foundation “Evening for Education” event, based on Alice in Wonderland.
The sponsor tables had signs, designed after the Cheshire Cat, with varying degrees of “invisibility”. Some were totally clear except for the smile, a faint outline of the body contours, and the sponsor names, with others ranging through opacity all the way to completely solid. Printed on both sides of 1/8” clear acrylic.
Detail of the LEF Cheshire Cat sponsor signs.
Macerich trade show exhibit at ICSC ReCon, Las Vegas.
The graphics for the Macerich exhibit were multilayered, combining property renderings and lifestyle photos.
Macerich exhibit booth graphics on 3form and wall panels.
Special attention was made of their newest development, showcasing Santa Monica Place on their 100 foot back wall.
Exhibit graphics for Plaza Las Americas. 3D signs and all walls covered in graphic panels printed on "metallic" paper, which gave the images a vibrant, almost three-dimensional quality.
Entry into Plaza Las Americas exhibit booth. Halo lit logo on "metallic" print. ICSC ReCon, Las Vegas.
Exhibit graphics for Cognizant
Exhibit graphics for Cognizant
Exhibit graphics for Taubman. ICSC ReCon, Las Vegas.
Exhibit graphics for Weyerhaeuser.
The entry tower for the Acadia Realty Trust exhibit. made of thousands of 2" glass tiles to reflect their original "tree" logo. The tower was made in 2007, but the next year Acadia changed their logo as seen here. The tiles were too expensive to update to the newer logo.
Exhibit graphic design for Protom.
Acadia's mosaic wall, made of varying layers of black PVC with applied graphics.
Acadia's logo, made of back-printed acrylic with CNC cut grooves.
This is an example of some of the Photoshop work I have done, in this image removing unsightly objects for a promotional display for the Ritz-Carlton in Coconut Grove.
I designed several vignettes for Kohler to showcase their new design trends at KBIS. This is IronTones.
I designed several vignettes for Kohler to showcase their new design trends at KBIS. This is Undertone.
I designed several vignettes for Kohler to showcase their new design trends at KBIS. This is ProTask (my personal favorite).
I designed several vignettes for Kohler to showcase their new design trends at KBIS. This is Woodfield.
A CD served as the invitation for Chili's 2005 General Managers Conference. I was hired by the show producer to design and create a fold-out schedule, event tickets, stage passes and more, all part of the collateral package I designed for the event. It was an exercise that involved layout, prop-making, photography, fake media paparazzi, a bunch of research involving the Way-Back Machine, and listening to more Jimmy Buffet and Jake & Elwood Blues than I wanted to. But before getting to get to the final suite of goodies that the General Managers received, there were several preliminary concepts that were tried but ultimately didn't make the cut, although they were more exciting to imagine and prototype than the rather “normal” CD jewel case. It all came down to expenses in the end. Take a minute to view the final result and the early prototypes in this brief case study.
This fold-out was the invitation for the event.
The layout for the booklet which was inserted into the CD jewel case.
The layout for the booklet which was inserted into the CD jewel case.
Backstage pass for the attendees.
Ticket to The Blue Leopard Club, where The Blues Brothers played a special concert for the ChiliHeads.
Concept 1. A fold-out card, featuring gambling and general mayhem. I liked the way the Chilis logo says "HI" in this version.
Concept 1. The inside of the fold-out card.
Concept 2. The event needed more of a theme, so a trip down musical memory lane became the guiding idea throughout the rest of the development. The second concept was a road (trip) map.
Concept 2. Revolution! The road map opens with some highlights of the meeting's festivities.
Concept 2. The "outside" of the map, with scheduled event and various other travel information.
Concept 2. The Map of a good time.
Concept 3. The theme needed to be more about the musical guests. Thus the road map turned into the "album". This is the cover.
Concept 3. The album would open and a guitar-thrashing ChiliHead would unfold with the Las Vegas sign behind him. I spent hours figuring out how those shapes would fold up and unfurl without ripping.
Concept 3. A CD was included in the album sleeve.
A set of full-coverage silkscreened labels for three varietals of wines. Each label featured a topographic map that depicted the location of the vineyard where the grapes were grown. This series won Best of Show for label design and also double gold medals "BrandBuilders - best use of labeling to promote brand" by Jerry Mead New World International Wines Competition.
