My friend (and karaoke partner) Leah asked if I would draw a hummingbird for her to have tattoo’d on her wrist. I’ve always loved the vibrancy and energy of watercolor tattoos and wanted to give it a try myself.
The hummingbird was sketched from reference photos found online, then painted in watercolor, and retouched in Photoshop.
Guess someone liked my Huckleberry Finn illustration for the Global Investment Literacy client so much, they decided to use it (without mention or credit) on VentureBeat. I suppose plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery.
See the finished book and all illustrations for this project in the ERA404 portfolio. Follow me @citarella and @era404 on Twitter.
Special thanks to @todd_greene for finding and sharing the link.
I think I’m going to make a Facebook Moleskine Sketchbook for myself, and people like myself, who would rather draw caricatures of friends rather than read the banal, tiresome updates of real friends. The illustrations in this mock-up were pulled from old sketchbooks, as well as a line drawing of the Red, White & Bubbly, in Brooklyn. The status and life events by my fictitious friend, Walter Sobchak, were pulled from IMDB’s listing on The Big Lebowski.
My new design for a friend’s tattoo has been featured on The Daily Glyph. The design is an homage to Herb Lubalin and based roughly on the font Antique Ancienne (note his studio logo, at that link).
In archiving old era404 projects, I just came across these twenty illustrations I created in 2003 for the Target Benchmarks Central Park event at Christie’s Auction House in the Rockefeller Center. The event was an auction to raise money for the Central Park Conservancy and produced/designed by Rand Burrus of Phoenix Event Productions. Each illustration was enlarged and reproduced on colossal 8′ x 8′ canvases to provide the backdrop for each of the benches being auctioned. In fact, after the bench auction was over, they began to auction off the illustrations too!
My last forays into illustrating for clients were for the Global Investment Literacy project and the Brooklyn Wine Company Sparkling White Wine Label. Target Benchmarks Central Park was a fun project and a chance to contribute artistically to a good cause. More information about the event can be found on the era404 website, here.
Well, another year and I’ve got another sketchbook to show for it. I don’t know if you got a chance to see the previous sketchbook 1, sketchbook 2, or the illustrations I did for the global investment project, or the illustrations I created to accompany my short story, “The Change“, or the tarot cards that we created for Tina’s birthday. If you didn’t, have a look. Anyway, enjoy these sketches too. The photos didn’t come out so well so I might try again when I have more time. Read more
Mike and I finally finished the tarot cards we created for Tina for her birthday. There’s 79 illustrations of which I did roughly 40, ranging in theme from biblical to greek legend to cartoonistic to shakespeare to modern…
The deck is called “The Tarot of Chloe” based on Tina’s alter-ego and will be printed duplex on ultra-white cardstock and wrapped in a black leather carrying case. Read more