Victor Ambrus and Project X

So I was checking up on what Justin Gerard had been up to and discovered a new illustrator!  Mr. Gerard is headed to Washington at the end of March for a workshop that I am highly desirous to participate in - if Amazon would stop stealing my money by tempting me with their capacious amounts of fantastic art books.  And books in general.  Anyway, where was I?  Ah!  New illustrator!

Well, actually, he's not "new" he's been around for a while - and I'm still trying to figure out if I should have known who he is . . . But that's beside the point.  He's awesome.  Watercolors, pen and ink, AND he recreates ancient civilizations on site for some BBC program!  And has books on how to do that.  I'm telling you angels are singing here, right now.

His name is Victor Ambrus; he was born in Hungary and fled to England after the failed Hungarian Uprising against the Soviets.  If you look him up on Wikipedia, it has a very extensive list of books that he's illustrated or contributed to.

As might be suspected, I have now given Amazon more money - money that I told myself I would not being giving them again.  At this rate I might as well just sign over my first child - second, too, maybe.  But I have 4 new(ish) books by this guy coming my way! So excited!

Part of the reason that I am excited is that my mind has been infected (again) by an idea of epic proportions similar to the other two ideas that my mind is still under the effects of (which you can see here and here).  It has the potential of being significantly more epic than either Silkwood and Co. or The Robin Hood Project (if you can believe that).  It involves being able to illustrate life from several different periods of history, and so you can see why Ambrus' books Drawing on Archaeology and Recreating the Past are such a cool find for me!

I'm not going to tell you what my idea for the new project is - I really want to jump right into it but it involves a lot of planning and research and I need to finish the first two before I start on a new project.  But you can see some of the character ideas here (as well as a kind of hint about what this project is about on the page):

I can't help myself - they started talking to me and telling me their stories and then I got a download of ideas . . . I just couldn't help myself!  I had to do some drawings for them!

Pages from My Sketchbook

Just some pages from my sketchbook today - I've finally rescanned and edited everything again.  Still not satisfied with the depth of the red, but overall it's the closest I could get.

Season's Greetings

Is that right: do you put an apostrophe before the s in "season's"?  That's the impression I always got when people wished somebody "the season's greetings", but maybe I'm wrong . . .

Anyway.  I can't sleep.  Again.  So I decided to post a quick something because I'm really excited about it and I'm a geek.

It's finally here! Now I just have to wait until NEXT CHRISTMAS to see it.  And then the Christmas after that for the second part.

Yeah.  It's so worth it!

Also, new doodle:

Technically it's for S&C, but I've been trying to put together a Christmas card in a more "cartoony" style and the concept sort of bled over into what you see above.  Done in Illustrator.  I always seem to head over to that program when I want to do something "fun" and "quick" and "mindless", and it always turns into something not quick and finicky and draining (sometimes in a good way).  But I did have fun - and that was the main point.

Concept Poster for Silkwood & Co.

Just a concept sketch for a poster for Silkwood & Co.  I'm working on the final, but don't know when I'll be able to get it up.

The drawing is done in charcoal.  I put down a layer of charcoal powder in my sketchbook (and I'm glad I was able to scan it in quickly, 'cause I haven't been able to spray it and the stuff is smudging and getting everywhere!) and pulled out the lights with a kneaded eraser and went back in with a charcoal pencil for the darks.  I scanned in the drawing, found a picture of old paper, pulled them both into Photoshop and set the charcoal drawing to "multiply".  Then I played with the levels and the color balance until I liked how it looked.  I added the type in InDesign.

I'm not sure if I am going to keep the font/logo you see in this one.  I've been playing with several other styles.  I'll try and put something up with those soon and you can let me know what you think!