Help is on the way

Just finished this assignment for this week's LA Weekly based on an article by Courtney Moreno recounting tales of life as an ambulance driver. The stories are a fascinating glimpse into a harrowing and often surreal side of medicine and was a great challenge to try and tackle visually. Also owenfreeman.com has just been updated with a bundle of new illustration and sketchbook work.

Forget it Jake...

Here is a piece I just did for the LA Weekly, on newsstands this week. The sketches were based on the broader idea of the city of Los Angeles, and then the finished illustration was an expansion on the upper right sketch with a nod to the classic film. Much thanks to Darrick and Jason for the opportunity and special thanks to the talented Eric Davison for his assistance.

Waiting

Just finished this illustration inspired by a piece on the daily risks in the lives of sex workers. Above are the thumbnail idea sketches, trying to work out a few compositional elements and then expanding further into quick color and value studies on the upper right. The interesting challenge to the piece was to try and create a sense of space which could then serve as a stage for the headlights to stand-in for a foreboding figure and still cut into the motel room with as much (or more) menace.

MF Doom

In From the Cold

Here are some initial sketches and then the finished illustration I did for this month's issue of Runner's World magazine. The piece was an autobiographical account of the writers near-death experience during winter run in a frozen canal outside Washington D.C.. Thanks to Kory Kennedy for including me among such auspicious company.

2,009

So the year two thousand and nine means it's almost twenty ten, which still sounds freakishly futuristic. Hope this post finds everyone well, I was aiming for a more organic theme for this post but instead here is a strange bundle of sketches and daily drawings to make way for the new.

Collect all 2!

Just in time for the holidays, my first two prints are now available at Gallery Nucleus.

Solatia

Op-art piece based on the cost of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan and the actual claims filed in for non-combat related deaths.

Tanker

Just finished this op-ed piece based on a recent New York Times article on the recent uptick of pirate attacks along the coast of Somalia.

Night and the City

OpEd

Illustration based on the New York Times editorial titled "Barack Obama, John McCain and the Language of Race"

Meric

PR

I just found out that this first piece I did for a Coastal America competition was selected to be on display in the Smithsonian from December 1st of this year through the end of March 2009, coinciding with the opening of the new Sant Ocean Hall to the public.
And in local news, I was given the opportunity to create an installation of work alongside the always impressive student gallery for the fall term at Art Center College of Design here in LA, which will be up through the beginning of December.

Gustav

Severance

The artwork for a short story I just finished about a guy trying to leave town to quit his numbers job, and a scrap handgun he can't sell.

It Was a Very Good Year

Ocean on the edge

Just finished this poster proposal piece for an ocean science exhibit at the Aquarium of the Pacific. Still a work-in-progress, but it went from sketch to here relatively quickly it seemed like it might be worth posting.

Silky Shark

Thought I'd post this process sheet just to blow whatever spontaneity the final silkscreen may exhibit. The concept was sort of a love letter to Los Angeles, the beauty and toxicity of it all, for a three-color silkscreen assignment. At the left are the thumbnail roughs, taking the Super Fly approach for a minute, then something about water, then some type. From there the three rough color sketches revealing how increasingly muddied the idea had become.

Finally I went back to try some ink sketches in the hopes of salvaging it using the limitations of three flat-colors. The far right top and bottom ink drawings became the basis for the black and violet screens, and the cropped final silkscreen, the second from the bottom right was one of the alternate color compositions based off those drawings.

Birds

Two-plate etching/aquatint assignment for printmaking.

Dracula's Pajama Party

Hand etching and aquatint print I just finished.