Pocket Brush Fun

My Pentel Pocket Brush continues to be fun to work with on quick whimsical sketches.  I'm starting to get a feel for what it's capable of and how to control it better.  I'll look forward to coming back to these to compare after I've gotten another 10 or 20 hours under my belt.  Most notably, getting those instant fat outlines that would otherwise have taken me 10 times longer to get with a fine-tip pen... those are really fun.

Mammoth Drawings with Brush Pen

This small set of mammoth drawings had me using a brush pen, ranging from 10 to 20 minutes each.  It's certainly a lot faster than working with technical pen!

 

I've owned a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen for well over a year, but never spent much serious time with it.  Thanks to a nudge from an illustrator friend, I decided it was time I started making a more concerted effort to get comfortable and confident with a brush.  

 

I've been very focused on pencils, technical pens and ballpoints and tend to think of myself as a pen guy deep down.  But with my commitment to black and white illustrations, it's important to be flexible and well-versed with a brush as well.  In the interest of a loose and lively line quality with some really beautiful line weights, these brush pens really are an awesome tool!

Dreamosaurs in Technicolor

It's not often that I feel compelled to do color work on my black and white drawings, but something about Dreamosaurs just called for some color play.  The original idea was to do a sepia tone over the full image just to add another layer of value, but once I got going on it I felt like a deep dreamy blue made more sense.  Photoshop makes it so easy to play with variations and layers of value.  The 'replace color' option is invaluable for me during this process, as I can drag the slider bars and see different palette options in real time without doing any permanent damage to the original.

All that said, I still have the itch to do a sepia version of some of my other black and whites.  In so many words, I'd like to push my illustrations a little further without making a jarring switch to full-color. Monochrome is just too beautiful to me!

Prints of these are available at my Etsy Art shop

As an aside and in the interest of scary children's media, I have to repost a quote by Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are) that my good friend and illustrator Aja Wells shared... 


"...from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustration as best they can.  And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis.  It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things." - Maurice Sendak

Dreamosaurs / Dinos & Dogs

Norman Rockwell said "if it isn't working, put a dog in it."  After my menacing 'Tar Pits at La Brea' piece, I wanted to do something a bit less intense and generally more accessible.  There's definitely an interesting, different energy juxtaposing the massive menace of a T-Rex with the cute and cuddly west highland terrier.

At 18"x18", this is one of my bigger pen & ink efforts.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that, with 3 or 4 coats of gesso as a base, I can use my scraper tool much like I would on a claybord piece... pulling up ink to make corrections or value adjustments.  It takes more time on the front end to get the board prepped, but it certainly offers a versatile alternative to pre made scratchboards.

Kettle Art 'Know Show' on the Deep Ellum Art Walk

I'm showing some recent scratchboard & silkscreen work at The Know Show @ Kettle Art in Dallas.   It's a one night only show, and we're the premiere stop on the Deep Ellum Spring Art Walk.  Don't miss it!

Featuring works by Brad Albright, Kasey Jones Parker, Cheryl Baker, Tyson Summers, Dan Colcer, Frank Campagna, Clint Scism, Corey Godfrey, Brian A Crawford, Cabe Booth, George Wallace III, and more!

Saturday, April 21st, 6-10pm

2714 Elm, Dallas, TX 75226

Kung Fu Strike - Master Mo Munny custom vinyl toy

7Sixty Games recruited me alongside Dallas artist/illustrators Cody Phillips and Jason Chalker to design custom Munny toys to help promote their new XBOX Live game, Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior's Rise.  

Following the claybound madness that was my custom Donkey Kong sculpt for Vinyl Thoughts 2, I wanted to bring the best of both worlds and do just a bit of custom sculpting over the blank vinyl Munny base.  This was a hell of a lot of fun, actually, and I'm anxious to keep working in this vein for my vinyl toy shows.

Click the picture below to see the Facebook album of all 3 of ours...

Albright's April Art Wall at Buon Giorno Grapevine

 

Come visit Buon Giorno Coffee House in Grapevine, TX for April's Art Wall, featuring 18 Brad Albright original pen & scratchboard illustrations.

Featuring fresh coffee from around the world, roasted right in the shop, Buon Giorno Coffee House in Grapevine features open mic Tuesdays at 8pm, live music Saturday nights at 8pm, and monthly rotating art displays featuring local fine artists. 

Silkscreening Posters

I've finally made the leap from screen-printing on textiles to paper!  

I have two designs ready-to-roll as limited-edition, signed and numbered prints.

These are printed white on black, with waterbased ink on 100% recycled, acid-free paper, and are available on my Etsy Shop. 

I'm really enjoying this so far, and am looking forward to keeping it in my quiver as a creative outlet.  It also seems like a really logical way for my to translate my original black and white drawings into something that can be displayed and sold at a lower price than an original drawing or scratchboard piece.  Being hand-printed, they manage to retain a sense of originality.  Plus it's just fun to put out a series of limited pieces.

I'm also displaying and selling these in matted frames at a few shows in Dallas... 

Deep Ellum Arts Festival and Attack of The $50 Art Show to name a pair.

