Patrick Sheehan Illustration

Flood

2011-11-04T07:26:00.000-07:00

REDO!! I was never happy with the original.

Butterfly

2011-10-17T19:19:00.000-07:00

I should have been painting, but instead I was busy being lazy. Then I felt guilty about being lazy and decided that no matter what, I would somehow manage to be productive today. But I still didn't want to paint. So I hung out with the piano, and this is what we made.

"Butterfly" by Tori Amos, covered by me.

P.S.

Dear Tori Amos,

Sorry for mangling your piece.

Thanks,
Patrick

Sketchbook Dump

2011-10-05T22:06:00.000-07:00

Three Heads Finish

2011-04-18T16:12:00.001-07:00

Still feeling a bit rusty, but I'm fairly pleased with how it came out.

Three heads in the Well

2011-04-09T16:23:00.001-07:00

The drawing is finished, I'm going to jump into coloring it in photoshop soon.

Today's progress

2011-04-08T19:21:00.000-07:00

My basement flooded today. But hey, I made art!

"The Duet" for Illustration Friday

2011-04-06T18:00:00.001-07:00

Check out my work here.

"Three Heads" Start

2011-04-05T17:59:00.000-07:00

Rodent

2011-04-02T16:55:00.000-07:00

Inspired by a trip to the Harvard Natural History Museum with friends.

Heads

2011-03-26T18:06:00.001-07:00

Lunch Sketch

2011-03-26T11:26:00.001-07:00

Who's a slacker?

2011-03-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

ME!! It's been a year since my last post. That's like, 30 years in social media time. Boy, does that make me feel lazy. I swear, I'm alive.

New sketch for "The Three Heads in the Well," (full story here) a possible personal project I may be jumping into:

I had initially drawn a thumbnail of this a LONG while back, but I never got around to cleaning it up until this afternoon. A lot of it probably has to do with the fact that when I initially drew the thumbnail, my studio had been moved to a common area in a giant Victorian house infested with cats, fleas, and, even worse still, filthy hippies.

Since then, I've moved out with the significant other to a place inhabited just by us with AMPLE studio space (aka, the "Man Cave"). I plan on locking myself in and chaining myself to the drafting table, just like the old times.

Other things that have happened over the past year:

Began studying for the MTELS (for realz this time)
Developed a passion for burritos
Started writing a comic (also for realz this time)
Made a hippy run out of a house crying, on several occasions (very proud)

More updates soon. Legit, I swear.

Slumbrew: Beetlejuice

2010-03-15T19:45:00.000-07:00

Hey All,

I was recently hired by my boss at Silverscape to create the illustration for one of his beer labels! He's a home-brewer, and until recently, had been designing all of the labels for his line, called "Slum Brew," himself. He asked me to create an illustration to be used on a (for the most part) Red Ale called "Beetlejuice," named for the large amount of fermented beet juice. I've just recently come to terms with realizing I'm a horror illustrator, so it didn't faze me when I was asked to draw a dead man. Dead guys have become the Patrick Sheehan specialty.

Here are the sketches:

1. First up is the "Beet Beetle." I thought this was witty, and an elegant composition. It was my favorite. 2. He mentioned some graveyard imagery, so I figured I'd try a headstone motif.3. Everyone was really disappointed when I said I had no plans to even touch on Michael Keaton. (After 4 years of illustration classes, averting the obvious 1st thought is basically second nature.) So imagine my surprise when number 3 was picked! Figures. I would have been happy doing any of them. (And like I said, saggy old men have become my forte... Is there a market for illustrations of dead, saggy old men?)

Anyway, I very randomly whipped out the charcole and got these guys done very quickly:

It's definitely my own take on Beetlejuice... far more sinister. I was definitely inspired by (nerd alert) The Gentleman and Der Kinderstod from the Buffy episodes, "Hush" and "Killed By Death," respectively. (Those ones still creeps me the f*ck out.)

