Poster Design--Richard III

Do you know the classic tale of England's King Richard III as told by Shakespeare? No? Well, many people don't actually (even though it is purportedly his most popular play). Essentially it's about how through manipulation and greed, one can both gain everything and lose everything (the "one" here being the ol' king himself).

pen and ink

Book Cover Redo

We were asked to take an existing book and come up with a new book jacket. The styles and specifications were pretty open, so I elected to go back to scratchboard, something I haven't done since high school. I actually decided to use this approach before I picked the book I wanted to do.

As you can hopefully tell from looking at the image, the book I chose is Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, which is essentially a twist on the classic Jungle Book story. Although I own and love the book, the cover always irked me a bit. I liked the colors and everything (although the artist's style without and within the book were a tad out there for my tastes), but I just didn't think it communicated the idea of the book as as whole. So with that in mind, I tried thinking of the best--or at least a more effective--way of giving the viewer a glimpse of what's inside...

*[Keep in mind that this image is actually for the entire jacket, meaning it's intended to be wrapped around from front to back.]

Of course it was only after I was close to finishing that my brother pointed out some of the original cover's subtlety (i.e. there's actually a boy's profile in the shadow running up against the gravestone), making my version close to moot. Whatever.

Original Cover Art by Dave McKean

Narrative Illustration--Character/Background Project

After weeks of studying emotions, mood and character design, we were finally assigned to implement our unique character into a background to begin to tell a story (hence the Narrative Illustration course description). The background alone required several color studies and examination of lighting and additional research. The end product is what you see here.

Actually, the word "end" is a bit of a misnomer--this piece is technically still "under construction" as they say... but it's mostly finished.

Those of you who have in the past followed my cartoon blogs will hopefully recognize this character from my most-recent-yet-indefinitely-postponed Skum of the Universe. My current plan is to continue with a series of these Illustrations and implement them into said blog. It's the only way to get the character and his unresolved story out of my head.

gouache, prismacolor

Illustration 251 - Gouache painting

These were my first real attempts at painting. Some are more successful than others, but I'm happy overall with how everything turned out.

Silence and Cold Comfort

Peter the Pumpkin Eater

Health is Relative, or Food for Thought

Narcissus and His Echo

Cutting Loose

Book Illustrations, Fall/Winter 2008-2009

I was asked by the Second Counselor in my student ward at the time to do a series of drawings based off of childhood stories and experiences shared by his family, particularly between the mother and her children.

The majority of the work was done in Photoshop, actually during the same semester when I was first learning to use it. After a lot of late hours doing initial sketches, caricatures, layouts and scanning (not to mention the labor of staring at computer screens for unhealthy spans of time), these were the result.


They're far from perfect (i.e. note the awkward white spaces that were left for text), but they were a lot more than what I was asked to do initially... which in hindsight means I really just made the whole project difficult for myself for no real reason.

Foundations Course Work, Fall 2008

The following are some of my pieces created during last year's Freshman Foundations courses, including Two-Dimensional Design, Drawing, and Survey of Digital Technology.

This is actually an altered image taken from two
still life drawings layered on top of each other.

A poster design of a particular location of
some significance--I served half of my mission here.

A still life assignment using objects
that essentially form a "self-portrait."

If you speak French it's funnier...