A set of full-coverage silkscreened labels for three varietals of wines. Each label featured a topographic map that depicted the location of the vineyard where the grapes were grown. This series won Best of Show for label design and also double gold medals "BrandBuilders - best use of labeling to promote brand" by Jerry Mead New World International Wines Competition.
photo: bybeephoto.com
A set of full-coverage silkscreened labels for three varietals of wines. Each label featured a topographic map that depicted the location of the vineyard where the grapes were grown. This series won Best of Show for label design and also double gold medals "BrandBuilders - best use of labeling to promote brand" by Jerry Mead New World International Wines Competition.
photo: bybeephoto.com
A set of full-coverage silkscreened labels for three varietals of wines. Each label featured a topographic map that depicted the location of the vineyard where the grapes were grown. This is a detail of the merlot label.
A set of full-coverage silkscreened labels for three varietals of wines. Each label featured a topographic map that depicted the location of the vineyard where the grapes were grown. This shows the first two I created, and the Syrah came a year later.
This is the design for the promotional tags given to retailers to display with the ELEVATION wines.
The ELEVATION Peaks & Valleys packaging, labels, cartons and shelf-talkers, took highest marks!
Another award-winning branding campaign. This is the label for The Big Red Table, which won Gold Medal for Most Unique Label in the 2011 Pacific Rim Wine Competition. See the case-study in the BLOG section for more details.
Another award-winning branding campaign. This is the back label for The Big Red Table. See the case-study. in the BLOG section for more details.
This is the image to be used for the shelf-talker tags that retailers display with the wines. It was meant to add more mystery to the romantic drama unfolding in the labels.
A year after the success of The Big Red Table, winemaker Jon McPherson said he had more red wine that he was going to blend and asked me to do another label in the same pulp novel-flavored style as the previous. We were on a winning streak, and as soon as he told me the name, I had the vision of a spaceman on a planet with a red giant star. Or it was actually the big red monster he sees that the wine is named after?
Back label without the text. The real Red Giant (or a guy in a rubber suit?)
At the same time The Red Giant label was being created, Jon McPherson said there was also white wines to be blended that needed a label, all in the same retro-style as the others. We tossed name ideas around, and I presented him with artwork based on the macho WWII wartime pulps. I thought it had some clever puns.
This is the artwork for the back label. The text described our hero coming to after being struck by rounds from an enemy fighter, pulling out of a death spiral, and the only thing that kept him focused was thinking about his girlfriend back home, Bettie. The nose art is what made me laugh, “Death from a blonde” instead of the traditional “death from above” because, you see, our hero has blonde hair.
This label won several awards, much to my surprise. It had a long, tortured birth, and I was not happy with where the original design idea got twisted into. Oh well. They liked it.
photo: bybeephoto.com
This is another award winning label design. It was a blend of wines from California and France, thus the map and the crests of the two different wineries. Unfortunately, I never got a case of this wine.
This design is the first of a series of wines and wine-based drinks. Sangria, Rosé, Cabernets, Riesling, etc. All with a whimsical, hand-made-looking labels based on Mexican paper mache folk art pieces, but each varietal having a different color pallet.
Another silly label, using a name that I think I came up with many years before. Somehow this label passed through the label police on first distribution, but on its second release, the label had to be changed because there is a law, which everybody involved was unaware of, which states the US flag cannot appear on liquor, beer or wine labels. The stars were replaced with the South Coast crest at that time.
This was a proposed label for a grape elixir that Jon McPherson of South Coast Winery was planning to bottle, but unfortunately the plan fell through. I enjoyed making the label art.
photo: bybeephoto.com
Cree Norse Promotional Package pg 1
Cree Norse Promotional Package pg 2
Cree Norse Promotional Package pg 3
Cree Norse Promotional Package pg 4
Cree Norse Promotional Package pg 5
Cree Norse Promotional Package pg 6
I have designed and help create many special retail displays through the years for various companies, including Neiman Marcus, Ruby, The Shops at The Crescent, and showrooms at the Dallas Market Center. These are just a few examples.
Neimans had a special promotional display for the launch of this designer. I was given small swatches of the designer’s fabrics to be used as visual textures for the printed graphics applied to the storefront display windows.
