Origins of Violence | Entertaining Dissonance

Beginning work on a short series of four pieces, concerning violent behavior and where it stems from. Each piece will be focus on a different argument. Of course, there are plenty of grey areas, so there will be some overlap here and there. "Entertaining Dissonance" represents the controversy of violence growing from the media all around us. People have pointed the finger of blame to TV, movies, music, video games you name it. One down, three more to go. I'll post them as soon as they're done- one by one. 

Along with the illustration- I've been playing around a bit with GIFs so here it is animated!

Animated GIF

Linework

Homo Ferus | The Earth Mother

4th Image for the Homo Ferus Series- many more in the future. As always, I'm trying to push the atmosphere in my work. Keep that cell shading while adding some painterly aspects in there as well. I'm a man without a country- in love with graphic and bold- but at the same time, in love with foggy and blurry. Something that just flat colors can't quite capture. Short post today. Working on a few projects at the moment- some of them will hopefully make their appearance here soon.

FrogFolio | The Storyteller

Illustration done for the FrogFolio calendar produced by Della Graphics. Every year, the calendar features some of the best illustrators working today. You can imagine how honored and shocked I was when the Art Director, Jim Burke, asked me to be a part of it. The only rule is that it involves frogs in some way.

After playing around with fables and fairy tales like the Frog Prince, I came across these wooden Frog masks from Bali. I've always had this weird obsession for older cultures around with world that have such different aesthetics from ours. I fell in love with the mask the second I laid eyes on it. From that mask, the idea began to grow into the person wearing it and eventually became just one piece in this traveler's wardrobe- picking up trinkets from each place they visit, carrying on stories from one destination to the next. 

There's items from China, Japan, Morocco, Africa, with others from as far as England and Ireland. 

Also, the characters on his robe are Anglo-Frisian runes for "Once Upon A Time. Or at least I think it is. It could be something like "Oncy Ipnh E Bime" or "My Feet Smell Bad"

Also, big news- I've started working on a comic book with a good friend of mine. 

Still in the writing stages but I'll be posting more later on. More coming soon. 

Linework

Thumbnails and Sketches

SI Happy Hour

 

With recent events coming up, Kate Feirtag, the Society of Illustrators Exhibition Director, wanted to incorporate more illustration into the event fliers. Makes sense, right? I got dibs on taking care of the poster for Happy Hour. First idea was to run with kind of an Art Deco approach- in particular, the Empire State Building in all of its glory. We later decided, however, that it was a bit too quiet for what we were looking for. Back to the drawing board. Going with something a little more literal, I came up with some new sketches and got the go ahead on the first. It's just like me to go with a flower as ridiculously detailed as chrysanthemums.  Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, I guess.

Original Idea for Happy Hour Poster

Second run of sketches

New Poster Without Text

Linework

Happy Hour is happening at the Society of Illustrators on June 20th from 4-8. Every one should stop by to say hello! Along with my flier, Tara Jacoby illustrated the poster for the Society's Cabaret Night, which you can and should check out here. 

In other news, I've been trying to figure out what the difference between my blog and tumblr will be. I'm going to try my best to keep them different (with the exception of big finals, which I'll post on both) so be sure to follow each one. I figure I'll tend to write more about the work and my thought process here, while post more smaller things like my instagram sketches on tumblr. We'll see, it's still up in the air. More coming soon.

Tumblr

For those stopping by, I just started a tumblr for my work as well. Why don't you head on over and follow me. It would make my day, that's for sure. http://johnnydombrowski.tumblr.com/

Snake Eyes

Here's an illustration I recently finished for Golf Digest. It was for their "Hungover Caddie" section about how to tell if your caddie has some money riding on you. Something that's really frowned upon and mostly kept quiet. We went with the sketch below, but my Art Director, Riva Schwartz wanted to add a bit more of a gambling feel to it. We thought it would be a cool idea to throw the ace in there along with a pair of dice. Good ol' snake eyes, of course. 

Thanks to Riva for the fun job! I'm very happy with how it came out. I'll be posting more soon.

Insta

Every once in a while, I'll have late night sketch fits with drying out brush pens- like I did tonight. Though I don't tend to post them on here, I thought I'd throw up a batch for everyone to check out. I do, however, always post them on my twitter through instagram. If you don't follow me on one or the other... you should!

Both my Twitter and Instagram handles are jdombrowski

The Sounds of Rapture

An Illustration I did a while ago for KillScreen Magazine- and never got around to posting it. For an article about the sound design of the Bioshock franchise.

Big thanks to AD Keenan Cummings for the job!

Herald

I've been rather busy lately- all with work I can't show you at the moment, so I apologize for not posting as much as I'd like. At any rate, here's a new illustration I recently finished. I wanted to draw a knight... so I did. Simple as that.

As you can probably tell, I've been trying to experiment to see how far I can push my linework/coloring. While I do love the look of a crisp outline, I'm trying more and more to evoke a certain atmosphere in my illustrations. I think that's always been a focus for me. Creating a strange hybrid between line and something more painterly.

Linework

Not sure just yet what I'm going to work on next. I've had a comic book craving lately. but we'll see. More later.