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.

No Man's Land

Image with Pulp magazine Adventure logo

Earlier this year, for about two months, the Society of Illustrators had an exhibit of Robert Lesser's Pulp Art collection. To this day, it's the one show that really stood out to me while working there. I was amazed by these oil paintings- quickly slapped down by artists like HJ Ward, Norman Saunders, Rafael De Soto, etc. And despite some reviews here and there I've read about the work, I think the craftmanship is remarkable. Sure, they are a bit rushed, but they had to be in order to survive in that line of work. Ever since that show I've been wanting do something along those lines.

Doing a Damsel in Distress/ Femme Fatale on the cover only seemed right. At the same time, to go in with my heavy blacks and leave them with the job of defining shadows in this creepy jungle. Despite the lure of a sexy figure, that trail can't lead to anything good.

Final image without text

Initial thumbs and reference from my sketchbook

Pencil sketches under a layer of inked tracing paper

Linework

Also, don't ask me why, but after inking this, I realized those two bird have appeared in drawings of mine before. I can't help it. I like those two birds.

Speaking of birds, Happy Thanksgiving! Hope everyone has a nice week. I'll be in touch.

The New Gold Rush

Here's a new illustration I did for a recent issue of Penthouse. It was for an interesting article about 20-30 year olds going back up in to the mountains above LA to pan for gold just like the 49ers use to. With the economic crisis we've been in, people are willing to try anything to get some extra money. I, personally, think it's an awesome idea.

Big thanks to Art Director John Faraci

Sketch

Layout

Backpacker | Gone Astray

Here's another illustration I did for Backpacker's Survival Quiz. This issue's theme was the risk of becoming lost in the wild.

Layout

Big thanks again to Jackie McCaffrey for the awesome Art Direction!