Masters of Ink Interview

Jason Thibault and the excellent crew over at optimumwound.com were nice enough to include me in their artist interview series, "Masters of Ink". Which is pretty nifty, as I have always been a big fan of their website. Previous artists interrogated include Lee Bermejo, Nathan Fox, Jim Mahfood, and a lot of other guys and gals who I really look up to. So, if you ever wanted to know more about my tools, techniques, and process, just click the link below for 14 fun filled questions and answers.

http://www.optimumwound.com/artist-adam-schmidt-talks-illustration-tools-and-technique.htm

NOBROW MAGAZINE

A few weeks ago the charming Alex Spiro from NOBROW Magazine invited me to contribute to the second issue of his publication. NOBROW, is a biannual textless art magazine on sale at all good design bookshops in the UK + Europe and available worldwide at http://www.nobrow.net/. What makes the magazine even cooler is the incredible color and paper quality, individually numbered limited edition printing, and a roster chock full of the best illustrators in the business. Artists contributing to their first issue include: A. Ricard Allen, Blex Bolex, Paul Blow, Jordan Crane, McBess, and Emiliano Ponzi.

Obviously, the upcoming second issue will undoubtedly feature some serious talent, and I am honored to be part of this project. So start getting excited, because the new issue drops sometime in the Fall. Included below are some pictures of the first issue that Alex was kind enough to send me, and to be honest I have never handled a higher quality publication.

Cover art by Stuart Kolakovic, interior piece by the fantastic Paul Blow, and thanks again Alex for all the swag.

Fun with Typography

Since coming back to freelancing after my stint at Rolling Stone, I having been spending much of my time playing around with hand drawn type. After making some new things, which will soon be appearing in a new type section on my site, I decided to go back and complete a set of letters that I created around a year ago for promotional purposes. Enjoy, and keep your eyes peeled for more weird type.

Mastodon - Crack the Skye

When I was interning at Rolling Stone, I was privileged to have an unreal vantage point of many amazing different illustrators at work. Every two weeks there is a new issue, and every issue I was lucky enough to see all of the concepts, sketches, revisions, and everything else that goes into a finished piece. And if that wasn't cool enough, I would get to work on my own pieces along side them. Below is a process detail from the Mastodon Rolling Stone record review piece I worked on while interning. For the whole image, visit my portfolio here.

Rolling Stone / Damian DeMartino

It has been a few weeks now since my incredible internship in the art department at Rolling Stone Magazine has been over, and I am still missing it. Every art director there was so welcoming and accepting, never failing to make me feel like part of the team. All the while knowing that it was just as important to encourage me as it was to point and laugh. When I arrived in their office, I really didn't know anything about what an art director actually did or how a magazine was designed and produced. I probably still don't, but it's definitely not for their lack of trying.

So thanks again to Joe Hutchinson, Steve Charny, Matthew Cooley, Elizabeth Oh, Damian DeMartino, Jen Redmond, and Sacha Lecca for helping me in so many ways. It was an education that I won't soon forget.

And finally, on a less schmaltzy note, Damian has decided to share his awesome vector work with world. Go now and check out all of the slick illustrations and comics online at http://syntheticcitizen.com/

Complex Magazine

Just got the call from the extremely friendly designer over at Complex Magazine last week about a fun little fashion spot for their upcoming issue. Basically it's a fashion gone wrong image of a style that I saw a lot of in the midwest, the always frightening, all denim suit. It was big change from the more concept driven stuff that I have been up to lately, but it was a lot of fun trying to add a few details to give him a little more "character". Plus, any day that I can draw a mullet is a good day.

Portrait of Arikawa

Just completed the full page portrait of Masakazu Arikawa, the president of a company called M Cube, for the premiere issue of Electronic Magazine. Below are the usual process pictures, which for this project involved a more in depth black and painted portrait than usual. I was a little worried how the paint would translate into color, but it was a fun challenge that seems to have worked out pretty well.