TS&TS Final

The Swashbuckler & the Sea

Watercolor and pencil. 4 x 8 on 500 series Strathmore bristol, vellum.

The Ace of Spades

This is an entry I am doing for Zach Franzen's forthcoming post on the Portland Studios Blog. You should check it out. He got most of the staff at Portland to submit an illustration on the theme of cowboys, rendered on a 4x6 card. There are some real gems there.

I love doing these little things. I'd like to put together a full set of these gunslinger playing cards at some point...

Civilization

Recently, Zach Franzen, our once-peaceful Keeper of the Blog here at Portland Studios, in a moment supreme enlightenment, discovered that civilization, as a concept, is best described with the tea. (strange, I know, bear with me)
When he arrived at this illumination, he was immediately impelled on a terrible, terrible crusade. In a stupor, he went downstairs to the Dollar General and acquired ten thousand packets of the most inferior and evil looking tea I have ever seen. He threw all those packets (and a rock badger and a spare tire) into a huge vat and boiled them for 3 days and nights. When he was finished he brought in a super concentrated brew of semi-liquid death and held all of the artists here at gunpoint, forcing us to paint pictures of "civilization" with only this evil concoction of his. Waving an AK-47 in the air he cried repeatedly, "Either you paint with this bulwark of civilization, or I'll make you drink it! What's it gonna be people!?" He threw out all our computers, he burned our pencils and he flushed all the watercolors down the drain.
I hid under my desk while he cried, "In the new millennia, there will be, only TEA! No longer shall we wear the stains of our high fructose corn syrup! No longer the cold, synthetic hum of fluorescent lights! No longer shall we be shackled to the chains of these poisons and greasy black machines! NO! Society will be green! Civilization will be pure! No longer bereft of the blessed sap we, as a collective body, united in Tea, shall be transported to new heights! TEA! TEA! TEA!"
Fearing for my internal organs, I painted...



He has written his sinister manifesto on the Portland blog, for any who are discerning enough to see through his glittering generalities to the underlying poison written between those tea-stained lines.

Anglerfish TV shirt design

Later this year, Portland hopes to release a few more t-shirt designs. As part of my ongoing campaign to convince mainstream America that their television sets are actually alien mind-control devices, I submitted this design.

Portland's beloved attack dog Susie

MONSTERJUGGLEDOUGHNUTSFORYOU

Tuesday, Brannon brought us doughnuts. Brannon, I hereby dedicate this illustration friday monster to you. May it serve you well.

The Groomsman

Value Study

Lost Spaceman

Bird Study

Conceptual Work #3: The Bridge Troll

The troll has to be a very dimensional creature. He is part of the lore of this land. And this particular troll has been set for reasons unknown to us, to gaurd this particular bridge. He is the gatekeeper to from one part of this world to another.
But set there how? and by whom? And just how old is he? Did he build the bridge himself and if so it is enchanted?
As I did him I began to think that all these things might be true, but also that he had begun to make the best of his odd situation. Maybe he was placed here as a curse long ago when he lost a contest to a brave and daring, wise king. And he must now live forever under this bridge. Or maybe he took up residence here when he found that he could exact a horrible toll from all who needed to cross. Now he wayalys any and all travellers on the king's highway.
And maybe he has found that he has a decided liking for Lamb.

The sheep have eaten all the good grass on the one side bridge and seeing the beautiful lush grass on the other cant help but try and cross over. The troll has the brightness to realize that this is good for him. He can pick them off one by one as they cross and having himself a merry feast every night.