Extra! Extra!  I recently helped my dear old friends at the Dandy Dwarves with the production of a commercial for the Doritos ”Crash the Superbowl” annual competition. If you’re unaware of the competition, in short, Doritos has brilliantly found a way to convince thousands of people to submit ads for their company and pay them nothing- make it a fun competition! Doritos Co. sifts through the plethora of monotonous videos that are submitted  and pick five to be voted on by the public for the possibility of being aired during the Superbowl. This year I helped the dwarves board out the commercial (click here to see a small sample of the boards) and decided to lend an extra hand and join them in the production as well- just for kicks. Anyhoo, I made the final cut as an “extra” in the background. If you look closely at the picture you’ll take note that I’m the one on top of the bus, waving a suitcase wildly in the air!

Watch the final video here.

Considering my brief stint as an extra I thought I’d do a post to pay homage to all the extras in my illustrations. The following pictures highlight all those lowly extras that have appeared in my work, true they may not have been featured but they were essential to the piece as a whole! Some are really small, even comprised of just a few strokes of the pen nib others are larger and are in fact quite dynamic and detailed but were not the focal point of the drawing for whatever reason, but all of them are important on some level. Please enjoy!

This first one, incidentally WAS the featured figure in the illustration, but it was his action that was truly the focal point, not the figure himself… so he qualifies in my mind. I kind of liked the cropped image as a desktop image… if you concur you can right click and save the image here. This is a cropped portion of an illustration I did for Caribbean Travel and Life magazine- unfortunately the publisher decided to pull the article due to it’s controversial subject matter (eating whale soup).

This is from an older piece. These little characters probably consume no more than 5% of the entire illustration but I’ve always really enjoyed their presence nonetheless.

Taken from a sketchbook. This character was at the time symbolic of me feeling marooned on an island in paradise.

One of the pages from my most recent book Zarafa. The cropped image here is slightly less than a quarter of the total illustration. This book has so many crowd scenes that I could have easily pulled another ten images for the purposes of this entry… I recall reading the manuscript and asking the publisher if they were seeing it illustrated like a Where’s Waldo with hundreds if not thousands of people  page after page. Fortunately, they seemed like they wanted the scale to be slightly less chaotic.

Perhaps you recognize this little guy from another entry? I’ve always liked his elegant simplicity, just a few strokes and he tells his story.

And finally, I just finished this job yesterday for BNET and thought this hard working stiff fit the criteria for this news update. That’s it folks, y’all come back now, you here!

Check out the new issue of Saturday Evening Post. It has quite a lot of my work running rampant throughout it’s pages. On the interior is a six page spread with 12 spots of my caricatures supporting the cover story “12 Innovations That Changed Our World.” But the true piece de resistance is the cover, not due to any remarkably and skillfully executed illustrating, but namely due to the magazines historical ties to Norman Rockwell and J.C. Leyendecker.

It may be difficult to find the magazine on newsstands as it is primarily a subscription based print now. But if you do have the means go check it out! Otherwise, just go to their website and you can flip through the articles.

Sorry for the infrequency of posting. Hopefully, I’ll get back in to a comfortable stride of posting bi-monthly news items.

I did this job for Inside Housing magazine (UK distribution) The final print size was just 300 mm x 300 mm I ended up doing this piece much larger on the watercolor paper just for the sake of having more area to work on the details. I think the plus size scale on this one really allowed me to explore with the watercolor brush strokes and overall I’m very pleased with how this one turned out.

Go check out my new book Zarafa at your local bookstore. It was just released and may not be on the shelves just yet, so make sure they order a copy to be placed facing front in their children’s book section. Or if you’d prefer go here: Barnes and Noble website or here: Amazon. OR…. if you’ll be in the LA area on July 8th I will be doing a book signing at Every Picture Tells A Story in Santa Monica from 6:00 to 7:30 pm, mark your calendars. 