Anyway, I then scanned the two parts, whipped up some color in photoshop and got this:

(Pardon the teeny-tiny-ness. The finished file is at work and this is all I've got)

Hopefully if this label goes over well, more will follow! For more info on Slum Brew, visit www.slumbrew.com

Freelance

2009-12-28T13:05:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, everyone! It's been a while, so I figured I'd give an update on the freelance work I've completed.

Here's the cover for Brittney Well's album, "Anyway:"

And a sampling of some of the icons for the previous job. They are apparently going to be used for a new social media site. I'll share a link as soon as the site is up:

UBER Update

2009-11-08T19:26:00.000-08:00

AAAAH!!! So much to talk about!

I love my new job. I've been working at Silverscape for about a month now, and it's pretty awesome. My duties are a mix of helping out with administrative stuff, general housekeeping, and art making. My co-workers are awesome, and every once in a while, I get to do cool stuff like lay-out and paint this mural:

(I also did the lettering & creepy devil guy) I just finished contributing to some artwork that will be hung in the office, which I need to finish tomorrow morning.

In other news, I finished the freelance job that I mentioned last time. And then promptly got another one! WOO HOO! I'm doing an album cover for a young singer/pianist named Britteny Wells. Here is the line work for her first EP:

Happiness is a new job

2009-09-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

When I started working in a restaurant a year ago, I swore that I wouldn't stay there for more than a year. As fate would have it, I was just hired by one of the top design firms in Boston with seven hours to spare. Now, it's only as a receptionist/cleaning person/fish feeder/studio elf, but supposedly, I will on occasion be getting the chance to put my degree to use.

The owner of the company emailed me on monday morning asking if I could start on tuesday, but my (now former) co-worker's cousin died the night before and she couldn't go into work. I had to go in early and work the lunch shift alone, so I didn't get the email until 5, which was just too late. The actual start date is still up in the air, but I'm excited. I miss being challenged. I feel like the less people ask of me, the less I feel like I'm capable of doing.

Also, I got my third freelance illustration job! WOOHOO! I'm on a roll! It's work for hire, so it pays crap and I retain no rights. But work should be quick and easy, plus the art director was very nice and polite, so it should be worth it.

I've also redesigned my dad's business card. He's been using the same card and letterhead since the mid 70's. (And it looks it.) He decided he wanted to keep the original illustration, since a lot of people have complimented him on it. I adjusted the colors (the original was black on beige stock) and updated the type so that it looked cleaner and more up to date.

That's Life

2009-08-21T18:41:00.000-07:00

I got my books printed the other day. And OH MY GOD. I miss having unrestricted access to color laser printers. My wallet was weeping, it cost so much. The good thing is that they came out looking really great, so I'm excited to share them with everyone.

I went to email a contact at Baseline Development Group (one of the companies I really wanted to work for) last night about setting up a portfolio review. Last year I tried finding work with them, but even after a promising interview, things went down the tube with the economy and we all know what happened after that.

Five minutes after I sent the email, I got a response email saying that the address was invalid. I double checked the website, which as fate would have it, disappeared. Then I found their business card and, even though it was three in the morning, decided to give the number a call just to make sure they were still there. The number was no longer in use.

So, apparently, the company was eaten by the recession. "Great," I thought. I was bitter for about two seconds, and then I just kind of shrugged it off.

I feel like I've grown up a lot in the year since I've graduated. I didn't see last night as a personal defeat. I just kind of accepted that things happen, and that I'm ok when everything's not ok. Last year when I had trouble looking for work, I really flipped out and got really depressed. But in a way, I'm kind of glad that things happened the way they are. Waiting tables sucks, but I'm young. I'll live. There are other places to show my work. I just have to figure out where. Any suggestions?

Redo

2009-08-16T23:32:00.000-07:00

I'm been reworking the series I started a while ago. The Cinderella piece will ultimately go with these.

