Yeremyan Brothers
Here are some portraits I illustrated for Atlanta Magazine earlier this year. Each pairing is of brothers in the Atlanta area who work together in the restaurant business in some capacity.
Connerty Brothers
Jakob Brothers
Fox Brothers
Atlanta Magazine spread
Cuts of Meat
Look away vegans, these cuts of meat were illustrated for the LCBO’s Food & Drink Magazine.
In Ontario we buy our liquor, wine and beer from the LCBO (the Liquor Control Board of Ontario) or the Beer Store. Yes, that is the name. Do you want to run to the corner store and buy a 6-pack of beer or bottle of wine? You won’t find any there! But head to the LCBO and you’ll find liquor aplenty as well as a beautiful magazine called Food & Drink. It is a free magazine with food and drink recipes, great photography and as of this month’s issue, tasty meat illustrations.
Food & Drink Magazine
Picture Perfect
I’m happy to share with you some new Valentine’s Day illustrations I made for my wife’s letterpress stationery company, Papillon Press.
The first one, Picture Perfect, comes from my love of old cameras. I still use a Pentax ME SLR film camera, as well as my dad’s old Olympus. I have a couple more oldies in my collection too. What lovely lady or charming chap wouldn’t love a card pronouncing them to be picture perfect in the eyes of the beholder?
The second one is inspired by Neil Young’s song, Heart of Gold (have a listen here). You can give this one to your sweetheart and tell her that you’ve been searchin’ for a heart of gold, but now you’ve found one. This beauty is printed in gold ink.
My wife, Chantal, prints all the cards on our old Chandler & Price letterpress and does a fantastic job. If you have a stationery store in your neighborhood and would love to see our cards in there, feel free to leave a comment with the store’s name.
These cards, and many more, can be purchased for Valentine’s Day in our online store.
Heart of Gold
Tracy McGrady
I will attempt to contain my excitement while writing this post but if you know me then you know that working for ESPN, The Magazine, has been a dream client of mine for as long as I’ve been an illustrator.
The first issues I ever bought came when Michael Jordan was in his last year as a Chicago Bull. I remember one issue chronicled Jordan’s playing career and his impact on the game, illustrating the article with full page art by some great illustrators. I forgot about that issue for a few years until I was in school for illustration. I remember mentioning it to one of my teachers who replied, “I should have been in that issue!”
Then not too long ago while living in Brooklyn, I was living half a block away from Walgreen’s. Every week or two I’d check in to see if they had a new issue of ESPN and I’d flip through to see what illustrators has work in the issue.
It is definitely a career highlight, one name marked off on my Dream Client List and one of my favorite assignments of 2012.
So, here are a few portraits I worked on for them of some former sports stars. I was asked to portray them during specific times in their careers (and not smiling).
Ray Guy, Eric Lindros, Don Sutton and Joe Namath
This fun assignment came late last year from Playboy. I was asked to illustrate a map some of the top off-roading locations in the USA (and one in Mexico) and to incorporate some of the landmarks/landscape from those areas. The Jeep Moab, flying over the desert terrain of Mexico, is the suggested vehicle for such an expedition.
Here are a few detail shots:
Ouray, Colorado
Arch Rock in Moab, Utah
The Jeep Moab
Tearsheet from the magazine
This issue should be on shelves now if you’re looking for an excuse to pick it up.
Another year draws to a close (pun intended) and it was a great one! I worked on a lot of fun assignments this year and with fantastic art directors. Thank you for reading my blog over past year.
In 2012 I met some illustration goals of mine, met some awesome illustrators at ICON 7 in Providence, joined a great group of friends/illustrators at IlloConfidential, had a lot of fun drawing maps, and drew a ton of portraits. I’ve included just a few of my favorite pieces from the last year in the image above, some of which you haven’t seen yet that I will be showing on the blog in the next few weeks.
I’m looking forward to what 2013 will bring. There are already a lot of changes in store that I can’t wait to share with you. Thanks for reading!
A detail of the coral illustration
I had a great time working on some illustrations for the current issue of aiCIO. The project initially started out with some portraits and then I was asked to create this underwater coral landscape that spanned two pages. I incorporated a few colors from the portraits to tie everything together. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before how much I love drawing coral – this was no exception.
Here are some of the portraits included in the issue:
I really love how the portraits look on the page. Each portrait is accompanied with graphs and pie charts and the colors all work together beautifully.
Doug Ray
I illustrated 12 portraits for Adweek recently for a feature about Media All Stars. I illustrated the portrait above of Doug Ray for a full page. He is the President of Carat North America and holds the media accounts for Pfizer and GM. The rest of the portraits below were placed throughout the article. Here are 6 of my favorite portraits. You can see the article and the rest of the portraits online here.
Media All Stars
The Inquisition of Mr. Marvel
This is one of my favorite pieces of the year that I’ve been asked to work on. I grew up reading comic books, and many of the comics I collected had characters created by Stan Lee (and Jack Kirby sometimes, too).
So when I was contacted by Grantland Quarterly to illustrate a story about Stan Lee, titled ‘The Inquisition of Mr. Marvel’, I was really excited to do it. It was a great read (check it out here). Like many early comic book character creators, Stan has lost the ownership of the superheroes he created and has no claim to the billions of dollars his creations make Marvel and Disney today. For the most part he’s accepted it and maintained his role as a comic book ambassador or even a mascot – the face of Marvel comics.
I illustrated all the frames around the portrait as well and those were a lot of fun. It’s amazing how portraits come together sometimes. Stan Lee without his ruby-colored glasses just isn’t Stan Lee.
I was excited to illustrate these three people for Plansponsor Europe Autumn/Winter issue. I had fun on these, especially when going in with a loose brush on their jackets.
Joel Kimmel's Illustration Blog 