elections on April's fool's day or May 1st, that is the question

This is my illustration for the POLITICS column of Dimitris Mitropoulos in STATUS magazine. Left parties want the elections close to May 1st, to win some of the feelings connected to that day, and right wing parties do not want that, so they prefer the date closer to April 1st.

Bjork

For caricature showdown 3000

Moebius 3D caricature

Lately I had more time so I tried myself in sculpting. This one is for Caricaturama Showdown

Novak Number One

This is the portrait of Novak Djokovic, tennis player from Serbia, ranked number one on the ATP list.

I made a sketch for the type first, some late night while watching one of his matches. The portrait came afterwards.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Status magazine illustrations

Renault Twingo Poster

I was asked by the Sense Ad Agency to make this image for the Advertising poster of the local dealer of Renault cars. I took the photo of the car (the car was white) and retouched it, adding the leaves, butterflies, and notes.
Not something I usually do, but I accepted the job... It's a (crying) crisis time again...

Chanel Purse - Vogue illustration

This illustration and lettering were made for the section Accessories - Shoes & Bags of VOGUE Greece.

Life & Style Magazine portraits

Section pages for the magazine Nyfi (Bride)

Here are 3 of several pages I made for the magazine about weddings - Nyfi (Bride)

I made the illustrations and lettering, all digital work.

Saint Obama To Save the World

STATUS magazine illustration.

Calligraphy sample

This calligraphy was done for the book of poetry for children "Decije oci", by Jovica Djurdjic.

Both cyrilic and latin letters were used here. The whole image is a mess of all the titles of poems from the book. I made it by hand in brown watercolor and changed the colors in my computer.

Perfeksion Garantee by Mitsos

Magazine "Mastoremata".
One of the magazines for the handy men. Full of good advices and ideas...
The article with advices for people who are about to build their house. It says that people tend to buy expensive materials and try to save on the craftsman using the cheapest one, like my hero, named Mitsos. Mitsos is friendly, knows everything, and the result is perfeksion, like his teeth!
I like the sketch more then the final version, I did it with a cheap ballpoint, recently I learned to like that tool.

James Bond Political Soup

This is the last illustration from this month's issue of magazine STATUS I'll show here. I made one more, but I am afraid this may be boring...

Afterwards I learned that this illustration won me a merrit at the EVGE awards for editorial illustration.

James Bond x 4

Half recycled, half new.
This illustration and the 4 previous ones here were done in 3 days. Not much time to think and try different things...Each of the figures were done at least 2 times...I'd say I was productive.

James Bond - Daniel Craig style

New James Bond, Daniel Craig. Watercolor, manipulated digitally. The Version on the right with blue colors, except for the skin. I was not sure which one I liked more, so I let them decide. I'll find out in a day or two, when the magazine comes out which one they liked.

James Bond - Pierce Brosnan

Half new, half recycled. If you see down on older posts you may see the left half of this illustration.

James Bond - Roger Moore Style

Different actor, different style. While doing a research for this series of illustrations I learned few unimportant things. Roger Moore said he was the worst of all Bonds.

He seems like a nice guy.

watercolor illustration manipulated (a bit) digitally

James Bond - Sean Connery style.

Magazine Status asked me to make several illustrations for the next issue. I just finished the last one, and here is one of them. Different actors gave different look for the character of James Bond. This is Connery Bond.

I did it with watercolors and manipulated it a bit digitally.

Mr. Hristoforako’s Portrait Story

I was assigned by the magazine “Life & Style” to make a portrait of Mr. Hristoforakos for an article about the Siemens scandal. I made severals sketches with different concepts, and finally the concept with big pockets was chosen.
Most of the times I make my sketches on paper, this one was a digital drawing.






I came to an idea to do this illustration the unusual way. I printed the digital sketch light on 2 watercolor papers. While waiting for one to dry, I’d work on the other one, and use the one I like more.


I scanned both papers, and when I put one in a layer on top the other in the multiply mode, I liked the result.