A photo of the final display.
A photo of the final display.
This was a tree in the Palladian window of the Downtown Dallas store, which featured hand-made ornaments exclusive to NM. I designed it in Illustrator, taking special care to give the various ornaments room to be seen.
This was a tree in the Palladian window of the Downtown Dallas store, which featured hand-made ornaments exclusive to NM. I designed it in Illustrator, taking special care to give the various ornaments room to be seen.
This was a tree in the Palladian window of the Downtown Dallas store, which featured hand-made ornaments exclusive to NM. I designed it in Illustrator, taking special care to give the various ornaments room to be seen.
This was a tree in the Palladian window of the Downtown Dallas store, which featured hand-made ornaments exclusive to NM. I designed it in Illustrator, taking special care to give the various ornaments room to be seen.
Close-up of the tree with ornaments.
Some artwork done in Illustrator for a boutique store in Ft.Worth. Printed and cut out, used as window display.
Some artwork done in Illustrator for a boutique store in Ft.Worth. Printed and cut out, used as window display.
The theme Rocket. Created in Illustrator, printed and applied to a cut-out MDX board.
The Rocket in place at the entry of the queue. Children could enter a playground tube tunnel that went through the display windows of the Downtown Dallas store.
Original artwork for the waiting area.
View of the waiting area queue line.
Artwork for the introduction window.
View of the introduction window. All of these graphics were created entirely in Illustrator, and most were printed on PSA vinyl and applied to the storefront glass as a foreground element to the display within the windows.
This is the artwork for the Main Street entrance into the store. Printed vinyl graphics applied to glass.
Artwork for the playground tunnel entry window. All of these graphics were created entirely in Illustrator, and most were printed on PSA vinyl and applied to the storefront glass as a foreground element to the display within the windows.
View of the entry window. Note how the printed window art matches to the built display elements within the window display area. Yes, there are Space Monkeys in the control room, and throughout the journey.
Artwork for the Planets window. There really is a Pizza Planet…
View of the Planets window.
This is the artwork for the Star Wash window. Because nobody should have cosmic dust on them.
Star Wash window with Space Monkey attendants. Side note: The monkey at top was crushed one night when the prop washing arm fell on him. Poor Monkey gone to Heaven.... hehe I had to slip in a Pixies reference!
Another view of the Star Wash window, during installation.
This is the artwork for the Re-entry Window.
All in all, this was an extremely exciting and enjoyable series of artworks, and the end result of the blending of artwork, set pieces, costumes and the contribution of many talented artists was most rewarding.
View of the Re-entry window. Again, all elements of the displays worked very nicely in concert with each other. Truly a joyful collaborative effort by everybody involved.
Exit window with control room in background. Overall I was very please with how well the foreground graphics on the glass integrated with the props and other scenery inside.
A few of the Travel Stickers I made for some of the prop luggage. You’ll notice some of these elements are used on other graphics I’ve created. Everybody enjoys finding Easter eggs…
A few more of the Travel Stickers I made for some of the prop luggage. You’ll notice some of these elements are used on other graphics I’ve created. Everybody enjoys finding Easter eggs and other obscure references.
A few years ago I designed some steampunk-style displays for Neiman’s fine jewelry displays. They were cut out of various foil-coated papers and assembled.
The final assembled piece
Design for second butterfly prop
Final assembly of second design prop.
Another final assembly.
A few recent experimental pieces. There are lots more, but these are all I care to show here. A few friends. A few random photos and illustrations from older projects, created in various programs (mainly Illustrator, Photoshop, and Painter, with some 3D models thrown into the mix).
This is the grab bag of the stuff I love doing!
Illustration of the Electro Arts corporate HQ. I do love Mid-century design. This was created in Illustrator by drawing over a 3D model I made in Carrera Studio, long ago.
Here’s my depiction of all of those things that were promised to my generation when we were kids which have yet to become reality. I mean, really? I would’ve settled for personal helicopters in our driveways. But, hey! Dig those aerodynamic costumes! This piece started as a pencil sketch, then I used a scan of the sketch to create paths in Illustrator, which were brought into Photoshop to use as masks for painting. A lot of my digital artwork uses this process.
