Proactive Hitman

Mixed Media and Photoshop 11.25” x 11.25” Strathmore 500 Board

This is an assignment I did in pencil, pen, water color, gouache acrylic and oil for Kent Williams' Image and Idea class. For this assignment we had to either create a spread or a partial spread for a short story in a magazine article he had just illustrated. Of course we didn’t get to see his piece ahead of time and had to interpret the story for ourselves. The story is basically a crime thriller mystery about a proactive hit-man who collects stamps as a hobby (notice the eyes are stamps with cropped 100$ bills in them) and goes out looking for a new client in order to pay the bills. The wrench is the weapon used at the climax of the story.

James and the Princess Sketches

This first sketch is of yes,... you guessed it,... my son James.

The others are a few exploratory sketches I did in my earthbound sketchbook for my Inventive Figure class taught by Daniel Galieote. We get to invent our own characters for either a story of our own or an existing story or movie set in a different time period. For the assignment we are going to create a female, male, and an animal. I'm choosing to retell the old German Fairy tail The Brave Little Tailor. You may recall the Disney version of the story in which Mickey Mouse is the unlikely hero who kills seven flys in one blow and is mistaken for a giant killer. I chose the story because I loved the idea of modernizing it. Instead of a tailor, I'm going to be creating a techie nerd who brags about killing seven monsters while gaming online, but is overheard by some nearby thugs who believe he has killed seven "mobsters". The king has been replaced by a crime boss and the princess is his bratty socialite daughter. These sketches are for the Princess in the story who upon finding out she has married a common tailor, goes to her daddy the king asking for help in getting rid of him.