I do my swimming underwater

Last week I worked on an illustration for Time Out New York that sent me scrambling for lots of underwater reference photos. Although I ended up not using any of these, here are a few of the prettier ones I found:

.....and the final illustration, which I'm happy with right now, but ask me again in a week and you may get a different answer:

{Click on images for their sources, minus the top one which I can no longer find}

I hope you had a Happy Halloween!

We stayed in this year and passed out candy to cute little kids. It's one of the first years I've done that and I really had a blast. I was lame and didn't put on a costume. I saw two of our neighbors across the street handing out candy as boxy, silver robots, so I know that I have to step up my game next year.

p.s. - Sorry for the absence, I've been distracted by illustration assignments and the World Series (poor Phillies.... sniff, sniff).

Photo via my new favorite tumblr site

Happy Birthday Dad!

I hope you enjoyed your annual blueberry pie today! Sorry I live so far away and didn't get to share it with you.

Vintage Streamlined Design

My favorite images from this excellent book of American art deco design that Jesse checked out of the library. I'm always a fan of J.C. Leyendecker's Arrow Collar Man and who knew that pollution in Pittsburgh could be so beautiful?

Another Random Sketchbook Page

Based on this Richard Avedon photo of the author. For some reason, drawing portraits has become almost therapeutic for me. If I'm ever having a bad day, I can count on it to cheer me up. Even when the subject looks this depressed.

If We Mated

Jesse and I have the creepy distinction of somewhat looking like siblings. Exhibit A:

This just proves that we must both be very, very vain people. The only advantage of this situation is that I've never really had to question what our possible future spawn might look like. Medium brown hair, medium pinkish skin tone, dark eyes, and large noses - check!

Last night, though, through the miracle of the internet (specifically, morphthing.com), I was able to peer into our future and meet our genetic experiment in both baby and adult form.

Welcome to the world, Jesseanna! I forgot to mention that our offspring was also born intergender (the site doesn't do male or female morphs, just androgynous mixes). All in all, s/he's not actually as silly looking as I expected. But given our gene pool, this child would still be guaranteed to endure many long years in that horrible "awkward stage"...as well as poor eyesight and social anxiety. Sorry kid. It will build character, or at least that was what they used to tell me.

Ruben Toledo + Nordstrom

Earlier today when I stumbled across these old Spring 2008 Nordstrom ads featuring illustrations by Ruben Toledo, my mouth dropped. Simply gorgeous. The ads were shot by fashion photographer Ruven Afanador.

p.s. - If one brilliant artist in the household isn't enough, Ruben gets to go home every night to Isabel Toledo, fashion designer extraordinaire.
And sometime he paints portraits of her...and, yes, their home looks amazing, of course.

magazine scans and more images via notcot