SketchUp model of my house redesign. Version 1. Currently working on v2. More soon….
Just a little design idea I made for a car-artist friend. I did several other designs for his shop, too.
A design for a local radio station pledge-drive contest. I was a final contender, but alas, not the winner. Completely done in Illustrator. Very tedious and it obviously took a long time, so I was kinda sad I didn’t win the contest. Oh well, win some, lose some.
I’m a life-long fan of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic. This is my interpretation of the ornithopters, as designed by the manufacturers. This is the mid-sized ‘thopter, capable of carrying about ten adults.
Close-up of the final artwork. I spent a lot of time designing a written alphabet for the Ix, the engineers who create most of the technology and machinery in the Dune universe. I tried to make it a mix of Korean and Arabic symbols. Look closely and you will see one of the glyphs is a nod to my favorite artist.
An Ornithopter from Dune. This, again, started as a sketch which was used in Illustrator to create paths, used in Painter as masks for the airbrush brushes.
Shai-Hulud attacking the Atreides ornithopter.
Some examples of my woodcrafting skill, such as it is. Wooden bowls turned on my lathe.
More woodcraftery. A school of fish, sculpted from quarter-sawn white oak, each individually crafted and lacquer finished. Each mounted on the dining room wall with embedded nails on the back of each fish, serving as stand-offs from the wall, to enhance the shadows from the skylight above.
This is a Photoshop image I made a few years ago which was based on one of my very first silkscreen prints I made while in high school. I enjoyed the idea of a travel poster reminiscent of the old IPA designs from the early 20th century, with Saturn’s rings appearing as lanes of a road stretching before you. Also used somewhere else….
Experimenting with brushes in Painter.
Experimenting with brushes in Painter.
Experimenting with brushes in Painter.
Experimenting with brushes in Painter.
Experimenting with brushes in Painter.
Several years ago my brother asked me to design a crazy tattoo for him. “Make it as weird as possible” was his only criteria. I went blank for weeks until one evening I saw a commercial for some sports channel that just had flashes of all kinds of random images. A fever dream of unrelated images. I immediately had this idea of weird juxtapositions of unrelated elements. All the elements that rattle around in my head, looking for an avenue to escape. Greys piloting giant flying preying mantids, battling flying monsters that are a combination of manta rays, octopus and sharks, and the flying monkeys from Wizard of Oz wearing gas masks (toxic atmosphere to the monkeys) battling the mutant fishy monsters, and giant dirigible ballon airships which are piloted by the Monkeys and humans. Or something like that. The logic gets a bit jumbled in these fever dreams!
Here is one of the Greys, the Queen of the Aliens. She is riding on the preying mantis, and bits of the Mutant Fish Monster are in the background.
This was done in Photoshop, after making paths in Illustrator. It is a very tedious process. I will probably create a blog post to describe the process.
Business card designs.
This is a frame from an animated holiday “card” I made several years ago when I worked at STAK Design. It was the end shot of a silly, 45 second animation of a gingerbread man taking a dip in a cup of hot cocoa on Christmas Eve. It was a fairly involved animation, all artwork elements done by myself in Illustrator, brought into Premiere for the animation. I even did the sounds. It was well received by all, and there were requests for a follow-up the next year, but we changed and did a different theme instead.
Backdrop for a “CandyLand” themed Christmas photo with Santa setting. Done in Painter and printed onto banner vinyl, approximately 8’ wide.
I was a member of the production team for an annual fund-raising party known as The Corndog Festival in Dallas. I produced the graphics and did the websites — every year was a different theme. It was a fun gig, and these are some of the graphics I made over the years.
The invitation card from one of the early years of my involvement.
Poster design for the Film-Noir style theme. Film Noir being another of my favorite things….
Sci-fi themed year. There was a lot of hype on TV news that year about Mars being closer than it had been in tens of thousands of years (by cosmic coincidence of planetary orbits, but in reality only by a fraction of the actual distance between planets), and me being a space nerd, I took this and used it as a silly theme for a silly fund-raising party. Why not?
Haven’t I seen that Mars somewhere else?
The Art Deco inspired poster for the Tenth Annual Festival. I made hand-pulled serigraphs of this poster design (still available for sale), and it was a grand blow-out of a party, held in the majestic Art Deco Lakewood Theater in Dallas.