Finally, here's a link to my previous post about DIY screen printing and my home setup..

Life-Size Mariachi Illustration

This is a life-size mariachi illustration I completed recently for a nation-wide, multi-brand marketing campaign for Cinco De Mayo and beyond.  The client will be able to customize the boards with their various alcohol brands and have customers take their photo with it at restaurants, bars, and retail stores.  I'd done a number of these in the past for Saint Patty's day, 4th of July, etc, but this was the first to encompass two figures and stand a full 6 feet.  Fun!

Donkey Kong Un-Tied - self-promotional illustration

This is a self-promotional piece that I drew up as a companion to my Donkey Kong sculpture for Vinyl Thoughts 2 in Dallas.

With sculpture and vinyl toys being new creative avenues for me, I thought I'd take the opportunity to tie it all back to the line art drawings I consider my primarily discipline and make double impressions at the show.  So while I worked on my Donkey Kong sculpture I also drew this up in my signature pen on scratchboard style to print on self-promotional postcards and hand out at the show.  I had a lot of fun with this one!

Donkey Kong - Custom Sculpey Toy

Here's my final custom Donkey Kong piece for Vinyl Thoughts 2: The Next Level-- video game themed art show in Dallas, March 17th.

Most artists worked on a blank vinyl character base, such as a Munny, but I crazily decided to sculpt mine from scratch.  With little sculpting experience to speak of, it proved a lengthy process for me.  But the challenge was well worth attacking, and so far as I could tell, the piece was well received at the show!

I built up the 11" figure with a wire and foil armature, primarily to save on clay but also to give it a structural core.  To retain a small sense of 'toy' in the piece, I left a bit of the flexible wire armature extending from the body so that the head would be able to reposition and look in different directions.

I used Sculpey Firm polymer clay to build up the surface, and after some debating, I decided to leave the surface smooth rather than giving it a ridged fur surface.  That served both to stay true to the vinyl toy theme of the show, and to allow me to use my signature style of pen and ink shading to give it more detail once I painted it with a brown/grey acrylic base coat.

All in all, the process took me far longer than I expected (and longer than I care to mention), but now that I've attacked a large sculpture project like this I feel more enabled to work with sculpture moving forward.  I'm looking ahead to do some simpler vinyl toy pieces using a preformed base (like a 'Munny') to save time and provide some parameters to the project.  But I'm also looking forward to doing some original sculpts, but keeping them at a more manageable size so I can start to play with detailing the clay itself.  

Here's another shot of the final piece...

Ethical Pricing for Freelance Illustration & Art Licensing

Hi all, a bit of a cautionary post about sites that offer to resell your images in publication or other media... 

I've noticed quite a few artists posting their work on GetBookCover at ridiculously low prices, and wanted to warn everyone that you should read the fine print and price well above the site's recommended prices if you're going to sell the rights to one of your images on a site like this.  In this case they retain rights to reprint the image indefinitely without any further payment to you--- **across any additional media platforms!!  They also take 35% of your sale.  This particular site encourages all artists to post their images for sale at $300. That sounds like a lot as a struggling artist right?  Well, those rights should be earning you more along the lines of the site's maximum $4000 price, **Especially** if they retain the rights for all further editions, be it in print, e-book, etc.  Also, at the time of writing this post, this particular site does not credit the images to the original artist.  In that sense, it's not offering any worthwhile exposure even if you were to price your images at the maximum price.

The Graphic Artist Guild's guide to pricing and ethical guidelines is a book that every creative freelance professional should consider picking up as a reference if you're unsure about an image's value for various uses. It's published annually, and while it generally sets the prices a little higher than we can reasonably expect, it's an invaluable resource and the standard for freelance artists. As creative professionals we need to be careful about pricing our work too low, which devalues both our work individually and our industry at large. Don't undervalue yourselves!


Graphic Artist Guild's Guide to Pricing and Ethical Guidelines

Vinyl Thoughts teaser...

Here's a work-in-progress teaser of my piece for the upcoming Vinyl Thoughts 2 video game themed art show in Dallas, Thursday March 15th.  Check out the website and don't miss it!  Free admission, door prizes, lots of awesome sponsors, and of course fantastic custom toys by 30+ artists on display and for sale.

For The Love of The Artists - Show Poster

 

Just finished up the show poster for Kettle Art's "For The Love of The Artists" group gallery show.  Don't miss it, soft opening Sat Feb 22nd & Grand Opening Saturday March 3rd, 7-10pm.  Hope to see everyone there!

The original drawing (below) is pen & ink line art on 5x7 scratchboard, finished in photoshop with hand lettering and additional grey tones.

Animated Movie Poster Illustration

Just finished up this poster illustration and animated gif for Broken Heart Disease, a short film being directed out in good ol' Los Angeles.  Learn about the film and "Like" the movie page on facebook!

Beyond the fun drawing itself, it's like visiting an old friend working with animated gifs, and I think I'll make an effort to find more outlets for it.  This piece would also make a fun anaglyph for retro red/blue 3D glasses.

Here's the raw drawing on its own... 5x7, pen & ink on scratchboard, followed by some of the initial doodles to gain my bearings.