VISUAL ART

PORTFOLIO

Logo Art - The Unsatisfied

Mechanical Pencil on 8.5x11 Printer Paper

My favorite medium has always been pencil & smudging. I love to emulate textures; wood, stone, metal, fur, hair, leather, fabric, eyeballs, blood...especially antiquated or patinaed finishes.

Choosing whether to add color via pen and ink or colored pencil, or partially adding color as a fade effect, these are a choice I make depending on the project or as the mood changes within the piece. I love to watch the evolution of a sketch, and I often scan and print my original drawings and then layer colored pencil and ink over the printed copies. It affords me the ability to experiment and make mistakes - as many as I want - until the final look I want is achieved. Most of my line-work is freehand, but I am not averse to using a straight edge here and there, such as in the edges of this Celtic cross, to get crisp lines and well-defined proportions.

Portrait - Brent Muscat

Mechanical Pencil on 11x17 Sketch Paper

In the 80's I did a series of musician portraits for BLAST! Magazine. This was a rock mag that covered the events and bios of bands from the late eighties era. I have since lost track of the issues with my art featured and would love to have them now. I drew everyone from Axl Rose to John Sykes, and even sent some of them to the artists themselves as a gift. I fortunately did so many I was able to retain a few for my own collection. This sketch of Brent Muscat was a commission. Something disrupted my progress during its creation and I restarted leaving this one as a portfolio artifact. This image reflects my process from draft to finish on one page and you may be able to see, I start with the eyes and work my way out.

Kruptikos - Game Board

Mixed Media on Foam Backer Board

Another form I am fond of when I'm feeling particularly creative, is mixed media pieces, where I combine different artifacts to craft something completely original; i.e., photography, print, pen and ink, unique base mediums, and esoteric or elemental theming. I often craft such things in blank books or behind frames to adorn my home. The example here is foam backer board with cut-outs pasted to it and art crafted directly onto it and hand colored, then photographed and digitally enhanced for print. This project took form when I was challenged to create a board game for a class in college. I decided to invent something based on the storyboard of a novella I was writing called Kruptikos. The game is an interactive narrative RPG model which encourages creative and mutable game play. The story is almost complete and will be ready for publication next year. I hope to later release the game as a compliment to the book.

Roczan - Shame Records Button

Digital Rendering over Hand-Drawn Art

I often scan my original drawings and layer them digitally to create new variants of my works for commercial or print use. This character is Roczan, a mascot I invented for my husband's band. Her image is sometimes used on flyers, album art, and merch for The Unsatisfied and, as used here, as the icon for the band's publication label, Shame Records. I have realized quite a few different depictions of her over the years from realistic to graphic, and even in anime form. I like to play with formatting in Photo Shop, Canva, and through photographic and various other digital rendering software to generate different models of my works for ads or other media, and to reimagine it. I also create a lot of logos and line art through digital means for various projects like the board game above and band merch art.