Zarafa is my third book done with Philomel and marks the second time working with the author Judith St. George. It’s a fun book, based on a true story, in which a lovable giraffe circa 1830 traveled from Northeastern Africa all the way up the Nile, crossed the Mediterranean, arrived in Southern France and walked 500 miles to Paris all to meet the king! Naturally, the giraffe makes a number of friends on the way and everyone who sees her falls in love. The following is a review from Kirkus: 

“Zarafa the giraffe first traveled on camelback, then by a small, creaky boat, then a tall ship and, finally, walked 550 miles on her own four hooves. Why would a giraffe ever do all of that? In 1824, Muhammad Ali, the viceroy of Egypt, decided to present King Charles X with a beautiful, exotic gift-a giraffe (in Arabic, zarafa means “charming” or “lovely one”). But Zarafa had to travel all the way from Egypt to France, with her lanky neck and knobby-kneed legs growing the entire time. In her trademark witty yet informational style, St. George relates this epic journey with a jaunty text and quick, parenthetical quips. Spencer easily captures this essence as his long-lashed giant happily lopes through the pages, much to the delight of adoring crowds. His gentle human caricatures and almost-but-not-quite anthropomorphized animals are playful, expressive and fun (an attendant cow’s seasickness is a particularly amusing detail). Thousands of visitors came to see Zarafa in France-no doubt many more will flock to this book.”

Here’s a couple interiors to peak your interest.

Bedbugs: The Perils and Misadventures of an Anxious Traveller was published recently. Author of the book Jonathan Hehir commissioned me and for the most part was my Art Director throughout the project. It was fun working with Jonathan because he was so personally connected with the book and he knew exactly what he wanted with very little ambiguity. Shipping the original to him, wasn’t quite as enjoyable… but that’s another story.

I’ve only read the first chapter, but it seemed like a very humorous book. So if you’re in the market for a dryly humorous novel, and you like books about traveling, and you want to own a Britt Spencer print, buy this book!

Cheers!

I hope you guys like anecdotal tales of torment and shame. 

I was asked by a preschool here in LA to come and read my book Fleas! for a charity benefit earlier this month. I thought to myself, hey what a fun and humanitarian thing for me to do. I’ll show up, read the book- everyone will love me for my selflessness, and lift me up on shoulders shouting Hoorah! Hoorah! 

So, I show up thinking that I’m going to do marvelously. After all, the kids will be so utterly in love with the book that simply reading it will make them frozen in anticipation of every syllable that rolls off my tongue. This was not the case, unfortunately. 

Instead, the moment I opened my mouth I lost control and the little crumb crunchers made sure I was aware that I had NO relevance in their lives what so ever. Between the chaos and through my monotone reading voice I could hardly think I was making an impact. A fact made very apparent by a kid requesting that perhaps I “read with a pie in my face.” In hindsight, that may have given them some fleeting moment of entertainment and truly would have been the best route to salvaging my integrity. (you know you’re in a rough spot when taking a pie to the face would actually raise your value) My feeble attempts at jazzing up the text with different voices wasn’t well received either. So much so, that by the end I was just paraphrasing in extreme short hand, “And then he went here and everyone was happy…” turn page, ” …and then he left and all the characters were sad, but you know things worked out anyway…” turn page.

Finally I closed the book and the parents politely clapped - naturally the children continued their chaos uninterrupted. Before I could high-tail it out of there I grabbed a couple of the complimentary cheese and crackers and was approached by a sadist that informed me of how well my performance went.

Never again!

Recently completed this job for the College of Charleston’s alumni magazine. The article titled, “The Darkside of Leadership” explores the tendency for some leaders to abuse their power and lead their flock in a wayward direction. I was fighting hard not to go a Star Wars route on this one. Fortunately, for the College of Charleston’s Alumni, none of my Star Wars sketches turned out and I decide against sending such foolishness. Out of the several sketches I sent, this one was picked:

I cleaned up the sketch and submitted this for their approval:

After doing the tighter sketch I really started getting a duoshade itch. If you recall from an earlier posting, here. I thought the drawing would lend itself  perfectly towards an older pulp comic look so I asked the AD, Alfred Hall if he wouldn’t mind me trying something slightly different than my usual watercolor and ink. Seemingly open to the idea, Alfred gave me the go ahead and I got the final ink done on the duoshade. 

Keeping pulp comics in mind, (and keeping in mind, I’ve never actually read a comic book in my life- so it wasn’t likely that my idea of a pulp comic is at all historically accurate) I wanted to use a limited number of colors and attempt to mimic a rudimentary printing process. I ended up only using three colors and a scanned texture of an old sheet of paper for the final.

Thanks Alfred.

A tad late on posting this Groundhog’s Day image… but better late than never… and if you’re living in California you know the Groundhog was full of it anyway. It was beautiful the day he saw his shadow, it was beautiful the day after and it continues being beautiful now. So take this image with a grain of salt. It was used as the cover image for Euromoney Magazine in February and like many of my jobs I will never see it in print. Perhaps one day I’ll take a trip to Europe and actually see some of my work on the newsstands. Until then though, i’ll just assume I’m wildly popular and that the french call me Le Poopie. Test your world knowledge or rather my ability to draw, can you name all of the figures? 