This was the design for a character that was on the Mars Needs Corndogs website, in a small video announcing the party.
My promotional artwork for a radio drama a friend was contemplating, based on a favorite book, Gun With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem. Hoping somebody will make it into a movie someday.
This image was part of an old portfolio website I made for myself. I really like that site. It was quirky-cool and I created lots of fun retro graphics. The Electro Arts HQ image earlier in this section was also part of the site.
A test piece showing old-fashion engraving technique.
Part of a series of pieces done for custom gaming desks, this was to be printed and applied to the right-hand top quarter of a desk. Trying to show the view through the lower side viewport of a space fighter under attack by an unseen enemy ship. Originally an Illustrator layout, then the separate elements were copied into Photoshop and used as masks and layers to create the 3D look. The glowing plasma weapon and engine’s energy beams were created in Painter.
From a photo I shot years ago, another image to be given the engraved look. I like this version with the simple color gradient.
This a quick quirky piece I did, trying to pay homage to the cheesy, low-budget sci-fi films from the 50’s and 60’s. Spacemen land on some alien world, turn on their view screen, and wish they had landed someplace else. Created with Illustrator layout, brought into Photoshop (one piece at a time as paths for masks) and modeled in layers and layer effects within Photoshop. The switches and landscape ground were images found online, everything else was done by myself.
Another silly image combining vintage car photos (several stitched together) and other imagery, trying to put the viewer in the middle of 2020. Hahaha.
This was from a design I made for a friend who wanted to start her own line of cosmetics. The company never happened, but I always thought the idea was nice. This is a newer revision I made for fun, long after the original venture vanished.
This is from a pen sketch I doodled in a sketchbook years ago, inspiration unknown. I came across it while looking for wine label sketches for the BLOG, and decided to scan it and use some of my new retro-inspired cartooning brushes in Photoshop to give it some finish.
The images here include some of the things I have recently been scanning into the portfolio from times way back, before computers. All is hand-made, hand-cut, hand-painted or drawn with techniques we used to call: manual, organic, analog, OG, hand-made, natural, etc. Actually, back then, it was just “art” without needing much prefix. Almost a forgotten era, but not all that long ago.
This was a design I was asked to do by the local rock radio station Program Director when I worked at a small design shop in Lubbock, Texas, in the early 1980’s. He brought in a go-by design from a sister station, and I whomped on that design and made it my own for the local station, FMX. I hand-cut the grid in rubylith so the lines diminish as they recede into the background. The letterforms took a while to work out proportions and how they interconnected. The Program Director loved it, and gave me a promo copy of some new wave band album, which they couldn’t play in the backwoods of Lubbock at the time. I think it was The Jam’s album. Whatever. It was a cool job, and a cool album.
I’ve heard from some people who still live in Lubbock and recall this design as their all-time favorite.
This is a multi-media piece I made in college as a comment about the impending advance of the impersonalization of humanism in society. How modern consumerism and digital advances were pushing down the importance of interpersonal relationships and one-to-one communication.
My friend’s girlfriend had an abhorrent fear that Sony’s Walkman personal music player, and its isolating headphones — new tech at the time — were the beginning of the downfall of humanity. I thought she was nuts, but I took that thought and ran with it for this piece.
Today, I think she was probably absolutely right.
Close-up of the kids, carefree, not seeing that their way of life is being changed forever. I especially like the little patch of glowing weeds they are about to run across. What can it be?
This was a quick sketch for the invitation to a party at my house back in 1984. There was a lot of anxiety over tensions concerning the Soviet Union and how President Ron Reagan was addressing them. World War III seemed around the corner, so why not throw a party? I had just seen Picnic at Hanging Rock, an Australian film set in Victorian times (I was devouring Australian culture at the time), thus the anachronistic costumes. I was also into strange juxtapositions, too.
