The Real Blog of the Real Jeff Hopkins

Finally Got That Girl Scout Patch I Always Wanted

2012-01-22T15:04:00.000-05:00

Last year I did an illustration for the Andrew Low House in Savannah, GA. Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts, was the daughter-in-law of the house's namesake, Andrew Low II. To honor the connection, the Andrew Low House has created a commemorative Girl Scout patch for sale in their museum shop, featuring my illustration. I'm pretty sure this makes me an honorary Girl Scout. Score!

JJ On the Couch #2

2011-12-14T13:47:00.001-05:00

Got a little more detailed with the couch in this one. I don't think I realized the amount of work I created for myself when I decided to start this series. That damn couch is going to be the death of me.

JJ On the Couch #1

2011-11-19T13:57:00.001-05:00

JJ On the Couch #1

Introducing the first installment in a new series I call "JJ On the Couch." Wherein I document the many ways in which a lazy greyhound makes himself comfortable on the living room furniture.

New Self Portrait (Plus a Retrospective)

2011-10-13T00:16:00.014-04:00

Just completed this self-portrait over the weekend and I thought it would be a fun opportunity to take a look back at many of the self-portraits I've done.

Skyline Sequence 24

2011-05-02T11:00:00.000-04:00

Last year I did a drawing of the Austonian, Austin's tallest building. I must admit I was not looking forward to having to do it all over again for this project. But with a lot of free time this weekend to devote to it, I was able to complete the Austonian and add it to the skyline.

Music: "In 3's" by Beastie Boys

Skyline Sequence 23

2011-04-30T19:15:00.002-04:00

And another one!

Featured buildings: 100 Congress and 301 Congress
Music: "To the Workers of the Rockford River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament, and it Involves Shoe String, a Lavender Garland, and Twelve Strong Women" by Sufjan Stevens

Skyline Sequence 22

2011-04-29T17:10:00.001-04:00

Whoa it's been a while! Been working on super top secret stuff that hopefully I can post about soon. In the meantime, here's a small addition to the big skyline piece: City Hall!

Music: "Riffs and Variations on a Single Note for Jelly Roll, Earl Hines, Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodds, and the King of Swing, to Name a Few" by Sufjan Stevens

Skyline Sequence 21

2011-02-11T14:56:00.001-05:00

Featured Building: The Ashton Austin
Music: "Sirius" by Pelican

Skyline Sequence 20

2011-02-10T11:14:00.000-05:00

Featured building: The Frost Bank Tower
Music: "Orion" by Metallica

Skyline Sequence 19

2011-02-08T10:27:00.002-05:00

Featured building: The W Hotel
Music: "Welcome, Ghosts" by Explosions in the Sky

Skyline Sequence 18

2011-02-07T09:52:00.002-05:00

Featured buildings: The offices of Silicon Labs and CSC.
Music: "From West Texas" by Explosions in the Sky

Skyline Sequence 17

2011-02-02T10:22:00.002-05:00

Buildings featured in this segment: AMLI on 2nd
Music: "Bruce" by Late!

Skyline Sequence 16

2011-01-31T13:25:00.001-05:00

Music: "Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners" by Foo Fighters

Skyline Sequence 15

2011-01-27T22:48:00.002-05:00

It's been a couple months since I've had time to work on my Austin skyline project, but it feels good to get back to work on it.

Music: "Don't Ever Leave Me" by Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden

Andrew Low House

2011-01-25T14:20:00.003-05:00

The Andrew Low House is a historic house in Savannah, GA. You can read a little history here. They recently asked me to do an illustration of the house. What made this one a particular challenge is the abundance of foliage that surrounds the house. The illustration had to be created using several reference photos from several different angles.

Dry Face

2010-11-09T13:25:00.007-05:00

So, remember all those monthly dry-erase masterpieces which have been lingering in obscurity in a suburban Texas Barnes & Noble? Well, no longer! Dry Face is born!

And in the interest of posterity I* have made a time-lapse of the process by which this was created. After creating and photographing the letters on the dry-erase board, I converted them to vector, which is where the first image comes from.

And just for fun, here are all the "Coming Soon" boards. I think it's interesting to see the evolution.

*by "I," I actually mean Heather Curiel and Alex Soto. Many many thanks to them for their assistance.

