Friday, April 4, 2014

Wigging Out


Here's some fun new work that I got to do for the great Entertainment Weekly!
I was so beyond excited to receive an email from the wonderful Jennie Chang, managing art director at EW last week. Based on my drawings for Alex Fine's awesome Hairy Baltimore, she wanted me to tackle 16 drawings of wigs from TV shows like Game of Thrones, True Detective, Scandal, The Americans, The Walking Dead, and many more. I didn't even know some of these were wigs!
Despite eventually being a bit hard on my wrist, I had a great time over the weekend knocking out these drawings and plowing through my audiobooks.

The issue has just come out and I'm incredibly pleased with how the drawings were integrated into the page layout! Thanks again to Jennie!


Thursday, March 20, 2014

A City Girl in Hot Water


Here's a new spot for Las Vegas Weekly. It accompanies a great story by Leslie Ventura about her unenthusiastic trip to a hot spring in the desert. You can read the story HERE or even flip through this week's entire outdoors-themed issue at http://www.ifoldsflip.com/title/6882

Sketches
I had some fun in doing the sketches trying various angles on the specific image they wanted for the spot.
Thanks to Corlene Byrd for gig!



--CKL--

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Masters & Johnson


Here's a new promotional piece I did to send out as a promo. It's actually my first promo since 2012 as I mostly focused on storyboarding in 2013.
The piece is based on Showtime's Masters of Sex, which became one of my favorite shows in the past year. Although getting Michael Sheen's likeness was tough, I'm pleased with how it came out (including the gleaming...device "Ulysses")


I once again went to GotPrint to have the cards printed and am again immensely pleased with the quality. I put my "Better Than Goofy Golf" Close Encounters piece on the back with a little bit of room for a personal message.
These should be hitting AD's mailboxes the beginning of next week!


--CKL--

Thursday, January 9, 2014

People Who Died 2013


I was recently approached by the Philadelphia City Paper to once again do their annual People Who Died issue. I had done before it two years ago and had a great time working on it so when the opportunity came up again, I jumped on it.
AD Reseca Peskin came prepared with the idea of framing the portraits in presidential-style duotone stamps with the portrait full-color inside. I found a wealth of reference to draw from with different style frames from various countries and time periods.


Apart from the cover, I wound up with the task of doing seven portraits of the notable Philadelphia residents who passed away this past year.

Politician Happy Fernandez and jazz pianist Jimmy Amadie
Middle school student Laporshia Massey and firefighter Michael Goodwin
Lawyer A. Charles Peruto Sr. and MOVE bombing survivor Michael Ward
1950's television host Sally Starr
You can read about these subjects as well all 23 Philadelphians who died this past year on the City Paper website HERE or even read the entire issue at http://issuu.com/phillycp/docs/issuu_1_9_2014
Thanks again to Reseca and the City Paper for such a great gig!

--CKL--

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Fifty Shades of Orange


This one is for the Philadelphia City Paper's Fall Book Quarterly Issue, which you can read at http://issuu.com/phillycp/docs/issuu_10_10_2013
For this piece, art director Reseca Peskin asked me to recreate one of those stereotypical romance novel covers where the voluptuous woman swoons against the shirtless man in some romantic location. Considering that the cover story is about fan fiction being written about Philadelphia Flyers players, the man being swooned for in this case is Philadelphia Flyers left wing Scott Hartnell.


I had a lot of fun finding various examples and references of the romance novels and discovering just how many of them have the exact same composition (seriously) For my initial sketches, I worked up some variations of the standard pose and placed the couple in a moonlit garden.


Once the first sketch was picked, I moved on to inking the final. I just switched to a new brand of ink and was extremely happy with how black my linework was on the paper. The previous ink I had been using was always turning out grey and not as opaque as I wanted.
In coloring the piece, I tried to make the orange of Hartnell's hair and Flyers jersey really stand out against the blues in the rest of the scene.


I'm really pleased with how the piece turned out and loved the text that Reseca and the folks at the City Paper did on the cover - it really nailed the romance novel look! Thanks to Reseca and the City Paper for the sweet job!

--CKL--

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

MacUser Interview

I was lucky enough to recently be chosen as the featured artist in the September issue of MacUser magazine. Art director Camille Neilson contacted me with a great questionnaire about myself, my work, and the role technology plays in my work. And since it's a British magazine, I got to use the "favourite" and "colour" spellings!