Note the red rubylith at the top. Another shortcut learned from my printmaking classes and graphic design job at the time. On the invitation, that area contained the title for the party: “The End of Civilization Bacchanalia”
This is a close-up of a mostly-acrylic and glow-in-the-dark-paint (for the stars) on paper painting of a sculpture that I was planning to construct from found- and custom-made objects while I was in college. The sculpture was a terribly ambitious prospect for me at the time (although the painting was easy); I had acquired a copper cryogenic flask that I wanted to drill holes in and insert a high-intensity light source, to create my own planetarium-style star projector, and supplement it with a scanning cathode gun from a TV set, shining onto a phosphor-coated ball (both attached via a vacuum sphere, seen on the right side of the image), held together with a custom fabricated metal body, mounted onto a turntable apparatus….
It went on and on. Lights and synchronized motors and magnets pulling big ball bearings, maps of imagined planets and star systems, recorded sounds, you name it. There were dozens of sketches, several painting, and a few parts collected. Good ideas, good memories, limited funding.
I am sure, back in the day, this had a real title. I don’t recall it now. It was a simple watercolor painting with India ink and colored pencil accents, like many of my pieces at the time. I remember my parents and their friends thinking my mixing of multiple media was very unorthodox, on the verge of scandalous.
I couldn’t see why they thought it so strange.
A multi-media lithograph and silkscreen print made during college. I was having a hard time coming up with something to create for my assignment, so I scrolled through an old sketchbook from high school and I came across a drawing of my friend sitting at a desk. That sketch illustrated him as a robot reclining, but I transformed the pose into this combination of images from magazines, movies and other assorted influences of the period. The three blank rectangles represented the failed attempt to come up with “good” ideas for the assignment at hand, and thus was born this piece, depicting the inability to come up with something better. Funny how artistic desperation sometimes conjures something worthy of the moment.
The second in the series of litho and silkscreen prints from college. A further dive into the thought process, showing again some of the elements, thrown together in a weird composition, that inspired creative images during that period. There are sublime references to the music I was listening to and other obscure items of inspiration.
Some new work featuring 3D visualizations processed after 3D design work, so far mostly via SketchUp 3D modeling and Lumion and Twinmotion animation. Working on Blender, also, as 3D design tool. Stir it all up. Set photon torpedos for wide dispersal.
A Lumion animation created to present to NA Councils for shipping container conversions as affordable housing alternatives.
A brief marketing animation of a small shipping container conversion our company can create for you.
Revised virtual walkthru of my daughter’s studio and workshop space. Done in Lumion and SketchUp.
Lumion render of shipping container apartment I designed.
Sometimes computers help, sometimes they are useless. These are recent examples of mostly hand-made pieces, where the smell of real paint, happy accidents and wrinkled paper is a joyful part of the process.
This is a “primitive paint” experimental piece I created a few years ago, based on a post-apocalypse novel written by Russel Hoban. A strange, poetically cryptic tale of a boy’s travels to unwind the mystery of the world in the “Time back way back”. I tried to get in the spirit of the novel — I created my own paint by grinding pastels and mixing with watered-down school glue, loose fibers, and painted it on rough watercolor paper (because my attempts to make my own paper from treebark and grasses failed) with sticks, twigs, and dried brushes.
Newly created in 2022, this is a multimedia composition made from hand-drawn sketches on paper (later scanned into the computer) for the main characters, with tracings of period houses done in Photoshop, and the fence created in Illustrator. All parts were resized and composed in Illustrator then printed, one element at a time, onto tracing paper sheets and applied in layers onto the watercolor background for the final piece.
Another art piece based on somebody else’s brilliant work, this is my interpretation of Elvis Costello’s first release, a mysterious little ditty about some daughter’s disappearance.
Or is it? Is it?
I always loved the ambiguity of the song. Is it a real murder? Or is it a classic film noir movie or TV show? The lyrics toy with both possibilities.
I originally made several failed attempts at a purely digital collage illustration, then I hit upon the idea that it would lend itself better as a physical bulletin board that a detective would use. A physical murder clue board.
Each element is pinned to the framed 36” x 24” corkboard with old-fashioned thumb tacks and pins, aged newsprint articles that I wrote to tell various parts of the song as shocking newspaper articles, photos of the crime scene and the detective’s investigations, hand-made evidence envelopes with actual objects (British cigarettes and carton, a film canister, old discarded photographs of the victim found at the crime scene), hand-drawn movie production storyboards, and other images. They all weave the murder story that I imagine the song could be about.
Or, the song could just be about sitting around watching the British TV series.
But how boring is that?
