Mug

Just completed an illustration for John O'Marra's poem book, Chocolate Chips and Rocket Ships. This is such a cool project: 100 poems illustrated by 100 different artists.  Check it out!

This is the first thing I've really made since my move to Columbus.  It's totally great here, and I even have a huge room entirely devoted to being a studio space.  Attached is a not very glamorous photo of what part of that space looks like, BUT I LOVE IT!

A few Mother images.

Here are some sneak peeks at my work in progress, "Mother." My thesis review date is March 27th which I am nervously anticipating. Just finishing will be a miracle.

Maltese Falcon

As part of my final project, I've been watching tons of Noir films and researching 1940's graphic design. Here's a scene from the Maltese Falcon re-imagined as a poster by AM Cassandre. Both of the source images below.

Concept Art

Here's a painting I did last weekend to warm up a new game design project I'm working on. To follow my progress go to my other blog, Osgood in 3D.

Art to Wear

Been working for the past couple months on the multimedia portion of Art to Wear at NC State. It's a fashion show hosted by the College of Design & College of Textiles. The event takes place Tuesday at 7pm. Come if you are in the Raleigh area.

In a strange twist of fate I ALSO ended up making the logo (see my rejected logo entry here.) This was an unusual "collaborative" process since I was given an existing logo and several graphic treatments and asked to create something new while re-purposing certain elements. The frame, typography, and Art Nouveau style came from the logo I was given but have been altered to fit my drawing style.

The Shackleton Expedition

One of the reasons I haven't posted in a while, been busy making an interactive Flash project about the Shackleton Expedition. I was admittedly more interested in developing a thoughtful interface and a showcase for my illustration skills than loading the project with amazing interactive widgets. It is, however, very scalable and could be loaded with photo albums, sounds, and movies if time and money was available to make that happen.

Go here to try it out: http://www.adamosgood.com/folio/shackleton/

This is one of the first opportunities I've had to blend my illustration and graphic design work into a seamless whole. Need to do more of this!

The Boss

Here's a little drawing I did of a "photograph" of the Boss character from my detective project. My very talented classmate Michael Delaney is setting these stylized drawings up in a 3D city and it looks amazing so far! More to come soon.

(He unintentionally but hilariously looks kind of like Conan, huh?)

Pioneer Tiger!

Here's a shaky cam shot of a painting that I'm working on. It's inspired by Neko Case.

Batman III: The Dark Rumor Mill

Cher, Bale, Depp, Hoffman.

No, this is not my wishlist for the 3rd Christopher Nolan Batman film. These are actually rumors that have been made (and possibly already debunked?) It's been fun to illustrate not only 4 celebrities, but also what they would look like in the role of these comic book personalities. (update October 12)

30 Rockefeller Plaza

So, this illustration has been looming over my shoulder like a vulture for the past 3 and a half months, but I just couldn't find a chance to do it. In fact, it was originally conceived as an Amy Poehler & Tina Fey thing back when Baby Mama came out. Anyhow, three days ago I said, "Adam, you are penciling this tonight, inking it tomorrow, and coloring it the next day." And I'm so happy I did.

Hooray

Guess what? I got into the "Big Book of Illustration Ideas 2." Go out and buy it, then turn to page 124, then find my e-mail address (adamosgood@gmail.com) and commission some work! This promo I did of KT Tunstall is the selection piece.

M.I.A Finished?

I think I'm done with this. I added some hand-drawn textures, as well as some computer magic in the form of pixelization. The pixelizing in particular represents the basic, yet bold and original way that many of the graphics in her CD artwork and music videos are.

I was inspired by Maya's design aesthetics with all the bright colors and textures. At the same time, I'm wanted to rein in on a really wonderful, selective color palette; something that I feel adds a lot of sophistication to any piece of art. I'd definitely say that working a selective color palette AND executing the look of crazy / wild colors was one of the biggest challenges I faced.

This is also the BIGGEST file I've ever worked on. Over 1 GB! I usually get a lot more mileage out of fewer graphic elements. I'm a little afraid about what 1 GB means... Will the file be less stable? I know it's taking a long long time to open & save. Is it easier to become corrupted? Only time will tell.

M.I.A. Redux

I've been working on a new M.I.A. illustration for a couple days (or weeks, if you include my thoughts, hopes, and dreams on the subject). I'm completely scrapping the test-painting that I started of her back in October, as I come to the realization that the time for playing around and experimenting is over and the time to make some serious illustrations needs to begin.

Also, I've been obsessed with Matthew Woodson's art for about a week now, and looking at his blogs and techniques have instilled in me a new sense of vibrancy towards inked work (which is probably the one thing that I can honestly say that I do very well). I'm going to try to push the colors to be a little more organic, using natural techniques where I used to use digital ones. Another artist who I love is Yoann Lemoine--he paints underneath his inked works. I've done some things similar to this, but never spent any real time playing with the format.

What I really love about both Woodson and Lemoine's art is the way that they stylize their drawings. Especially the way Lemoine applies a boxy look to everything. I still need to find where I stand in the world of stylization. In other words, what does a person look like through "Osgood-vision", or a dog, or a lamp post... anything? I've been trying out the distortion thing for about a year now, and I'm having trouble combining that with inked work, especially inked portraiture. In this image in particular, I stretched Maya's face out rather dramatically in the horizontal, but then wasn't completely sure how to go about her body... She is a beautiful, full-figured girl, so I didn't want to do the long arms and legs that I've been doing so much recently, but also didn't want to get too realistic with her proportions. I think I found a pretty good mix between the two... We'll see how I feel about it in a couple months after I've done some more work.

I definitely know that my work lends itself best to broad, incomplete, yet confident strokes, and I need to find a way to use that more. Kagan McLeod is another illustrator that I take a look at fairly often... he does some wonderfully vague ink work, if you look through his whole portfolio.