Skyline Sequence 14

2010-10-23T13:03:00.001-04:00

Music: "In the Mood" by Glenn Miller

Skyline Sequence 13

2010-10-21T12:40:00.003-04:00

This one is all over the place, filling in random things that I skipped over. Any time you see the white window disappear it's because I'm using a different reference photo. One that is a more zoomed-in shot of a specific area of the skyline.

Music: "Son of Neckbone" by Beastie Boys

Skyline Sequence 12

2010-10-16T21:21:00.004-04:00

This one is mostly filling in some background buildings. Once again, I had to use a more zoomed in reference photo for some of the buildings (1:52-2:40).

By the way, these look a lot better if you view them full screen, or on the actual Vimeo page.

Music: "Sneakin' Out the Hospital" by Beastie Boys

Skyline Sequence 11

2010-10-15T15:55:00.000-04:00

So this is the rest of the 360 Condos. At the end of the video, once it's completed, you can see where I copy and paste it into the skyline.

Music: "12/16" by Maserati

Skyline Sequence 10

2010-10-11T14:29:00.003-04:00

In order to get the detail exactly right on some of these buildings, it will be necessary to use zoomed-in reference photos. This one is the 360 Condominiums. Once I finish the building I'll drop it into the panoramic. Hopefully you can see the building coming together on the left side of the frame.

Music: "Team" by Bon Iver

Skyline Sequence 9

2010-10-09T11:00:00.001-04:00

Herb Alpert's "Spanish Flea" makes everything funnier. Fact.

Skyline Sequence 8

2010-10-08T17:53:00.004-04:00

All the previous time-lapse videos have been 12 frames per second, this one is 24 frames per second, just to speed things up a little bit. What you see here is about 2 hours and 20 minutes of work.

Music: "Droned" by Phil Collins

Skyline Sequence 7

2010-09-30T10:19:00.002-04:00

This is the first time I've had to add natural elements in one of these architectural drawings. I usually avoid that by choosing buildings that aren't blocked by trees or shrubbery. This time, obviously, that's unavoidable. Keep your eye on the top of the frame and watch the treeline crawl across. I know what you're thinking: "Jeff, isn't this going to take, like...forever?" Yes. Yes it is.

Music: "Groove Holmes" by Beastie Boys

Skyline Sequence 6

2010-09-26T16:02:00.002-04:00

Music: "Structure and Discipline" by Thomas Newman

Skyline Sequence 5

2010-09-23T01:14:00.005-04:00

Featuring theme music by Fugazi!

Skyline Sequence 4

2010-09-22T15:16:00.004-04:00

Yeah, I know what you're saying. "It's only the second sequence he's posted, how can it be #4?" Just trust me. It's the fourth sequence I've made, that's what it's saved as on the computer, so to keep things simple that's what it's called here.

I did the math (and I still don't trust that I did it right), but this time-lapse amounts to about 25 minutes, compressed into 2. I had to go back and adjust the background image when I discovered some photomerge errors. But now that that's all squared away, I can get back to doing the actual work of illustrating the skyline. In the future I think I'll zoom in on that upper window so you can more clearly see how it's coming together. Stay tuned!

How It's Done

2010-09-12T21:51:00.006-04:00

I thought it would be interesting to show a work in progress through a time-lapsed screen recording. I recently took a panorama of the Austin skyline with the intention of turning it into an illustration. I figure this will be a really good project to show in-progress, and it will be interesting to see the whole thing come together. It took a lot of googling to figure out how to record the screen shots exactly the way I wanted to. Hopefully you can see that in addition to the bottom window where I'm doing the actual work, I am keeping a top window open that will be a zoomed-out view of the whole illustration as it comes together. What you see in that window is really only half of the final panorama, which is so wide that it's more practical to do two illustrations and stitch them together later. So, this will definitely be a long-term project and I'll try to post the latest time-lapses regularly.

Also, much credit is due to Mr. Alex Soto for inspiring this idea and for his technical advice.

Hey, look at that! I won something!

