King of the North

Hey everyone.  It's been a long time.  A lots changed over here. Some big life stuff.  Moved to Greenpoint, got a job as the art department coordinator at Scholastic.  It's been a really amazing year. However, during this time of transition my illustration work was put on hold... but fear not for I have returned better than ever.  And I come baring gifts.

Below are some really fun Game of Thrones illustrations I got to do for Vulture.com.  Here is a link to their page with a great little write up tying together my concept with the start of season two of the amazing HBO show. It's been a blast working with their art directors and I'll be pitching some new ideas to them soon, so be sure to keep an eye out for more fun pop culture related stuff.

Two point O

Version 2.0 of www.STEVEPONZO.com is finally here!

It's bigger. It's better. It's filled with new artwork for everyone to enjoy and there will be plenty more on the way.

A huge thanks must go out to the great Tim Cohan for his brilliance and patience working on the site with me.

So please take a look around and let us know what you think.

Children's Book: 3rd Full Color Page

Here is the final full-color page from "Peanut Butter and Ellie." All the drawings are finished and I plan to post some of the sketches soon. The book dummy will be fully completed after one last re-write, which I should finish up in a day or so. Then, hopefully this bad boy gets picked up and you'll have a full 32 pages of pure puppy enjoyment sitting on your book shelves. Fingers crossed.







currently reading: "Werewolves of Montpellier" by Jason
currently listening to: Ugly Casanova- "180 South OST"

Landscapes and Scenery

Quick interlude from the book dummy (which will be done this weekend and sketches will be posted shortly thereafter).

I was looking through an old sketchbook and came across these pages that I really enjoyed.







currently reading: "Birchfield Close" by Jon McNaught
currently listening to: Black Keys - "Brothers"

Children's Book: 2 full color finishes

The "Peanut Butter and Ellie" book dummy is officially under way. I opted to start at the beginning and worked up to completion the first spread in the book. You might recognize the figures in this drawing. I had drawn them up a while back and used them on a little promo piece which I posted a few weeks back. I had always planned on using the image as part of the book so I worked up an environment, and now its finally complete.


The other full color page I wanted to do was a single page image that really stood out from the rest of my original thumbnails. It's a scene after Ellie makes a mess in the house and Peanut Butter has to throw Ellie in the tub. This takes place right after she is dropped in and PB reprimands her. I think its a really pivotal scene in the book and was a great choice for a finish.


I now have seven days to get the rest of the pages up to respectable sketch quality. Some are going to be tighter than others, but on my shortened time table it will have to do.

I hope you like the work so far. Let me know what you think.



currently (re)reading: "Hellboy: Conqueror Worm" by Mike Mignola
currently listening to: Menomena- "Mines"

Children's Book: thumbnails

Hey everyone. I recently began production on my first children's book. I've decided to work up a story for a drawing I posted a while back entitled "Peanut Butter and Ellie."

First I laid out the entire book and created thumbnails for each page.



Since this first round of sketches I've tweak some things here and there, moved some images around, added a few pages and then cut some others to make it all fit just right.

In the next two weeks, I will be creating 1 - 2 finished color spread and I'm shooting to have the other 30 pages done as fairly tight sketches. I have A LOT of work ahead of me, but I'll make it happen.

On June 12th I have a meeting set up with a BIG publisher, so these coming weeks will be filled with non-stop drawing, very little sleep and a lot of excitement. I'll be posting a few sketches and the finished full color piece as soon as I complete them so keep checking back.


currently reading: "Hellboy: The Wild Hunt" by Mignola and Fegredo
currently listening to: Tokyo Police Club- "Champ"

Fowl excuses

- Alice Update: Ugh... usual excuses, I got busy, it got side tracked.

The sketch above is what I was working on recently for the piece. Actually, this is an older and way rougher sketch I did. I seemed to have misplaced my more recent drawings. These are the characters from the caucus race. I was trying to combine them with the pool of tears scene. I put a lot of time into the characters and I really liked everything I came up with, but in the end they weren't working for where I wanted to fit them in this odd visual narrative. I'm going to see if I can rework them and move them to another area of the piece, but I'm going to push that until after I finish up everything else.

Up next is attempt five on the cheshire cat. After that I have to throw a mouse into the water, and then all that's left to do is wake Alice up from her sleep beneath the tree.

- One of my drawings was posted on the awesome website Yay!Everyday. Be sure to look around, there is a ton of great stuff.

- At work we just got started on our fourth children's book. Should be a hectic, yet really enjoyable few months to come.

