ACM #2 Final Framed Piece

ACM #2 Final Render

ACM #2 Digital Process

ACM #2 Watercolor

ACM #2 Watercolor Process

ACM #2 Reference Photos

I love using photos from hikes. Photography is great in that it can take you back to a point and help you remember not only the moment itself, but everything else about what was around you when you took the photo.



This is Cades Cove in the Smokey Mountains. It's a beautiful place, though it is somehow always overcast and drizzling when I go. It reminds me of the forests I hiked in as a boy in Western Pennsylvania. I have many fond memories there. I waged an ongoing war with river trolls, stalked ancient druids and was hunted by giant, black-eyed foxes.

Years later I found that same old forest using the terrain feature on Google Maps. It was strange seeing it from above, from this odd and unfamiliar angle. But I was delighted to find that I could still make out all the old haunts of my childhood. The same trails, the same clear ponds covered in algae, the same clearings in the forest. And though some of the remote edges of my old realm were somewhat overcome by a spreading plague of parking lots, it was, for the most part, all still there.



This one is from Giant Sequoia National Forest, in California. This forest sat on a cliff overlooking the ocean. It was as if the giant trees had in ancient times, been planted all across North America, and at some point pulled up their roots and strode west, only to be stopped here forever by the Pacific.

ACM #2 Digital Sketch

ACM #2

"O thou false knight and traitor unto knighthood, who did learn thee to distress ladies
and gentlewomen?"
When the knight saw Sir Launcelot thus rebuking
him he answered not, but drew his sword...

For both of these pieces I wanted to achieve a much more classic feel to the overall atmosphere. The difficulty for illustration, as it relates to stories, is its lack of narrative sequence--it requires compression. In my mind, I tend to see these stories in somewhat epic, idealized terms. This scene, if it were to be in a movie, would not need the dramatic lighting or golden atmosphere, because in a movie, the general effect is felt over the course of the whole experience, so that in the end, the combination of the story, the dialogue and the cinematics will convey epic-ness or romance in a way that no single image from the film may be able to convey. Likewise, in music, the passage of time allows for rise and fall of the music to build and build so that its overall story is not felt in any single note, but rather in the emotion that it conveys. An illustration on a story however, is an attempt to encapsulate the whole of the story into a single, frozen moment in time. There is no sequence of time, except as the artist is able to lead the viewer by means of composition or by including separated, sequential imagery.
For me, this is always an interesting problem. I rarely know everything about a piece at the beginning. In many ways the illustration plays out a story for me, and by the end, so many different scenes and opportunities are revealed, that I find it difficult to chose which to use and which to discard. As much as possible, I find myself wanting to layer several of them into the same image, so that each time you look at the image, new things are revealed. My favorite illustrations have always been this kind--with much to get lost in, even if it deals with only a single moment.

Roadtrip 2008: The Northern Rockies

Zach, trying his luck on the ice. "Zach, you fool! The ice is deadly!"
Later, after having watched from a safe distance, a Korean couple asked him if he were a famous geologist and had their pictures taken with him.


On the road from Banff to Jasper.


Ben Kammer, loaded for bear at Dawson's Pass. We saw several signs of bear while we were in Glacier National Park. The bears there have eaten people. We were told horror stories by the rangers as we checked in. They made us watch videos proving that the bears were sentient and evil.
"Bears in Glacier National Park have been clocked at 30 miles per hour. You will not outrun them."
We were not maimed by bears or rock badgers so on the whole, we did rather well. However, I am ashamed to say that we began to go crazy after several days without any cheeseburgers. I began to read a lot of William Blake and lose my mind.

Our last night in Banff National we spent in a bear-proof campsite, protected by high-voltage electrified fences, Mounties with machine guns and railways with freight trains that came every 40 minutes. A bear attempting to attack us would be shot, electrocuted, lit on fire and then run over by a freight train. I spilled my ramen and left the bear bin unlocked just to dare the furry huns to try getting through.
So much for our plans for a daring adventure through threatening territory. We might as well have planned to camp in the McDonald's play place.

ACM #1 Framed

JustinGerard.com is Online

In a bout of uncontrollable awesome-ness Ben Kammer has rebuilt the JustinGerard.com website and forged it into a fearsome spectacle of flash programming.
Better known for living in a state of mutual hostility with his cat and for crafting music that makes the heavens weep, Ben Kammer also does web development for Portland Studios. He is nine feet tall and drives a car made of parts from ships that fought at the Battle of the Nile.

It will take five thousand bears driving five thousand tanks and an act of Congress to stop Ben Kammer from being awesome.

ACM #1 Final Render

"I will that thou wit and know that I am Launcelot du Lake, and very knight of the Table Round. And now I defy thee, and do thy best."