hahaaaa... sad times... I had a friend who had recently shot himself, and while everyone else with this prompt drew birthday parties and other kinds of happy surprises, I drew this, you can only imagine how concerned my art teacher was. Also, the lack of sleep I had was wearing on me, I spelled surprise wrong so I had to go on paint and correct it. It was the beginning of the school year and my friend had killed himself just at the end of summer break, when I was so busy having fun in the sun, it was the most surprising event I have experienced. So I tried to paint a beautiful scene with bright colors with a depressing scenario so that it wouldn't really match up... aka surprise.
This is the book I made which contains the educational paper I wrote and illustrated about my trip to China in the summer of 2017. I gave a lecture entitled, The Sketchbook: Let's Connect at ICON10, The Illustration Conference in Detroit, MI this past July. I gave a few of these books out along with pocket sketchbooks to the audience. Below are a few spreads from the 40-page book.
The best that I know in summer is cottage life in Finland countryside. This is the image from the lakeside. Angling on a pier in perfect style. The color of the fishing hat and waterlily make a perfect match.
I helped create the Island in the Sun can for Conshohocken Brewing Company a couple years back. They release it every year in the summer and I drew this up to celebrate the re-release this year!
