La-Z-Boy Christmas Card

I illustrated the annual Christmas card for the La-Z-Boy sofa company.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!

25th Annual Sketchcrawl SF

Mr. Erwin Madrid finally managed to drag me to my first sketchcrawl:) Naw, I've actually been wanting to go for a long time now. I finally found the time. Yay! It was fun sketching with everyone. I'll surly go to more in the future.

Here's the link to the sketchcrawls forum to see what others did that day. www.sketchcrawl.com

These are the results. I probably would have gotten more sketches done if I didn't spend so much time socializing with everyone:) The time went by so fast.

How to Train Your Dragon

I did the cover for A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons, one of the books in the Hiccup the Viking Series. It's very exciting to see the Dreamworks trailer to the movie.

Scroll down to my August 31st post to see the cover I illustrated.

Here's the movie trailer. It looks amazing.

The Red Badge of Courage

I recently finished illustrating the cover and interiors for Stephen Crane's classic novel, The Red Badge of Courage.

The book will be available January 2010 through Magic Wagon, a division of the ABDO Group www.abdopub.com, or your educational wholesaler.



I decided to take the poses myself, and have a friend shoot me for photo reference. I don't usually do this, but I felt an urge to do so for this project. It was fun getting to play the characters.



These are a some of the interior illustrations I did for the book. I inked these with a sumi pen.

The Farmer

One of the images from a recent story I illustrated.

This is a retrospective scene, where the farmer is remembering the good old days on the farm.

A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons

I did the cover art for Cressida Cowell's book, A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons. This book is now available at all major book stores.

Dreamworks is making a feature film on the characters in this series. Read more about it on this link. www.imdb.com

Field Trip Mysteries

I just got my copies for the Field Trip Mystery Series. I did the cover and interiors for all 4 books. The books were written by Steve Brezenoff and published by Stone Arch Books.





Here are the main characters in the series

The Goblin Baby

Random House send me copies of the Goblin Baby book I did the cover art for. Yay!

The story is written by Berlie Doherty, and the interior art was done by Lesley Harker. The book was published in May so it should be out in all major book stores.

The Star-Figher of Murphey Street

Today I got my copies of The Star-Fighter of Murphy Street trilogy, published by Zonderkidz. I Illustrated the covers and interior spots about a year ago. I've been looking forward to seeing these books published. It's always a treat for me to see the final outcome of my illustration work.

These books were really fun to illustrate. I love the titles for each book:)

Spring Cleaning. Yay!!!

I just cleaned out my locker at the Academy just before spring break. I had about 3 years worth of drawing pads in there. I brought home about 15, 18 X 24 drawings pads, 100 pages per pad. Each pad is jammed packed with drawings from my classes. A lot of them were demos I've given, and drawings from my workshop. I am in the process of transferring and cataloging them in my computer. It will take quite a bit of time to sort through all of them but I am working on it.

I didn't realize I had accumulated so many drawings is such a short amount of time. I'm glad these drawings are finally getting the chance to see the light of day again:) I'm seriously thinking of putting these drawings together in a book format. We'll see...

I have enough material to update my blog for a couple of years now. Ha! I'll show you guys the drawings in small increments.

Most of the drawings I've been posting on my blog are nude quickstudies. I love drawing the clothed figure as well. I find folds very fascinating and challenging to draw.

These drawings are all 20 minute poses.These are all done with a compress charcoal stick on 18 by 24 smooth news print.






I used a red prsmacolor stick for this one


Pencil in sketchbook

New Baby/ Anatomy Drawings

Thanks for all your feedback on the last post. My goal is to post at least once a month, so check back every so often.

I been quite busy with the family, teaching, and freelancing. We have a new baby in the house. Emma Beatrice Canga was born November 17, 08. She is a bundle of joy and a handful.

4 months here


Been getting back to anatomy lately. Every so often I like to freshen up my knowledge, by studying the drawings of the great Renaissance masters, and look at a lot of Greek and Roman sculptures. They are very inspiring to me.

All of these were done at my Quickstudies workshop. The poses range from 1-3 minutes.

Quick Studies/ Workshop Part 5

Sorry it's been some time since my last update. Thanks for everyone's feedback on the last post.

It's good to have the Spring 09 Quickstudies in session. Here are some drawings from yesterday night.

King Midas

Here are some of the images from a story I illustrated for Pearson Education. The story is about King Midas, the man with the golden touch.

Most of the storytelling here is done through body language and facial expressions.

These images are copywritten by Pearson Education

Who needs Structure?

Yes structure is very important, but sometimes I like to add a dash of unpredictability and chaos to the mix. Just a dash...

These were done with a felt tip pen. Towards the end my pen started to run out of ink. The lines started to get scratchy. I like happy accidents such as that.

Our model was amazing. She did a lot of great poses.

Children's Books

Just recently got my copies of the Alec Flint, and Fearless Flynn books I worked on. It's always a pleasant treat for me to see my work in print.

I did the cover and interior art for Alec Flint Super Sleuth. The book is published by Scholastic and is written by Jill Santopolo.
The book comes with a key chain medallion.



Fearless Flynn and other tales is a book comprised of 3 short stories. I didn't do the cover for this book, but I illustrated one of the stories called Thirteen Crows. The book is published by Harper Collins and the story is written by Gillian Shields.

Hear are a few of the pages I illustrated from the book.

Quickstudies Workshop Part 4

Some sketchbook pages from Mondays quickstudies workshop. These were done using a sumi pen and graphite stick.

Quickstudies Workshop Part 3

Here are a few of my sketchbook pages from the last 2 quickstudies workshops. These are done in Pen. Yes, we go through a lot of paper:)

More to come...

The Mousehunter

I did the cover for the American version of Alex Milway's book, The Mousehunter. The book will be out February 1, 09. You can read more about the book on The Mousehunter website and blog. Here's the links.
www.themousehunter.com
www.themousehunter.com/blog/

I designed the gold borders framing the image as well. Portrayed on the cover is Emiline, the main character, and her mouse friends.


Here is the cover layout along with the title. I did not design the title. You can read a brief description of the book here.




Thanks to the folks at Little Brown for giving me permission to post this on my blog.

Quickstudies Workshop Part 2

Here are a few drawings from my quickstudies workshop. The workshop is held once a week, on Monday nights from 4-7 pm. In one workshop the model will do as many as 74 poses. The poses range from 1-5 minutes. I use charcoals of varying colors and prismacolor sticks.

You can go through a lot of paper in one workshop, so I like to cram my pages up. Here are some example of that. I will post more of these in the future.





This is a head studies demo I gave in class the other day. We each took turns doing 5-10 minute poses. I drew the students as they posed, while others watched.

The Violinist/ Kids at Play

Kids at play