Accordions and Politics!

Hope everyone is well! So the first image is a commission for an exciting collaborative project. I really recommend checking out the blog with the other images. A lot of great artists have submitted a piece, it was an honor to be asked! So I thought I'd take advantage of the loose guidelines and use some wax!!! I love that stuff! The second image is another commission. I was asked to draw politicians as members of the Fantastic Four. I have McCain, Obama, Clinton, Romney, Huckabee, and Barr in there. It's not completely up to date since I originally started it a while ago, but just recently finished it.

take care,
-francis

Sneakers!

When I want to have a little mindless fun I like to draw sneakers.... I don't know why. I think it's because each shoe has a personality it's own, and it's hard to draw a bad shoe. No matter how wonky it gets, it still manages to maintain a cool look. Anyways, these two pics are me messing around. I drew the one with "a million shoes" a while back and I thought I would bring it to some kind of resolve. I was going to color in each shoe with wild colorways but I lost patience..haha. The other one has me using some wax over my lines. I kind of like the look.

For those interested heres a huge Shaquille O'Neal size file of the first image. I'm also wrapping up two illos so I'll be sure to post those soon.

best,
-francis

Update

So I feel invigorated after spending a week back home in Detroit with the parents and girlfriend. I did the top drawing of her and then she did the other drawing of me. I think the resemblance is spot on!!!

The last image is a photo of the newest Mikosa magazine I just got in the mail. It's a handmade black and white mag from Amsterdam. Every issue they redesign the look and the binding! The kind folks over at the Mikosa offices asked me to contribute a few black and white drawings for this issue. I also did a sticker too...mine is the one of the girl in the chair whose eyeball just fell out....of course.

I've been doing all sorts of small projects that unfortunately are all NDA, so I can't show those now...but I'll post some new imagery soon!

take care,
-francis

Illest of Ill '08

Hope everyone is well. Lately I've been getting into high gear organizing a student run gallery show for my school's Illustration department. Even with tremendous help from my fellow classmates it's been crazy so far. But it's looking to be a good show. The theme this year is the Charles Dana Gibson's "Gibson Girl," and J.C. Leyendecker's "Arrow Collar Man." So I've been working on a few promo things...mainly t-shirts. These are the results so far. The guy's shirt is going to be produced for sure and the girl's shirt is up in the air. I also brought together a few sketches I did to get warmed up. We will be putting the shirts up for sale within the next month so if anyone is interested in purchasing either shirt feel free to email me. All the proceeds go directly back into the show.

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I put the original ink drawing of the men's shirt up for sale in the store for all those interested.

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take care,
-francis


P.S. Tickets for the Totoro Forest Project are now available. The show runs September 6th at the Pixar campus. I'll be there, so if you can make it, make sure to say hi! Also they just launched a blog with up to the date info right up to the show!

Commissions

Hey folks! I thought I'd make it known that I'll now be able to accept private commissions for a limited time. I'm real open and concerned about making it a good experience so feel free to email me varied ideas. I'll be able to take small projects from $100 to larger more expansive projects.

Thanks guys!

take care,
-francis

San Diego sketches!

So San Diego might be one of the flyest cities I've been to so far. It was a blast. All the nerds (and artists....with me being both) converged on the Convention Center for Comic Con 2008. It was great meeting all my heroes! Thanks to everyone that took the time out to talk and scope out my work, I really appreciate it. While I was there I did some doodling and these pages are the result. I think one of them was done before SD but most of them should be from the trip. I can't believe that I forgot to draw one of the bike cab dudes. I seen as many of those guys as comic books....haha

all the best,
-francis