A POOL PLAYER'S JOURNEY

This is my first published book that I had to design from front to back. I did all of the interiors, designed the cover image and layout. It's a pretty cool book. Check it out, pick it up, get better at pool.

2 min, 5 min, 20 min

Beards

A few friends of mine are putting together a show this December at the Aviary Gallery in Jamaica Plane.  The theme is Beards.... I drew this pic of Rasputin from a photo, then drew the other 2 modeled after his pose...

Published Children's Book

My first fully illustrated children's book! It will be a few weeks before the book is available for purchase but here's a sneak peak...

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

Recently I was commissioned to illustrate called Rolling, Rolling, Rolling by Mary L. Pulcher. It's about cantaloupes, watermelons, and cucumbers that all decide to leave their garden for the day.  I had to do the entire book in 3 weeks (12 spreads total). I decided to make the book revolve more around the environment over anything else... I'll post pics of the actual book tomorrow!

The Thief's Only Child Add

This is an advertisement I designed for a book that's already been published through the company I'm currently working for.  Publicity needed it to reflect the book as much as possible.  I basically copied the look of the spine of the book and made it into a banner add... do you want to buy it? is it convincing? Thanks to Hannah for passing me this project!

Uroboros

uroboros illustration for an upcoming book

CORT

An old friend of mine had me make him some concept art for a film he's putting together a while back, I thought I had posted this earlier, then I saw it on his film blog and thought twice...  You may have seen some previous character studies I posted a little while back.  This was an image he had asked me to produce specifically.  He's looking to get all the attention he can so if you're feelin curious, check out his FB page for the film. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cort-A-Short-Film-About-Priorities/173840062692864

Here's a Screenshot of all the images on the website...enjoy!

Salt Box Farm

These two of three images I did for a friend of mine's website.  He owns a catering company that he runs through his farm.  I posted and earlier image of a catering platter a few weeks back.  Each image will represent a section of the site.  The platter being for catering, flour being for "in the kitchen" and the weathervane for "on the farm".  I'll link the site here when the images are up.

GO Grab em!

Final Tiger Color

This is the final color scheme that we had agreed on.  Removing the shadows adds a sort of retro effect to it and brings out the line work more.  The same was done with the bowling graphic.  I had a file issue before and wanted to post these in a hurry so I posted and older version of this board.

2 New Hopps Boards

This month Hopps will be releasing 2 new boards with my designs on them so go out and grab em while they're hot!  The Tiger deck actually has different colors than the one posted here but this is pretty much what it looks like.  Also some quick concept work for you all to have a look at.  Thanks Jahmal and Jerry!

IN THE NAME OF GOD

About 10 days ago I was contacted by a friend who writes plays. He was looking for assistance with a flyer for his latest piece of work. The play is based on a film that follows 6 characters, who each have memories of the 2001 attacks on The World Trade Center in NYC. After a continuous back and forth of ideas we came to the one you see on the bottom. We wanted to make something that wasn't using cliche imagery, but still grabbed the viewer's attention. The top two were different ideas we ended up scrapping. The play premiers on the anniversary of 9/11 at the Central Square Theater. Check it out!

Some tracing was involved, thanks photoshop :)

Portraits, Paintings, Process, Pose for me?

I put an even on facebook a few days ago inviting people to pose for me because I need to make paintings for a show in October. This is the 1st painting in the series, it's a self portrait. I'm trying to paint other people, but I did this to get back in the swing of things... Anyway if any of you followers are interested in posing hit me up at mmongiardo@gmail.com, I live in Manhattan... Also I wanted to share my process, basically everything I've learned about this way of painting came from George Nick, look him up, he's a genius.
Obviously, I start with a drawing, USUALLY, what I do is draw whatever it is I'm about to paint and THEN map out the lights and darks.
This time I was really rusty, I didn't properly draw myself or map out he darks so I ended up with this. It felt flat and sat in my room for a solid month before I decided to hop back on it.
THIS is usually what I do before I start getting too far into the painting, I just make sure the drawing is right and try and get a good feel for where the darks and lights are. In this case I just drew over what I had done before, it also kind of helps for me to be able to paint on an already painted or colored surface, it helps to place the lights and darks and find the midtones......
I start to fill in what I've drawn out. I usually mix 3 or 4 colors ranging broadly in tone. From here I can see what's working and whats not and make decisions about where I need to redraw, change tone/color or completely fix things.
This is the final product. Basically I start to take the broad basic shapes of the tones and hone in on the smaller detailed areas as I go. Like I said, I learned this process from George Nick at MassArt, it really, really works. They take a pretty long time (this one was maybe 5-6 hours in the end?) and A LOT of the time I end up redrawing/painting entire segments that aren't working.... but it's pretty satisfying once you get what you're looking for. Thanks for looking!

OH! I forgot to mention one major detail! I don't use brushes for this, only palette knives...