January

Here is an piece I just finished for a promotional series for Heflin Reps. The concept was to take the name of a month as the portrait/theme and run with it, and I lucked into January, so the Betty Draper sketches started almost immediately. Below are some of the preliminary idea drawings.

Suicide Watch

A few months ago, I got a call from UCLA Magazine to illustrate an article on rising suicide rates among middle-aged Americans. After sketching the first few thumbnails and re-reading the article, I decided to focus on the absence of connection and we went with the man in the park. From there I experimented with the idea of visual isolation by including the passing world in watercolor figures and warmer temperatures.

Postcards from London

In between projects over the past couple weeks, I've been working on some pen and ink drawings on postcards to send from London. Here are a handful from the British Museum, London Natural History Museum, the Louvre, Tower of London and some streets around London and Paris.

Hope everyone out there is having a warm and happy holidays, here's to the end of a monumental year and the beginning of a bright new decade.

Chirac

New promo series: Jaques Chirac

Superstition

Just completed this comic sequence in collaboration with Helen and the good folks at Sonny London. (The fully scripted and scored version is also available here.)

Londinium

Seeing London for the first time made me wish my full-time job was location sketching. The city just draws itself. Here are some sketchbook pages so far, fountain pen and ink wash mainly, more to come.

The Big Sleep

Here is an illustration I just finished of Carmen Sternwood from the final scenes of Chandler's The Big Sleep. I noticed a lot of my thumbnail sketches while reading were characters other than Marlowe, so it was interesting to attempt to capture his tone through a supporting character and scene. Unlike previous approaches, I tried to limit the compositional drawings to rough thumbnails, which allowed the final drawing/watercolor process to be a bit more fluid.

In other news, I've been included in Taschen's new "Illustration Now! 3" book, alongside some amazing artists. I also did a quick Q&A with the good folks at Gym Class Magazine, which is on internet-stands now.

Overlook

A new illustration I just finished for this week's LA Weekly. Also, I've just started on Twitter, in case you're interested in more links and less alphabetical-characters.

PULP

Earlier this year I got the opportunity to collaborate with photographic dynamo Neil Krug on two illustrations for his and Joni Harbeck's upcoming PULP ART BOOK. I have been a huge admirer of Neil's polaroid work since first seeing it on Flickr, and although these are still in-progress, I thought I would post some of the sketches and pin-up drafts so far.

Nerding Out

I had the good fortune to get a call from Nick Vogelson at OUT magazine last month for an article on the crossing-over of nerdism into mainstream American culture. Through the eyes of the writer at events such as the San Diego Comicon, I was left with a certain reverence for the pop culture pile-up that these events seem to inevitably lead to. The first few sketches were essentially riffing on this idea of fictitious comic book and film worlds colliding, first with each other and then again with the world around them. The rough pencil ideas were scanned and re-drawn into the more legible sketches in Photoshop, and once the hallway version had been approved I did my best to retain as much of the loose, crowded quality of the rough sketches as possible.

Overall it was an incredibly fun assignment, and really any day I get to draw Skeletor sleeping on someone's lap at a bus stop is a good day. I think it's the issue should be on stands now, thanks again to Nick for the opportunity.

Conchords

Here is a new self-promo portrait I just finished of New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo, along with a bit of the process from sketch to digital paints. Owenfreeman.com has also just been updated with a bundle of new sketches and illustrations.

Also in case you haven't seen it there is a fantastic Drawger post by Yoku Shimizu detailing the process of a new portrait she did for Golf Digest. Can't recommend it enough.

Tempest

Here is the latest illustration for this week's LA Weekly, inspired by a longstanding infatuation with the concrete forests of overpasses across Los Angeles.

Brütal Lemmy

Here are some of the sketches I did for the new issue of Nylon Guys magazine along with the finished illustration. The piece was for the "Rock & Awe" interview with Lemmy Kilmister about his role in the upcoming heavy-metal themed Brütal Legend video game- I couldn't ask for more visually fun elements to work with. Much thanks to Alexander Chow for the opportunity and thanks again to the illustrious Frank Stockton for the assist.

Mash Up

Here is a new piece I just did for this week's LA Weekly. I had been reading about the history of Malibu Creek State Park, where M*A*S*H and the Planet of the Apes series were filmed when I did the rough sketch. After hiking up to shoot some reference shots for an idea about a misdirected extra, I painted the ink and watercolor version. After some trial and error and strange accidents with color and temperatures, I came to this version, which hopefully retains most of the anachronistic feel of the original concept.

In other news, I'm incredibly honored to have my unpublished "Waiting" illustration awarded a spot in this year's Communication Arts Illustration Annual, which is on stands now.

Unbelievable 2.5

Unbelievable_2.5, originally uploaded by owenfreeman.

Portrayals

Here is an ink drawing/portrait of Mr. Hugh Hefner I did for this year's Playboy Jazz Festival. Throughout the assignment I was inspired to keep practicing with daily warmup portrait sketches of whoever else came to mind, and push various limitations like duotones or lighting as I went (while trying to maintain some fleeting likenesses.) It's an unexpected bunch, all together, but I guess there was a lot of Kojack on in the background...

Northlake

New illustration for this week's LA Weekly. Also just received a bronze medal for the Meric piece in the current issue of CQ, which was a cool surprise.

G20

Here is a cover and double-page spread I did for the current issue of Securities & Investments Review. The assignment was a super-heroic take on the single superadvisory board that world leaders were creating to confront the global economic recession at the G20 Summit in London this year.

The cover was penciled pretty much directly from the rough sketch, but the thumbnail sketches for the spread at the top left were still a bit too subtle, so for the tighter pencil versions we tried to take it in a more direct and cinematic angle. After a few color treatments the double page spread finally felt dark enough without being too dark, and the recession had the correct number of tentacles and it was off to print. Thanks to Johanna Ward at Wardour for the opportunity, and special thanks to Frank Stockton for the assist.

The Four Star

Illustration I just finished for New York Magazine about the impact of the recession on four-star restaurants in Manhattan.

Morello

Here is a full page illustration I did for the current issue of FHM magazine in the UK. The illustration was based on an article detailing the brutal rise and fall of GIuseppe Morello, the head of the first organized crime family in America during the turn of the last century.