1. What was your first Mac? 
My first Mac was white 13" MacBook. I bought it in 2006 right before I left for college in New York City. It somehow lasted me for over five years until it was tragically struck down by a rogue fireplace screen.

2. What is the current Mac you are using? 
I'm currently using a 13" MacBook Pro from late 2011.

3. What equipment do you use apart from your Mac (periferals etc)?
I do most of my illustration work as ink drawings on Stonehenge watercolor paper. I use a scanner to bring the drawings into Photoshop where I can separate and manipulate the linework. My Wacom Bamboo tablet is incredibly useful once I begin to work on pieces digitally. I've had this tablet between six and seven years now and I'm dreading the day that it dies on me.

4. What is your favourite current software programme and what was the first programme you used?
My favourite programme would have to be Photoshop. I don't think a day goes by that I don't use it. I'm also a big fan of GarageBand. Even though it's fairly limited and I know I should be using Logic by now, I've been totally satisfied with some of the songs I've been able to create for my music and animation project The Least of Creatures.
The first programme I used must have been this game my sister and I loved that was called Jill of the Jungle. It was this great sidescrolling game where you would climb trees, swing on vines, collect keys and apples, and fight monsters.

5. Can you offer any tips for success?
Some of the best bit of advice I can offer is to find a balance in your career between taking yourself and your work very seriously and the ability to have fun with it. I feel like one can very easily get bogged down in the monotony of their work and completely miss out on the learning experiences that it can offer. What has really helped me is giving myself assignments and projects to keep busy. By constantly working and practicing, you maintain an excitement about getting to make art.
Another thing that I think is extremely helpful is being part of the community that you want to be in. As arduous as things like Facebook and Twitter can be at times, they're a great way to keep in touch with the people in your field that you admire and you want to work with. I have learned so much from being in contact with other illustrators and discovered that it's a friendly and supportive community.

6. As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was a kid, I definitely knew I wanted to be an artist. I didn't know in exactly what capacity, whether it was comic books or animation, but I just couldn't imagine doing anything but art for the rest of my life. The one exception might be paleontology. I was completely obsessed with dinosaurs. I'm pretty sure I made the right choice though.

7. How did you get your first big break? 
I believe it was the spring of 2011 and I had been out of school for a little over a year. I was living in Brooklyn and barely scraping by on whatever jobs I could get my hands on. Then one day I got a message from an art director from the New York Observer. She had come across my work on Twitter and thought I might be right for a spot she had coming up. It was through that first real published illustration that I was able to get my foot in the door and start to learn how to work in the business.

8. What or who are your influences and inspiration?
A lot of my influences were instructors I had while I was at the School of Visual Arts. I was lucky enough to have teachers like Yuko Shimizu, Steve Brodner, Thomas Woodruff, David Soman, and John Ruggeri. Each one helped me grow tremendously as an artist.
I've also been exposed to an incredible number of illustrators who are just outrageously talented and constantly impress me. I adore the work of Frank Stockton, Tomer Hanuka, Sam Bosma, Kali Ciesemier, Jillian Tamaki, Joel Kimmel, Alex Fine, Thomas Pitilli, and PJ McQuade. I could go on and on as there's a wealth of great talent out there.
Another big inspiration for me, as both an illustrator and storyboard artist, is the work on cinematographers in film. I'm an absolute film geek and am constantly watching movies. I'm trying to study the way that films are composed and are able tell the story visually. Some of my favorites are Vilmos Zsigmond, Roger Deakins, Janusz Kaminski, Robert Elswit, and Conrad Hall.

9. What mistakes have you learned from?
I probably learned the most from the time after college where I was taking on absolutely anything and everything I could just to make rent. I got myself in over my head more time than I'd like to admit. I would scour Craigslist for any art-related jobs, whether it be a logo design, creating flyers, drawings for someone's children book, or images for tee shirts. It was unfulfilling and frankly debasing. Somehow, I managed to pull through and learn what I was capable of and more importantly what exactly I wanted to do as an artist.

