Seth Macfarlane For NYLON

I'm not always the best portrait illustrator out there, but for some reason whenever i do them for NYLON they turn out pretty alright. This one is Seth Macfarlane, creator of "The Family Guy" and professional bro behind Wahlberg CGI and dude humor vehicle ted. If i sound excessively snarky
about this right out of the gate, please know that it comes from years of childhood ridicule rooted in such late 80s/early 90s ted prefixed fare as "Teddy Grahams", "Teddy Ruxpin" etc, or public luminaries of the Bundy, Danson, Kazinsky and Turner varieties (i'll never forgive him for colorizing Casablanca). Gonna be damn near 100 outside today kiddies. For those about to rock...etc...

Margaret Mead

Inspired by the recent formation of a band by her name (one day every combination of words will have at least a secondary meaning as a band name which will necessitate the creation of a whole new lingual lexicon, but i digress) i thought i'd post this portrait of legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead from back in the halcyon days of 05.  I seldom get called for portraits as i've said before, but this is definitely as good as any i've ever done. It was commissioned by DOSE, the dearly departed Canadian alt-daily that launched more than a few illustration careers way back when, drawn straight into a sketchbook and scanned and emailed at kinkos while i was on vacation. Good times.

Happy Father's Day!

Hey All - Happy Father's Day weekend. In the spirit of the event, here's a sketch book portrait of the old man (speaking figuratively) drawn back in 2007, dude's doing the crossword puzzle and holding still, uncharacteristically. Happy Father's Day to you and yours! Cheers!

Panda Bear's "Tom Boy" for NYLON

Last month i got a call from NYLON magazine to do a full page illustration of Panda Bear from Animal Collective to accompany the review of his forthcoming solo album "Tom Boy." Not terribly accustomed to being called for portraits, i was thrilled that the direction was pretty open ended, the only real stipulation being that the piece feel "painterly." It having been a while since i sunk my teeth into some gouache, this was exciting. 

I was very familiar with Mr. Bear's "Person Pitch" album from 2007 and was given a one-time use preview stream of "Tom Boy" to listen to while working on the illustration. From what i could assess from that one listen, the new record dialed up the melancholy undertones and slowed the tempos a little from the previous release. More than ever, the music reminded me of a bizarro world post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys, which in turn set me scrambling through my record collection for the Beach Boys comp "Endless Summer," one of my favorite illustrated LP covers ever. I've attached a jpg below - how cool/creepy are the weathered Wilsons hiding in a psychedelic surf jungle?

Using this as inspiration/homage i concocted the following sketch. The other conceit of this design was that it would grant maximum leeway in terms of nailing the portrait by obscuring a lot of the face with psychedelic flowers. 

This was then translated to the final below:

Coming off the Fashion Week process and some design related work i've been up to, it felt really great to do something of the "hands dirty" painted approach again. Thanks for reading!