Dina Babbitt

2009-08-06T21:26:00.000-07:00

I opened the Globe this morning while I was at work and, quite randomly, I read that Dina Babbitt died a couple of days ago. I don't know if anyone else has heard of her, but she was an artist/animator who was the wife of Art Babbitt, another artist who worked on many classic Disney animated features, animating the Queen in "Snow White" and Gepetto in "Pinocchio." I first heard her story when I came across this:http://drawn.ca/2009/01/02/dina-babbitt/

Dina was a Czech-born Jew who was imprisoned at Auschwitz with her mother during WWII. While there, Dina painted a mural in the children's barracks (coincidentally of Disney's Snow White), and her talent caught the attention of Dr. Josef Mengele.

As everyone knows, Mengele had conducted brutal and dehumanizing experiments on the prisoners at Auschwitz. He was particularly interested in research on heredity. Mengele had used color photography to attempt to document his subjects, but given the quality of the film and the processing facilities they had, he could never reproduce the color of the patient's skin tones accurately. So Mengele called on Dina to paint portraits of Gypsies and other prisoners. In return, Dina was able to bargain that she and her mother would be saved from the gas chambers.

After the war ended Dina moved to Paris where she met Art Babbitt. The two got married, moved to L.A., worked at Warner Brothers together, had kids, etc.

Years later, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum somehow acquired Dina Babbitt's paintings, and in 1973, a curator managed to trace her signature and contacted her to inquire about the provenance of the work. Since then, Babbitt had been fighting to have her paintings restored to her. For almost forty years, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum has refused to relinquish ownership of the paintings, stating that artifacts proving Holocaust history should be in their original setting and that they were the property of the state.

When Dina Babbitt passed away, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum was still in possession of her paintings.

Reading that she had passed away without having her work returned to her disgusted and saddened me. I am HORRIFIED that anyone could be so blind and insensitive. The only thing Dina Babbitt had wanted was to be able to show her grandchildren her work and say, "This is how I fought. This is why I am alive. This is why you are here." I am so angry that the museum could not distinguish the difference between a paper record and the saving grace of a human being's life.

I wish Babbitt's family the best of luck as they continue her fight to obtain her recognition of ownership.

My Adventures

2009-08-05T18:00:00.000-07:00

I FINALLY finished painting this s.o.b. It was originally a freelance/school assignment for a publication called "Say Goodnight to Illiteracy." It was intended to accompany a poem called "My Adventures," and I really thought that I'd gotten the spread when the art director saw it given her reaction, but I lost out. I re-did the drawing to go into my portfolio, but I didn't finish painting it in time.

Here's the original for a side by side:

Cinders

2009-07-29T17:32:00.000-07:00

Cinderella Poster

2009-07-17T20:39:00.000-07:00

I'm beefing up my portfolio. This is a draft for an illustration I'm going to turn into an educational poster that will be designed to accompany the series of readers I'd mocked up a year ago, which I've also been re-vamping. All of the readers were really random folk tales that not many people knew, so I thought I'd try a story that was much more familiar for the poster.

Squid Lady

2009-07-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

Waking the Witch

2009-07-14T22:19:00.001-07:00

Red, red roses

Pinks, and posies

Bizness Card

2009-06-17T21:50:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to finishing off my sister's Birthday present. 15 days late. (I'm horrible.)

I knew that she really needed a decent business card for her freelance baking work. She orders these generic free ones with the printer's advertisement all over it, which just doesn't look all that professional. So I came up with these (front/back):

The reason why it took so long was because original idea sucked (Surprise!) and then I went on vacation (more on that later) and then I was just sort of exhausted. But I finally got into work mode today and completely started it over AND finished it. Go me!

Caitlin, if you're reading this, Happy belated Birthday. They'll be here in a week. And yes, I know that's not the right phone number; and yes, I fixed your email address. I'm just too lazy to save a new jpeg.

