Harry Potter works at a ranch branding cattle.

Harry’s scar is so much a part of the story that it seemed funny to me that he would go around branding cattle with a lightening bolt. Funny but mean. Poor cows.

The 2012 Sketchbook Project has’t started touring yet but the dates are coming up soon. Stay tuned!

So that’s where he got his inspiration for The Endless Column!

Okay, so a few things.

First, I need to confess, I didn’t come up with the idea to make Brâncuşi’s The Endless Column out of coffee cups; I just doodled it. My hilarious and talented friend Anna Coy first created a coffee inspired version back when we were in college out of Styrofoam coffee cups. Anna was the queen of non-archival art (she was an anarchivalist!).

Number the second, this isn’t entirely historically accurate. Brâncuşi died in 1957; Starbucks was founded in 1971. Obviously Brâncuşi wasn’t drinking triple soy Caramel Macchiato’s all day just to stay awake. Considering he spent most of his life in Paris it’s more likely he’d be accumulating demitasse cups, not takeout cups, but what’s the fun in that?

I love the idea that Brâncuşi’d stop off at a Starbucks and pick up a fancy coffee to go, stack up his trash and be inspired. And since I spent the morning looking very much like this Brâncuşi doodle I decided to immortalize the concept on an archival post-it note.

The Glass Celing exists. There are some holes in it, but for the most part it’s still in one piece. Of course the place it’s most pervasive is in the world of supervillainery. O’Ren Ishii, on the other hand, breaks through with gusto. She’s a well rounded baddass.

Some may say she’s a minion or minor villain because the movie is called Kill Bill, but think about it. She may have started off as a minion, but she rose to new heights. She wasn’t just an Asian female villain in a revenge movie. She busted through the supervillain glass ceiling and became a world class villain with style.

I really wanted to do a female villain but there are so few that aren’t witches or psychopaths. I had to dig a bit before I found one who wan’t just an old hag or hyper-sexy. I wanted to find a woman who wasn’t just a stereotype. There are very few. There are the witches (most of Disney’s villains), and then you have sociopaths like Alex Forrest and Annie Wilkes. I didn’t want your typical female stereotypes. Ladies can be classy and evil too.

O’Ren was such a logical choice. She was the headliner of the first movie. Finding the perfect pose wan’t hard. As much a Tarantino is a writers director he also understands the visual so well.

There is no better scene in Kill Bill than that where the Bride faces off with O’Ren at The House of Blue Leaves. The stark white, the bumbelbee yellow, the blood. It’s perfect. In fact that battle was so much more memorable than the one with Bill.

It’s true, O’Ren died in her onscreen confrontation, but it was such an amazing death. It makes her one of the most awesome villains of all time… and she didn’t even need to wear spandex.

Gandalf works at a head shop selling “hookahs” to hippies.

It doesn’t matter if he’s Gandalf the Grey or the White Wizzard, this man knows his pipe weed.

Remember, the 2012 Sketchbook Project will be going on tour in April. Check the schedule to see if it’s in a city near you.

In a sadly ironic twist of fate the most photographed sculpture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art isn’t any of the priceless works inside, but the Rocky Statue that sits at the base of the museum steps. The city has been asking the question “what is art” since the Italian Stallion himself donated it after Rocky III. It’s traveled around the city, even sitting in storage for a number of years, as the city has debated what to do with it. Rocky has been very controversial.

If you visit the statue and stay longer than the obligatory photo op you’ll see the diverse number of people who stop to take a picture with the fictional boxer. There are joggers, tourists, students, museum goers, and kids. Kids love Rocky. Not the movie, mind you, but the statue. He makes a fantastic jungle gym. Can you do that with a Brancusi? I don’t think so.

Travel Poster

I actually struggled quite a bit with this one. I think it’s because in my head it was drawn before I put a pen to iPad. While I was taking pictures of people taking pictures at the museum I got the shot of a girl in a bright orange jacket doing her best boxing pose. As you can imagine, boxing poses are very popular. I decided to pretty much straight up illustrate her as she posed for the camera. I also wanted to make sure I got as much of the actual museum in the background, because of the irony of the situation.

I ended up taking some liberties with the actual position of the statue. Rocky’s actually set a little more off to the right. You might miss him if it wasn’t for the long line amateur photographers. The thing is I wanted to get the steps in too. The second most popular thing to do while at the museum, after you’ve taken a picture with Rocky, is run up the steps and raise your hands in triumph! The full Rocky at the museum experience.

Postcard

For the postcard I decided to focus more on the museum than the statue. I figured I’d blow Rocky up big and place him on the right. Unfortunately this meant I couldn’t use the girl. Also, Rocky looks a bit more like Atlas here. I’m not sure Stallone ever looked so classical. Not even on the actual statue.

And before I leave you, if you’re not currently singing Eye of the Tiger you are now!

Fox Mulder supervises the formation of crop circles by art school students.

There’s something inherently funny about the idea that Mulder would be setting up all of the strange occurrences he investigates in the X-Files just to see Scully mad.

Tour dates are up for the 2012 Sketchbook Project, just scroll to the bottom of page and stop by if it’s in the neighborhood. I know I can’t wait to see all of the amazing sketchbooks.

Another of my favorite escapist franchises is Harry Potter. Not the movies, the books. Yeah, I was there at midnight at the bookstore waiting for the novels to be released. There are so many terrific characters I would love to illustrate! Voldemort is not first on the list. Yet there he is, all evil and snakey.

