They thought I was a surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.
Frida Kahlo

I’ve recently begun working with a close friend who is in the process of writing a book. I’m spring-boarding off the story line and doing some conceptual pieces,fleshing out parts of the story and its characters in a visual way, while the book’s narrative continues to evolve. It’s a really interesting project and a different approach than most of the publishing work that I typically do. My eventual hope is that I can post at minimum the book’s first chapter, (most likely around Christmas), and show some accompanying illustration work ranging from sketches to finished pieces.

The painting above is one result of the collaboration so far. The boy being grabbed by the legendary and infamous Kraken and losing a key piece of hardware to boot. The scene depicted is one that will not appear in the book, but the image it inspired in my mind got me sketching, which in turn led to my creating a color version of the sketch. Painter IX was used almost exclusively because I wanted to show a “painterly” quality in the work,leave some things to the viewer’s imagination and not render every last detail.

You can see a quickie demo movie of the steps involved by clicking the image below.