Who knew the tilde could do so much?

So I just found out a trick using the tilde key in Adobe Illustrator.  If you hold it down while you make a shape, it continuously makes the shape everywhere the mouse goes, so you get interesting wire-frame drawings.  I decided to revert back to when I was 7 and would draw space stations and floating cities all the time.  An example drawn only with the Rounded Rectangle Tool and the 'tilde' key is above.

If floating futuristic cloud cities aren't your thing, you can just make sweet shapes.  Checkit:

JPAC's Hairspray

Below is a flyer I created for a Chicago theater troupe's production of the Broadway musical Hairspray.  I was instructed to use the offical Hairspray logo, which I did, and then I played with the funky color scheme to create the text boxes for the dates and information.  The TV was created from scratch and the picture of people dancing is actually people doing DDR.  I altered the photo using photoshop to look like old television in the style of American Bandstand to go along with the story of Hairspray.

If you are in the Chicago area you should check out the production.  Go to www.jpactheater.com to find out more!

French Horn Hat, after much ado.

So I finally got around to making the picture that won the vote held about a month ago.  French Horn was the clear winner, so here it is:

Apparently, Bootsy loves to say "wooooow!" so I thought it should go in the picture, especially since I waited so long before finally getting around to making it.

This is probably the last of the Bootsy related artwork for a while.  BUT if you'd like to reminisce and look at all the Bootsy art I've done up til now, click here.

It's Bootsy Again, Baby!!!

So I still haven't drawn Bootsy with a French Horn on his head, but hopefully this will tide you over:

Apologetic Rob(ot).

This is a t-shirt design I did for a friend.  She gave me no guidelines at all, just wanted something fun.  So after a few iterations and some ideas from my friend, we ended on this design:

If, by any chance, you are interested in owning one of these shirts, please contact me!

Logo Designs

These are some variations on a logo that I am designing for a client.  The M was taken from their signature. 

The finished design can be seen here: Watercolors by Marilyn Lebhar.

Frost/Nixon follow-up

These are updated designs I made for the Surfside Players theater troupe's upcoming production of the play Frost/Nixon.  I had to change some text from the last version I posted, and I darkened the courier type in the background to show up a little better in print (although some of the effect is lost in conversion to lower quality images posted here). 

11x17 poster with sponsor boilerplate added at the bottom

 Smaller version used for flyers with Surfside Players boilerplate at the bottom

Postcard flyer 

Lots of Scary Shhh in the Ancient Land

This is a T-shirt design for my friend (and for me) based on a song we wrote when we were kids called "In the Ancient Land."  Just for fun.

Lemme know if you want to buy one when we get them made (on American Apparel shirts).  Please don't forget to vote for Bootsy's new hat on the right side of the page.

Bootsy Redux

Shortly after I posted the Bootsy Collins illustration, I got the following comment:

"Did you know bootsy collins is so named because he wears boots on his head instead of hats? If you don't believe me, listen to his music! Especially the single "Gonna Wear this Goddamn Boot on my Head." You should change it so there's a boot on his head."

To satisfy my readers, I have done the following:

Bootsy "BootHat" Collins

Please vote in the poll off the the right where YOU can decide what Bootsy will wear on his head next.  

It's Bootsy, Baby

I found out today that my co-worker is going to hang out this weekend with Bootsy Collins of James Brown band and Parliament Funkadelic fame in Cincinnati, so I decided to do an illustration of Bootsy for fun.  I hopefully will finish the whole picture eventually, but for now you get a floating, psychedelic Bootsy head.

Groovy, baby.

The Captain

Here's a T-shirt design I did for a friend of mine.  She gave me the text and a description of the images she wanted.  I drew the duct tape using Illustrator and the helicopter is a specific model so I took a photograph from wikipedia commons and live traced it with some edits to get the detailed hand-drawn look.  Here is the front:

...and the back

Freaking Clown Shoes

This is an exercise I did for a class for a fictitious event called "Clown Town".  We were given an 8.5 x 11 flyer and a bunch of clip art like the ones used in the ad.  We were instructed to use the same copy and do whatever we wanted with it to publicize the same event.

This was the example we were given.

This is what I did with it.  I decided to do away with the clipart examples because I really disliked them all and ended up drawing the clown shoes based on a photo I found.  

Frost / Nixon

This is my first stab at the Frost / Nixon poster for the Surfside Players.

 The faded text that forms the back layer of this poster seems to not appear very well when I converted to jpeg for the web.  I may have to tweak it!

Hair (the musical) Continued

So the peeps at Surfside Players (http://www.surfsideplayers.com/) liked the design (and the show) so much that they want bumper stickers of my posters.  I sent them a few designs and this is the one they chose:

I had also done a few others where I went for different looks.  Among them was this black one, which I thought would be much easier to read on a bumper sticker from a distance. 

In the end, they felt the red and yellow sunburst was too iconic to leave off of the sticker.  Can't say I disagree.  Next, I will be designing their posters for Frost/Nixon, which I will post when they are available.

Picasso's Three Musicians

For a 5th grade Spanish class project I wrote a report on Picasso and accompanied it with a colored-pencil copy I drew of his oil painting, Three Musicians.  Since then I have always loved the painting and finally saw it in person this summer at NYC's MoMA.  Here is a photo of the original, my recreation of it using Illustrator, and then my drawing altered in Photoshop to look like a plastic engraving. 

Three Musicians (1921) Pablo Picasso, Oil

Three Musicians (2010) Adam Reifsnyder, Vector Art

Plastic Image

Hair (the musical) Poster Design commission

I was hired by the Surfside Players theater troupe in Brevard County, Florida, to create a series of posters, flyers, and logos for their upcoming production of "Hair."  I was given the copy, some restrictions and guidelines on some of the type, and pretty much free reign on the idea.  The previous designer had been working in Microsoft Paint (?!), so I also helped the troupe convert existing boilerplates and logos to vector artwork so that it can be more easily resized to be used for future show posters, etc.  My thanks to the Surfside players for the work!

This was the original postcard I designed for the show.

This is a smaller ad which was printed in grayscale in their local paper.  

Finally, this is an 11x17 poster with a boilerplate that contains their sponsor information.

Quick logo design

This is a logo I designed a few weeks ago for a project.

UPDATE: Click to see this logo used in a layout

Original Illustrator Drawings and Cartoons

Here are some original drawings I did on Illustrator for fun.  The first was from a few weeks ago and was inspired by the speed skating I watched non-stop during the Olympics.

"Christmastime" began as an exercise in tracing the face and torso from a sketch in a sample of CS4 artwork, and it evolved into an Xmas card cover of sorts.  

Finally, "Wormy' Adventures" resulted from a stream-of-consciousness drawing session.  I guess I was in a children's book kind of mood.