Sketches

2009-04-24T08:27:00.000-07:00

For "The Pink" by the Brothers Grimm
More coming later

Mail-ahs

2009-04-15T15:31:00.000-07:00

I got the "Sleeping Beauty" piece for the Dig printed as a postcard, and I just sent out a few today to some editorial-esque places. I ran out of stamps, so I didn't get to send all of them. And I still need to look for other magazines to send to, since I have 70 left. Any suggestions?

Lately, I've been planning on working on some comics with old friends. Real art coming soonish.

Non-sequitur: I'm growing Nasturtiums, Morning Glory, Marigolds, Columbine, and a mix of God knows what. (I don't like growing practical things. Although, you can eat the Nasturtiums. And technically the Morning Glory. If you're into hallucinogens.)

Old Work

2009-03-28T11:03:00.000-07:00

I was going through some old files, and I figured I'd post some work that I still really like, but hasn't seen the light of day in a while. First up is actually a form study project from freshman year of college. I had to illustrate one of my favorite books, Tolkien's "Silmarillion," as a sort of dream project. The only problem was that I had to do it in 3d. I ended up making a costume for the character Luthien. It's modeled by the lovely Emily, who fit's Tolkien's description perfectly.

Next is a piece for my Word and Image class. The assignment was to hide a letterform in a painting. If you squint, you can see that the gestures of all three Gorgons make the "G" for Gorgon.
Lastly, another piece from Word and Image. We had to do a poster about the concept of "spying." I wanted to do something more narrative, so I ended up doing a piece about Mata Hari, a Dutch courtesan who was (now we know wrongfully) convicted and sentenced to death as a spy during WWI. Incidentally, Mata Hari and I share the same birthday.

Marianne

2009-03-09T18:09:00.000-07:00

This is 2/3 of "Marianne," by Tori Amos. My piano started buzzing so the last part was sort of unusuable. She does that sometimes. And yes, not illustration, I know. But I've been meaning to sit down and play with the microphone that I recently got and I figured I'd share.

Didn't the White Rabbit call Alice Marianne?

Alice Linework

2009-03-05T11:20:00.001-08:00

After working at such a leisurely pace for so long, I've finally finished inking the cover for "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." I need to finish coloring it, and then I'll start mocking up the type in InDesign.

I've also been commissioned by a coworker to do a logo for her band. If things go well, it may lead to album art. They're opening for Amanda Palmer in a few months, so plenty of people will see it, which is pretty cool.

Illustration Domination

2009-02-24T20:47:00.005-08:00

One of my friends from college recently started a new blog at www.illustrationdomination.blogspot.com where my friends and I will come up with a prompt and then create work based on it. The first week's theme is "Creatures of the Deep," and the piece below was my contribution. I finished it in a few hours, and I have to say it was really fun to just work on something small and quick. I hope people really get inspired to do the work, because I'd really like to keep going with it.

Also, you should check out smorart.blogspot.com. My friend Sean painted the pen and ink piece I did of The Witches in photoshop, and it came out AWESOME!

The Queen of Hearts

2009-02-06T12:21:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm still plugging away at the Alice piece. Here's the sketch I started out with:

And here's a detail from the finish in progress (please pardon the blurriness):

In other news, I FINALLY got around to playing with a new skin for this blog. I don't know html, so I spent an entire night deleting lines of code to see what it did to the blog until I figured out what things meant and got what I wanted. I still want to make a few changes, but I'm happy with it for now.

Alice's Adventures in the Weekly Dig

2009-02-03T14:05:00.000-08:00

So my work ended up making the cover of the Dig! The monday before it came out, I had the ABSOLUTE worst day at work where I just kept screwing everything up. (I'm not really cut out for the restaurant business.) Then I came home to an email from the art director saying they wanted to use my piece, which totally made up for everything that had happened earlier.

When I saw it printed, I was surprised by how great it looked. I've heard that printing on newsprint is horrid, but I actually think the color came out closer to how I intended it than the first piece of mine that was published, which was printed on a nice coated and varnished paper.