10. What's your ideal project?
Because of my movie obsession, I would absolutely love to do illustrated movie posters. I've been a huge admirer of the work artists have been doing for Mondo. It's also been great to see more exhibits at places like like the Bottleneck Gallery, Hero Complex Gallery, or Gallery1988 with all of these incredible artists with a passion for pop culture. And if it ever happens I get to poster work, I certainly wouldn't mind doing anything having to do with Star Wars…

11. Tell us something good...
“To live will be an awfully big adventure.”

12. What's your favourite gadget and why?
I have to say my iPhone. Ever since my girlfriend convinced me that I needed to upgrade from my old BlackBerry, I've been so happy. It's just a wonderful tool for research, keeping in contact with clients, social media, and taking reference photos. It's unfortunately also fantastic for procrastinating. Bit of a double-edged sword.

Talk us through your work.

Revenge Story
This was a promotional image I created as a sort of still from a film that I wanted to see. In this case, it was a combination of inspiration from Cormac McCarthy's books and Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (which I believe is the most aesthetically beautiful film ever made) Although inking the piece was tedious, as well as eventually separating the linework in Photoshop, I ended up liking the process. It was a fun challenge to tell the story I was envisioning.

Better Than Goofy Golf
This image was created for a show at the Bottleneck Gallery in Brooklyn, New York called Where Is My Mind? The piece is based on one of my favorite films Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This one was strange for me as it's the first illustration I've done from start to finish in Photoshop.  This allowed for me to get the level of extreme detail and accuracy I wanted in parts like the the grill of the truck or stalks of grass. While it was a great exercise for me, I don't plan on continuing to work strictly digital. I love inking too much.

Grenada Invasion
This was an illustration for the Village Voice's Fall 2012 Education Supplement. The art director wanted a scene of absolute mayhem as medical students from New York City colleges and the offshore school of St. George's battled one another. Even though I dread having to draw crowd scenes, this one was ridiculously fun as I had free rein to go as insane and over-the-top as I wanted. I enjoyed coming up with all of the different tools and weapons that the medical students would have at their disposal and use against one another. I also found that this piece gave me an valid reason to use some of my blood spatter brushes in Photoshop.

Beasts of the Southern Wild
This was a personal piece I did because I had been chomping at the bit to draw an animal as unique as the auroch. I also wanted to try and capture the strength in the magnetic little Quvenzhané Wallis as Hushpuppy. I did the auroch and Hushpuppy as separate drawings so I could adjust their scale and position once I started working digitally. When the piece came into Photoshop, I settled on a simple, earthy color palette and focused all attention on getting the two characters right. One of my favorite elements in the piece is a layer of thin pencil lines overlaid on the auroch's skin to convey the rough texture of the fur.

Father Vs. Son
A personal piece I did for fun. I am absolutely obsessed with Star Wars and have been throughout my entire life. With this piece, I wanted to depict an alternate angle of sorts of the climatic confrontation scene in The Empire Strikes Back. I gathered as many reference images as I could in order to very accurately depict the set, props, and costumes in the scene. While inking, I drew Luke as a separate image so that I could freely move him around in the composition once I began working digitally.



Thanks again Camille!

--CKL--

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

It's Arrested Development

Here's a new set of portraits I did of everyone's favorite TV family...the Bluths! This project has been in the works for a long time now. After a hiatus in which I took on quite a bit of storyboard work as well as moved out of my apartment, I finally managed to sit down and finish all 9 portraits.
Before the fourth season (which was okay) aired, I re-watched the first three seasons. I think this is the third or fourth time I've watched those seasons through. It's just complete and utter comedy gold. So when I came up with a Brady Bunch-esque arrangement of the Bluth family, I decided to depict them in their heyday before the fourth season. In this big family portrait, we've got:

George Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor) with his prisonmade yarmulke
Lucille (Jessica Walter) with her martini and not-so-subtle wink
Buster (Tony Hale)
Gob (Will Arnett) presumably in the midst of dancing to "The Final Countdown"
Michael (Jason Bateman)
Lindsay (Portia de Rossi)
Maeby (Alia Shawkat)
George Michael (Michael Cera) who is admiring Maeby
And last but not least, Tobias (David Cross) who just blue himself.


I had fun trying to use a limited color palette. I felt like it helped tie them all together.
The piece is now for sale at my Society6 Shop at http://society6.com/cameronklewis/Its-Arrested-Development-vP2_Print
It's available as a print from 8x8" all the way up to 28x28" It can also be purchased as a framed print as well as a stretched canvas print.

I've also recently uploaded some older work to the store. The pieces "Crash Landing" "Good Ol' Fashioned Revenge Story" "Space Oddity" and "Spectator's Sport" are now available as prints,
Check them all out at http://society6.com/cameronklewis


--CKL--