After some color adjustments and a little retouching on the eyes I sent it to the art director, to show him this stage, with the idea to work a bit more on the hands and few other details, but it was decided to go as is!





I may do it for myself later on, but I am happy with the result…

Click on the image to see it bigger

One more portrait, one more kidnapping, one more ransom payed…

Mr. Mylonas was seized at gunpoint from his car outside his home in Thessaloniki. The ransom was payed and he was released."For me it was a bad experience," Mylonas said. "But, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

The brief was to show him relaxed, as if nothing serious happened to him. The magazine is Life&Style. Digital illustration

Vladimir Putin - The Silent One

This is an uncomissioned portrait - caricature of Vladimir Putin. I wanted to emphasize his strength and peace.

Mr Putin is a Judo master, wearing a black belt.

...few days later: One friend just sent me an e-mail telling me that he FEELS DIZZY when looking at this, as with all the images when the distortion is made by some digital tool. I made this caricature drawing it the usual way when I work digitally, using my Wacom tablet, but, at the end, I wanted to see it distorted even more and used the warp tool in photoshop. This is that version, so my friend is right! Anybody else feeling dizzy watching this? I am really curious!

And her's a close-up.

Court Illustration

It was the trial of the century in Greece. I was one of the illustrators there, ALTER TV station hired me, because the cameras were not allowed in.

It was an interesting expirience. This is one of the illustrations I did. Mr.Kufodinas had a speech that day...

Kastoriadis Portrait

One more portrait I made using the same technique as the previous one.

Alexis Tsipras Portrait

I did not upload for a while.

This is an uncomissioned portrait of a young politician, I made him look even younger, intentionally.

Photoshop

A close up of a slightly different version, to see the brushstrokes, and a photo.

Black House or Pink House, what is it going to be?

First black candidate or first woman candidate for US president.

Status magazine, digital ilustration

Vaggelis Vekios, drummer, for the magazine GALERA

This is the story. They called me up from the magazine for the portrait with the interview with Vaggelis Vekios. I do not know of him, but he is famous drummer in Greece. They send me few portrait photographs and the interview. No usable key words in the text. No photograph of the man playing. Deadline- 2 days. What should I do to make it interesting? Make his portrait on a drum? No. Try to make him playing the instrument using some other musician's photo as a reference? - But what if he has some characteristic style of playing - holding the sticks - that I do not know about? ...Finally, I remembered the red calligraphic image I made previously. These unreadable letters do create a sense o0f rhythm and red is energy... Here's the final result.

And here are the stages and variations. Making copy of stages of work and making an animation of it usually produces nice results.

Calligraphy x 3 - Latin letters, Greek Alphabeth, and Cyrillic

The word Calligraphy written in 3 languages. I am familiar with all of these...and it creates a mess in my head, as on this image...as I said, I am an immigrant...

Pen on paper and playing with it in photoshop afterwards.

Ideal Male

Illustration for the Esquire, Greek edition. Article about the ideal male. Woman's taste for men who are good providers and husbands the usual days changes towards "mucho" men during the days when she is fertile. Also,the research found out that the taste for different man's attributes has a big range. Some women like hairy chest, some hate it...

I want to a local toystore to take fotos of Barbies, and I had to buy one to rip her clothes off and photograph her in this pose.

Pen and ink, and photoshop.

M is for Music

Illustrations for the book from which children learn to read. Half way to be finished the project was cancelled, and I was very sorry because I planned to dedicate the book to Ana, Jana, Jovana, Margherita, Mia and Sara. I imagined their proud faces when they show the book to their classmates
The figures were done separately, in watercolor, each being rather small, 4-5 cm (1.5-2 inches). Watercolor looks good when printed bigger then the original size, I think, that is why I show the close-up of musician's faces, I am specially proud of the expression of the drummer's face (top left).

Christmas Poster

Together with Ashley & Holmes advertising agency and Le Spot productions I was lucky enough to work on posters and brochures for the Christmas Celebrations for the City of Athens 3 years in a row.

This is my favorite one. The theme of the celebrations was 'PLAY"

Watercolor on paper and a little play with colors in Photoshop.