They ended up cropping it a bit differently because they didn't use the little spot illustrations/photos at the top that they've been using recently, and so the cover image needed to be more square than rectangular. But it still came out nicely, as you can see below:

In other news, I've cleaned my room. Which means I've cleaned my studio. Which means I now have room to work again:

A little while ago, I'd done some sketches about Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I ended up turning it into a bookjacket, which I'm just starting now. Here's Alice and the Queen of Hearts, along with the sketch:

New Stuff

2008-12-18T11:23:00.000-08:00

I recently submitted this piece to the Weekly Dig, and I got a really great response from the creative director. Hopefully they can use it!

Barefoot

2008-10-23T21:25:00.000-07:00

I had a really nice interview with an art director at Barefoot Books on Monday. It seems like a really cool company that makes really beautiful books, and the woman was super friendly. She was very interested in my experiences as a young illustrator just starting out. Going in, I knew that they had a very specific aesthetic, and that only half of my work would fit with what they do. (She complimented me on the black and white stuff, but they're BIG on color and they'd never really be able to use it.) She flipped through my portfolio a couple of times, so she seemed to like it.

I should have included some of the Mother Hulda illustrations, since the book really fit into their color palette, but they're executed way more experimental than I normally like working. Plus, I ran out of time and I didn't really feel like spending money to print the pages.

In other news, I may be doing backgrounds for an animation. My first real freelance gig out of school!

Failed Experiment

2008-10-22T14:24:00.000-07:00

I played around with the linework for "The Witches" in photoshop, but it wasn't working out that well. I painted it traditionally, which came out interesting, but think I'm sort of giving up on this one for now.

Finished Linework

2008-10-14T17:15:00.000-07:00

Here they are:

New Stuff

2008-10-09T11:50:00.001-07:00

I've started a new piece which I'm thinking can be used for a postcard, if I can get it sent out by the end of the month. It's Fall, so the Witches are back. A few years ago, I made a book dummy about these three ladies, and every fall around this time, I'm suddenly inspired by them again. They just sort of swoop in, and leave before winter hits.

This is actually the second version of this piece, since I started one the other day, and then proceeded to pour watercolor all over it. Then I realized I was really rusty with traditional paint and that I had ruined it. It's actually a good thing, because even though I have only one character inked so far, I can already tell that my inking has loosened up and now has the same quality it had when I was working in school. I'll probably do the same digital watercolor technique over this as the book cover, and hopefully still achieve the Rackham/Dulac feel I was going for.

Finished Cover

2008-10-04T16:03:00.000-07:00

I just finished my redo of the Gray Mother Goose Cover. I haven't bound it yet, and I'll probably spend a little more time refining it. But now that I've got it mostly finished, I'm going to start working on a personal piece for a new postcard. I think I'm going to stick to pen and ink for this one, since it's what most people seem to really be responding to.

Popsop

2008-10-03T15:12:00.001-07:00

I was recently googling certain keywords to see if any of my work actually pops up. For example, if you google "Portuguese folk tale," there are three of my illustrations on the first page of images. But a funny thing happened when I entered "Baba Yaga" into the search engine. A copy of my piece showed up on a site I had no affiliation with.

Apparently, my illustration of Baba Yaga and the mock up of a tea box I did was featured on a packaging design website here: http://popsop.ru/russkij-folklor-v-dizajne-amerikanskogo-brenda/ It was in Russian, so I needed to translate it in order to figure out why my work was on this site. Apparently, they thought it was a real box! I'm sort of torn over how I should feel about it. Yeah, they used my work without my permission. But they did credit me, and they thought my homework was an actual printed box, which is kind of flattering. I don't know.

Goodness

2008-09-30T15:32:00.000-07:00

So all the hassle with the drop off was totally worth it. When I went to go and pick up my portfolio monday afternoon, an intern or junior designer came up to reception to give it back to me. She was really enthusiastic when she told me that everyone liked my work, especially the "scratchboard" (I really need to label it as pen and ink), and that the head of the department left a note in the cover. Her feedback was really great, and it sounded like she might have a project in the back of her mind for me. It's really inspiring me to start making new work again.