- Recently, I've been spending a lot of time job hunting. I'm currently re-working my resume for the billionth time. Lets hope that all pans out so I can focus more of my free time on the drawing table instead of on cover letters. I promise more frequent posts are coming. I'm in the process of scanning another batch of figure drawings, so check back soon for those.

currently reading: "Bottemless Belly Button" by Dash Shaw

currently listening to: Matt Pond PA- "The Dark Leaves"

The Last Board Room

When I was looking through some of my old work I came across this piece. I feel like this was a turning point in my style. I still really like how it turned out, but it wasn't living up to the standards of now. So, instead of redrawing the whole thing, or even just doing a version with cleaner lines (which I will do at some point), I opted to just change up the color scheme a bit. I think it gives it new life. I like looking at it a lot more now. The thumbnail version holds up better than the close up since you cant see my unrefined line work but again... i think its got something.

currently reading: "Gray Horses" by Hope Larson

currently listening to: Jason Lytle- "Yours Truly, The Commuter"

awww

This was a little something I drew up for my girlfriend. I'm slowly but surely putting together a collection of one off illustrations from our years together. This one was the first night I spent at her place, and the "songs from under the covers" was the name of the mix cd I had made her. The mix is a lost art but I must admit, I'm pretty awesome at it.

In other news I'm still hard at work on "Alice." I reworked some colors, and made huge progress on the water, and I'm a few more working hours away from finishing up the four characters from the "pool of tears" section, the dodo, lory, eaglet and duck (who are all metaphors for the four people on the boat trip where Dodgson first told the tale of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland).

currently reading: "Mesmo Delivery" by Rafael Grampa

currently listening to: Rocky Votalato- "True Devotion"

quick update

I'm back from my ski trip to Colorado and I'm still in one piece. I'm eager to get back to finishing up Alice but I recently I've been flowing with ideas for my graphic novel. So I'm taking a few days to do some research and writing and character doodles. Alice is taking a quick breather but I'm hoping to get some work done on her this weekend and if not 100% getting stuff done next week.

2/5 update: earlier this week I managed to get myself some tennis elbow sans the tennis part. I think I got it from a plethora of jui jitsu classes, so.... jui jitsu elbow? Either way for a few days it was kinda difficult to hold a pencil for a prolonged period of time. So this has hindered my drawing progress to say the least. But today it feels pretty ok and I'm hoping by tomorrow I can get some work done. Weird injury, I don't recommend it.

Alice teaser

I'm heading off to Colorado for about two weeks for some amazing skiing, but before I left I wanted to leave everyone with a little teaser image for my magnum opus of my 11ft Alice in Wonderland image I've been working on and not working on forever.

I didn't want to give too much away, but you can definitely make out some hints of characters. The Mock Turtle was the most recently completed character so i thought I'd make an "in progress" version of him front and center for everyone to get excited about.

I promise this will be done soon. Although I did once again scrap my Cheshire Cat. Take four on him. The only other characters left to finalize are from the pool of tears scene and then the big kicker finale scene to bring it all home. Now that I'm typing this it seems like I have more work to do than I thought, but its coming along quickly these days. Shouldn't be much longer now.

currently reading: "Essex County" by Jeff Lemire

currently listening to: Spoon- "Transference"

Introducing...

Above is the first piece I've done of my children's book characters Peanut Butter and Ellie. I felt i needed something solid before the idea would start coming along at a faster rate than it is.

I've had this title and a basic idea of a plot floating around in my head for a while, I had the moral, i had Ellie's character in mind and even a rougher version drawn up, but it wasnt until i sat down recently and drew up a design for Peanut Butter title that the story started to solidify in my mind.

I've been taking notes, and making thumbnails trying to let the story grow out of the sketches in a natural way. I'm letting the drawings tell me what they want. I'm really excited about this project. It's going to be a long term thing, but I couldn't wait to introduce everyone to the pups.

currently reading: "Paradiso" by Marcus Sanders & Sandow Birk

currently listening to: Built to Spill- "There is No Enemy"

Merry Winter

It's Santa's birthday! merry christmas everyone.

I hope everyone is having a happy holiday season. Here is my little gift to everyone. Enjoy!

currently reading: "Punisher Max" by Garth Ennis

currently listening to: Eels- "End Times"

Design Portfolio

The Bell House part 3

Here is the final piece. I like painting leaves, can you tell? I had fun working on it, but I dont foresee doing another house portrait any time soon.

The color is a bit off and its not totally in focus because I'm dumb and forgot to scan the finish before I gifted it out. This is a quick picture I shot of it with some minor photoshopping. I think it does it justice though.

Until next time folks... happy a few days after Thanksgiving.

currently reading: "Purgatorio" by Marcus Sanders & Sandow Birk

currently listening to: Robbers- "Flesh"

The Bell House part 2

Here is the work in progress. I laid in all the flat colors except for the tree trunks, I kinda ran out of brown paint at the moment.

Details still to come in; the grass, window shades, chimney, roof, shingles, tree bark and lots and lots of leaves.

currently reading: "Thor" by JMS and Oliver Coipel

currently listening to: John Nolan- "Height"

The Bell House part 1

A while back I was asked by a family member to do the obligatory "hey you're an artist can you draw me a picture of my house?" thing. I kinda put it off for WAY too long, but i figured I'd crank it out this week and surprise my aunt with her masterpiece at thanksgiving.