Welcome all.

Thanks for all the comments I received last week, folks. It makes the process of posting far more appealing when I have some measurable feedback. It’s just the type of reinforcement an idle person such as myself needs to get up and post.  I’ll try and respond to any questions I am asked in regards to my posts in a timely manner, so make sure to check back consistently. 

I’ve been asked a number of times whether or not I believe drawing is something that you have to be naturally inclined towards or if it is something acquired through years of practice. Rather than trying to answer your question through reason or endless prose I thought I’d just show you some of my work from years gone by and let you be the judge. Natural talent from day one or have I worked on a few things?

First up,  we have this clever little drawing of a baboon with a bright-pink, very inviting caboose. Clearly my observation skills were finely tuned even at a young age.

The male nude has always been a staple in my portfolio. Unfortunately, much like the content of my work not much has changed anatomically either.

I apparently needed Mickey in flight to pull this composition together. I think it’s fair to say this piece pre-dates the pop-surrealist movement, but hey, I’m not looking to get accolades… just saying…

Some more pop-culture influence.

…and another. I REALLY liked Star Wars. Too bad I didn’t care as much for symmetry. 

Of course, as most young boys were, I loved me some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and depicted their various stories not yet told by FOX. Note the singular bone sticking out of the beheaded footclan soldier, more like a drumstick than a vertebrae… admittedly in elementary school I wasn’t the most scholarly student.

This is what the majority of my sketchbooks looked like  in 3rd grade. I’ll have to reserve another post for just these drawings. They’re pretty fun to look at. Well, to me, at least.

I’m jonesing to put some of my high-school rubbish on here. It’s laden with confusing philosophies and sophomoric perspectives on life. I think I read “A Brave New World” and reacted in a way only a high school boy could have… by drawing pictures of fetuses in jars and superimposed cliched images of WWII imagery… what a jackass. To the future!!!

I recently stumbled upon some duoshade paper by Grafix. I had only heard about it’s usage through the grapevine, and I had only seen examples of it in the form of small jpegs. Unfortunately the jpegs didn’t give me a good understanding of it’s purpose in the least. Furthermore, It doesn’t appear there are many tutorials, if any, that I could find. So, I figured I could just go out and get the paper myself and give a little tutorial of my own… too bad I’m an awful writer and an even poorer documentarian. Nevertheless… try and enjoy.

I first heard of duoshade when looking in to the techniques of some editorial cartoonists. I had read that cartoonist Michael Ramirez used duoshade to quickly establish areas of hatching and cross-hatching. “What?”, Said I. So I googled Duoshade by Grafix and found very little information in regards to explaining what duoshade does. Even Grafix’s website does very little in helping a consumer understand what the product actually does. All things considered, I gather that duoshade might be on it’s way out, as it would appear no one cares about it anymore. I decided to special order a sheet from a local art store. Carter Sexton to be exact… if anyone is interested. 

Eventually the duoshade paper arrived. It has a surface very similar to bristol paper- smooth and slick. Below, my hand showcases the Duoshade by Grafix. (Excuse the quality of the pictures, i took them on the fly with no concern for lighting) The paper I got was 23 2. Which means 23 lines per inch and the other 2 is for Duoshade. You can get the lines in varying sizes and frequency and even in dots, though the dots don’t come in the Duoshade only in the Unishade. 

I did a quick ink drawing… why not a cowboy?

Then I broke out the Duoshade “Light Tone: Developer No. 1″ 

The developer goes on with a paintbrush and allows the hatch marks beneath the surface of the Duoshade to suddenly appear. It’s instant and easy. You simply apply the solution where you want hatch marks it took me maybe two minutes to get to the stage you see below.

If you look closely at the surface you can see how the hatch marks are actually everywhere on the sheet but only made more apparent once the developer is applied. 

Next I used the “Dark Tone: Developer No. 2″ 

Again, it was a very quick process and extremely easy to spread. Look below. 

and a close up…

It does appear that there is some slight variation in the color and tone of the lines in parts, some areas come across as gray whereas others seem to have a sepia tone. It makes the original quite pleasing to look at, not so monochromatic throughout but perhaps not so useful if you need it to be printed cleanly and black and white. BUT it photocopies extremely well and only reproduces in a nice evenly toned gray! Overall, whether this product is here to stay or if it’s on it’s way out I had a lot of fun using it and I thoroughly enjoyed hatching at wash speeds.

Here is the final, adjusted slightly in photoshop. The very first banner image is the same file put against vintage paper. Comments are welcomed.