Anyway, here's an update on the Mother Goose Cover:

Middlemen are EVIL

2008-09-26T13:50:00.000-07:00

I finally made my first round of cold calls to children's publishers around the city to find out their portfolio drop off policies. In school, I was told that some places have particular hours or days that art directors will look at people's work. Since I REALLY want/need work, I figured it was time to really get my work out there.

One of the first places I called was Houghton Mifflin. I was told I could drop by any day in the morning and then pick my portfolio up in the afternoon. Since I had today off, I decided that I would spend my morning by dropping off my work.

When I get there, I'm greeted by a big scary security guard who tells me that Houghton Mifflin has a strict no drop off policy. "What?" "No drop offs. I can't allow you to go up." I explained that even though I hadn't made an appointment, the art director herself said I could drop off my portfolio. When I dropped the art director's name, he sort of mellowed out and let me up.

Then I get to the reception desk, where I'm greeted by a little person. I tell them I'm there to drop off my portfolio. "What?" "I was told I could drop it off in the morning and pick it up later." "You can't do that, I can't receive mail or packages of any sort at the front desk." I go through my spiel. He gives me the art director's extension to double-check the drop off policy. No answer. I call EVERYONE else in the trade department. No answer. I'm told to come back in a few hours.

I go back. Same thing happens. I get soaked in the rain and go home. I'm kind of angry, but on the way home, I stopped in at a whole bunch of stores and picked up job applications. So if I don't get something on the art side of the fence, maybe something on the other side will pick up?

I called the art director when I finally got home, and she was actually pretty livid when she heard what had happened. She told me to come back Monday morning and that she'd set the receptionist straight, which was cool. Hopefully Monday goes smoother.

2008-09-14T18:23:00.000-07:00

Trying to come up with new work when you're working 40 hours a week at a job that you hate is pretty frustrating, because you never come home in a creative, productive mood. It's very strange working at the school bookstore. I feel like I should have moved on by now, but I'm stuck at Mass Art. I hope I find something better soon.

Anyway, I did manage to pump out a few thumbnails for a small project I'm about to start. I had made a short book based on Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes my firs

t semester of senior year. The cover was just black book cloth, with a gray belly-band with the title printed on it. I'd like to make a proper cover for the book, something to make it stand out a little bit more. Here's a quick thumbnail that I was actually happy with:

And here's the sketch:

Updates

2008-09-01T17:15:00.001-07:00

Several months ago, I had a few interviews at a couple of young children's textbook publishers. Now that I have space to work, I've been reformatting some old stuff and making new work to create a mock-up series of books of "folktales from around the world," using the input I got during my interviews. Some are finished, some aren't, but here's a sample of what I have so far.

Summer

2008-07-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

My friends and I are having a group show early next month, and all of us are trying to get new work done. It was decided that the theme of the work would be "summer," which I wasn't crazy about. The only things I find interesting about summer are thunderstorms, so I went with that. And ladybugs. Anyway, It's about half done at this point I think. I can tell that I'm really rusty. This is only the second thing I've worked on since school ended. I may end up also showing the piece I did for Nina's birthday. I don't know what it has to do with summer, but it almost have a similar feel to this one.

Birthday Present

2008-06-21T13:34:00.001-07:00

Since school ended, I haven't been making a whole lot of artwork. But my friend's birthday was the other day, and I decided that I'd make something for her. She heard me playing some Tori Amos songs on the piano the other night, and said that she'd like to hear more of her work. So I burned her a bunch of CDs, and designed a case for them to go in.

The cover is actually based on a weird fever dream I had when I was really sick. First is the drawing, with some color and texture added in photoshop, plus some illustrator vectors thrown in there, too. Second is the finished piece. Lastly, there's the the final layout. The back of the cover feels a little bland and even though I've already given it to her, I might play around with it some more

First Post!

2008-06-10T17:50:00.000-07:00

Woohoo!