I drew up a sketch of the house, simplified it to contours and then i transferred it to this great handmade paper.

I know that at the moment it doesn't look like much but I promise once I put my brush to the paper it'll liven up quite a bit.

Monday or Tuesday I'll be posting the image with all the flat color laid in and after that I'll take the next few days to add in the details and I'll share the final with you then.

currently reading: "Inferno" by Marcus Sanders and Sandow Birk

currently listening to: Manchester Orchestra- "Mean Everything to Nothing"

Cheshire Cat take two

A few months back, before I got all distracted by life, I mentioned I was working on an Alice in Wonderland jumbo piece. I showed you an alternate version of the white rabbit and a terrible terrible sketch of the Cheshire Cat. Well, I finally got back around to working on it and first thing I wanted to do was show you my new and improved cat. It looks strikingly similar to the creepy cat that is currently living under my deck and scaring the hell out of my dog.

I'm currently fighting myself on the best way to get from the caterpillar to the tea party. I keep thinking I have it right then I get mad and tweak it a bit. Regardless, that should be done within a day or so and then after that i'll be about 2/3 of the way complete (just so you dont think I'm the slowest artist ever, this piece is is currently over 11 ft long and it basically tries to kill my computer from the inside out). So yah, its big, but it will be finished soon. I'm shooting for the end of the month. Left on the checklist is the mock turtle, some waves, and a tree, oh and then i'll probably go all ocd on the piece and clean up everything like a nut case.

currently reading: "Paper Biscuit" by Ronnie Del Carmen

currently listening to: Monsters of Folk- "S/T"

Ellie

I kinda took the summer off from producing work and spent most of my time thumb nailing ideas, creating concepts and began working out a few graphic novel and children's book ideas. Then I had some router issues, a scanner dilemma, an agent fiasco, a fruitless job hunt and hundreds of other things that really shouldn't have distracted me but alas... I'm back now.

Over the next couple days I'm going to just throw a few things at you from some of the different avenues I've been exploring.

First up, this is the main character for a children's book I'm in the early early stages of. Basically, I have the best title ever and a few character designs. Not really what you'd call a book just yet, but it will be.

This is Ellie.

She is a straight up caricature of mine and my girlfriend's crazy little lady. She will be getting into some sort of adventure or trouble... or ... other story idea.

I was originally going to use this character (or one similar) for one of my graphic novels, I still may I'm not 100% sure which story is which just yet. I started with a longer form comic idea and then a children's book idea popped into my head and I've been ironing things out ever since. There's a lot of back in forth in my head. I think the beagle graphic novel still needs to be told... but i think it'll have to be a little less cute.

Just to give you a quick walk through of my thought process...ahem... graphic novel about a dog, a dog in a forest, hundreds of other character ideas, no plot, some semblance of a plot, a shadow monster, OH great children's book idea about two dogs, do that instead, no plot, thoughts about what a children's book should be, what's the message?, what's the lesson?, back to thinking about the graphic novel, kinda got a great idea working its way out, then out of left field... what if i change the dog to a person, still in a forest, there are creatures with no eyes, and all sorts of religious allegory... and so on. Basically I have three crazy stories from one idea and i cant keep it all straight. ugh.

Oh well, until I sort out some of this insanity I'd like you to meet the real Ellie.

currently reading: "Preacher" by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon

currently listening to: Brand New- "Daisy"

Business cards from yester year

Hey folks, I made it home alive from my cross country trip and now I'm shaking off the rust and getting back to the drawing board.  I've worked a bit on the Alice in Wonderland piece but that I'm taking my time on that one, lots of fun reference and lots of planning it all out.  My baseball drawings are underway as well.  I started with CC Sabathia and its coming along, I hit some speed bumps but I'm ironing them out.  I need to stop just jumping into finishes without really planning out the page.  I tend to do that a lot with personal pieces and its dumb.  Always thumbnail kids.

I'm also tinkering around with a cd review illustrations for the new Eels album (which is amazing) and while I was doodling  I came up with a cool Counting Crows idea, so I figure I'll work those up at the same time and fingers crossed things work out.  I'm thinking I'm going to try and be a bit looser with those, maybe even get away from the digital coloring.

Since I dont have much new stuff to show you at the moment, I figured I'd post some old business card designs I did a while back. The first two are for a friend's upstart company, I wasn't sure which version I liked better so I posted both.  The last card was for a bed and breakfast ran by folks with the last name Coffey, so I went with a coffee theme GET IT?! Graphic design and I aren't the best of friends but I'd say we're buddies. 

Also, be sure to keep checking Peculiar Bliss for some random little doodles from me and a slew of other great artistic minds.  I wont be double posting anything, so what you see here wont be there and vice versa.  Double the fun.

currently reading: "Bone" by Jeff Smith

currently listening to: Eels- "Hombre Lobo"