Voldemort was one of the villains that I left off of my Heroes and Villains sketches for the 2012 Sketchbook Project. He’s such an iconic villain I felt bad for leaving him out so I decided that he would be part of my first villain trading card set.

One of the new things I worked on this week was to try and start using my iPad for sketching. I still don’t like it. I’m not sure if it’s the apps I’ve tried or the stylus, but I’m banking on it actually being the iPad itself. I tend to lean the palm of my hand on whatever I’m drawing on and the iPad does not like that. It doesn’t like that at all. It also dosen’t seem to understand what pen pressure is.

Unfortunately for me I hate scanning my sketches. I like to be able to go back and forth quickly between my sketches and Illustrator so I’m going to try and stick this iPad thing out.

On to the actual illustration. One of the things I wanted to focus on was how snakey Voldemort is. Since I knew I would be including Nagini, his snake, I wanted his body to feel like it was wrapping around her as much as she was wrapping around him. I absolutely love that curve in his lower back, it’s my favorite part. It feels like Voldemort is slithering around Nagini. I also wanted their skin to share some of the same green to make a stronger connection.

The other thing I wanted to focus on was the description from the book, instead of just trying to illustrate Ralph Fiennes. The problem with that is that once you’ve seen the movie the image becomes so iconic it’s hard to go back and remember what your imagination originally conjured up. In the end he looks like a thinner, snakeyer Ralph Fiennes, but that’s okay. He pretty much fits the description.

Edward Cullen. That’s it. Does there need to be anything else?

Honestly, I don’t know of a hero more dastardly, and all he does is exist. And play vampire baseball. And sparkle. You get the picture.

I’m so excited. My sketchbook hit Brooklyn yesterday and is safely in the hands of the folks at the Art House Co-Op, who put together the 2012 Sketchbook Project.

The tour starts in April at the Brooklyn Art Library, the permanent home to the Sketchbook Project. If you’re in the area stop by to see last years books. Once the tour starts I’ll let you know where it will be so you can see all of the fantastic sketchbooks by brilliant artists everywhere.

Doctor Who uses the Tardis to bet on yesterday’s horse races.

Careful, that link up there will eventually sing to you. I guess the good Doctor got stuck time traveling back to the 90’s when sound made a website awesometastic!!

You can’t have a list of heroes without including Doctor Who. I’m only vaguely a fan, but I have seen at least one episode of each of the Doctors. Well except for that Doctor that only had one episode. In fact that’s what I call him, One Hit Doctor. I have names for all of the Doctors. Like I said, I’m not a superfan so I don’t know the actors and calling them by numbers just seems confusing.

This is how I remember them (in order of reincarnation):

1. Mr. Burns
2. Paul Simon
3. Tony Bennett
4. Afro Doctor
5. Karen Carpenter*
6. Mr. Bojangles
7. The Riddler
8. One Hit Doctor
9. Convict Doctor
10. Harry Potter
11. Flock of Seagulls

*This one may take some explaining. When I saw this Doctor he reminded me of Karen Carpenter’s brother, you know, the rest of the band. The thing is nobody remembers his name. So instead of calling him Karen Carpenter’s brother all the time I shortened it to just Karen Carpenter.

So I’m down to my last five sketches before I send my book back to the 2012 Sketchbook Project. I’m hoping to be done tomorrow so I can scan, bind and send it on it’s merry way.

Then it will be sent round the country, and when it comes to a venue near you I hope you’ll stop by to take a look and support all of the phenomenal artists that participated.

On your way to the Badlands, and I encourage you to go because it’s surprisingly breathtaking, is the last stop you’ll encounter before entering the national park. The Ranch Store is a small gift shop that’s marked by a giant prairie dog and topped with a pretty awesome sign shaped like a steer. On the inside it’s your pretty standard gift shop stuff, but outside you not only get to see the six-ton prairie dog but you can feed real live prairie dogs that live in a nearby colony.

Travel Poster

Because the prairie dogs are so abundant in South Dakota, and because of the The Ranch Store’s giant cement guardian, I wanted to focus on the animals themselves. Luckily the giant prairie dog is rather crude in construction so it was easy to illustrate it faithfully while making it still look distinctively different from the “real” prairie dogs. Since my illustrative style isn’t terribly realistic it’s something I always struggle with. I do have to admit that the more kitchey a giant totem to America is the more I love it.

Offical Ranch Store Postcard

The real concrete prairie dog is a bit more salmon in color than the almost pinkish-white he is here, but I like to try to keep a consistent color palette and I had already used the red and blue in single isolated locations. The pinkish-white is in fact the lighter hue of the red used on the store and similar tonally to the off white I used as highlights. In my head that made it okay to have so many single use colors.

The three prairie dogs in the front remind me of a rap album cover for some reason. There’s something in their posture that feels really ol’ skool. Even though this is a poster for The Ranch Store I wanted to make the animals the most prominent features of the poster. It’s an homage to the vintage Australian or safari travel posters that featured exotic animals.

Prints Available

Purchase a travel poster print over at Society6.

Postcard

I’m not sure if I think the postcard is more or less successful than the travel poster. All of the elements are the same, The Ranch Store isn’t overflowing with visual excitement, but I made the store more prominent. I think compositionaly the elements of the postcard come together a bit better than the travel poster, but there’s something in the poster that speaks more to the destination.

As your last stop before the Badlands it really is tiny and isolated on the prairie, I like the feel of that.