Self Portraits Over the Years

The age is noted below each image.

Tua, Cody, Seth

Tua
Cody
Seth

Quick sketches of my friends. I'm playing around with the idea of offering to create custom online avatars...along these lines.

Thriller Redux

(Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult.)
Blake's Thrill'r
When I was a kid I loved Michael Jackson's music videos. I would watch "Thriller" and "The Making of Thriller" all the time. When I was a child no artist touched me the way Michael Jackson did....wait, what?!

I would reenact Thriller randomly. Because of this my brother Kelly decided to shoot this super-8 film of me. He also did the makeup.

NEW LEYENDECKER BOOKS!

Hallelujah! The second coming of J.C.. That's right, J.C. Leyendecker. I just received the first book about him that has been published in over 30 years. It's pretty comprehensive, but there's another book about him coming out in a few weeks. To find out about those, follow these links.

Book 1
Book 2

If you don't know who he is, he was the preeminent illustrator of the first half of the 20th century. Norman Rockwell idolized him, and it shows in his work. At that time (the Golden Age of Illustration) a single magazine cover would earn you the equivalent of a down-payment for a house. Needless to say, the guy was quite wealthy.

This Andre 3000 illustration of mine is an homage to Leyendecker:

BYU game panorama

BYU vs. Wyoming. Great seats.

"But Blake, why aren't you posting artwork?"

Fine! I'll start painting again. Get off my back!

July 4th light drawings

This has become a yearly tradition for my brother and I. He has some a good digital slr camera that we take long exposures with. We started out with sparklers, but then moved to a flashlight covered with a couple layers of tissue paper. The flashlight makes much more crisp and fluid lines. Anyway the pictures have my Brothers Kelly, Peter and their kids.

Rachel McAdams

The latest in my series of my celebrity crushes. I'm attempting to work faster and more simple in my rendering.

Evangeline Lilly

Evangeline Lilly as Kate from "Lost". I started this a few years ago (when Lost was good) and finally got around to finishing it.

Jesse Jackson

Started this a year or two ago and finally got around to finishing it. I think the best effect of an Obama presidency would be that Jackson and Sharpton would have a harder time making money off of convincing people that race is the most important issue in America.

Parent's Birthday

Here's a couple illustrations of my parents that was their 60th birthday present from me. My dad grew up in a small town in Idaho on the other side of the Tetons from Jackson Hole. His father got a harness made for his Irish setter that would pull my dad around on a sled in the winter.
My mother traveled across the US as a kid in Frankenstein-like cars that my grandpa built. He basically created the first motor home.

Communication Arts

I just found out that my "No Country for Old Men" piece has been accepted into the Communication Arts Illustration Annual. I will be in stores this July.

Iron Man and the Fantastic 4 chick with unrealistic blue contact lenses

Robert Downey Jr. I don't know anything about the character 'Iron Man', but I'm very excited for the movie.
Jessica Alba. As you can tell from the post title, I really hate when they have brown eyed people wearing blue contact lenses in movies. It never looks good - Her in Fantastic 4, Orlando Bloom in LOTR, Ziyi Zhang in Memoirs of a Geisha. I think it's because the pupil doesn't change size.

No Country for Old Men

For an email promo. Photoshop and a bit of Painter.

Self Portrait '08

Self portrait for the new year.