2010-09-08T13:54:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago I came across a site called Create My Tattoo, which essentially crowd-sources tattoo designs. Normally, I'm very wary of crowd-sourcing sites like this, but one of the contests drew my eye. Someone wanted a family crest/coat-of-arms representing various aspects of his life. The iconography and design of heraldry has always piqued my interest, so I gave it a shot. Turns out I won! Here's the winning design:

The Austonian

2010-06-14T02:02:00.003-04:00

I've hung around photographers enough to know that the tops of parking garages (or buildings) are the best spots for getting cityscape angles. Downtown Austin has an abundance of good spots. When I found a spot where I could get an unobstructed shot of Austin's tallest building, The Austonian, I knew I had to do an illustration. Most of the illustrations that I've done in this series, however, have been relatively small. I was a little concerned that with such a tall building, I wouldn't be able to get a very detailed photograph. But using Photoshop's lens correction filter and photomerge functions, I was able to stitch together a really good reference photo that was detailed and undistorted. Took me a few weeks to complete this one. [Click to zoom.]

Cont'd...

2010-06-01T20:45:00.002-04:00

The further refinement of my dry-erase masterpiece:

On the Effective Use of Company Time and Resources:

2010-05-19T17:40:00.006-04:00

Any time I get asked to do something at Barnes & Noble that somehow involves my design skills, I go all out. Over the past few months I've been slowly perfecting the "Coming Soon" board in the music department.

I discovered a really interesting thing about dry-erase boards: you can easily erase with your fingers. By coloring in big blocks of color, you can use your finger to take away the negative space and create kind of cool block letters. Naturally I wondered if a whole type set could be made from this. Here's what I've come up with:

David Foster Wallace

2010-05-02T15:56:00.002-04:00

I've been reading Infinite Jest and obsessing over David Foster Wallace recently.

Travel Poster

2010-04-30T23:13:00.002-04:00

I was asked to submit an idea for the cover of Connect Savannah's "Best of Savannah" issue. I'm not sure where it came from, but I had this idea to try to mimic or pay homage to art deco travel posters. I've always been a big fan of Joseph Binder, an Austrian poster artist from the 30s and 40s. More recently I've really been digging the work of Tavis Coburn. The Connect decided to go a different direction, but I kept working on the idea because it's kind of a new direction for me and taught me a lot of new techniques. You can see the results above.

Human Surveillance

2010-03-14T21:03:00.003-04:00

So, I've been here for a little over a month now. The rest of my junk arrived a few days ago from Savannah. Now I can get settled in a little better. Now that the weather is nice, I'm biking around and getting to know the city. Should have an illustration of the University of Texas Tower done pretty soon to post. In the meantime, check out Human Survey. My friends Bob and Skip are doing a sort of anthropological photography project, taking hundreds of portraits of random people on the street (including yours truly, see above).

John Muir

2010-02-27T12:52:00.002-05:00

For the past couple days I've been watching the Ken Burns documentary "The National Parks: America's Best Idea." A lot of time is spent on 19th Century naturalist John Muir, who lived an absolutely fascinating life. He also had a pretty interesting look, so I got inspired to do a portrait, continuing the hairy/brush tool trend.

Hair apparent.

2010-02-19T16:05:00.004-05:00

Another project to keep myself busy during downtime at home. Many months ago Eric Prine of world famous Attic Fire Photography took a few pictures of me with his super-hi-res-I'm-a-real-professional camera. I've been fascinated with how detailed the images are, seeing every individual hair and pore (if I had known, I would've shaved properly). I've also been interested in translating that detail into an illustration. So, voila. Self portrait.

Keeping Busy

2010-02-16T15:08:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I took a drive out to Austin's Pennybacker Bridge to take photos because I knew it would make a great illustration. People often ask me how long it takes to do one of these. Usually I don't know what to say because I work on them in shifts, shelving them for weeks and coming back to them when the mood strikes me. Well what you're looking at here took me exactly five hours. I know that because I literally did nothing else when I got home from taking the pictures (no internet at home makes Jeff a bored boy). Here's a zoom:

I have arrived.

2010-02-15T15:16:00.002-05:00

So, I have arrived in Austin (actually I arrived 2 weeks ago) and am just now getting around to reconnecting with the world. Looking forward to joining the art and design scene here. I'm finally getting around to doing more personal work and hopefully I'll have something new to show in this space soon. In the meantime, read all about my former roommate and amazing artist, Alex Soto.

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Now playing: The Beatles - Long, Long, Long
via FoxyTunes

The Process of a Portrait

2010-01-11T16:11:00.017-05:00

A lot of the portraits that I've done are of friends who asked to have one done. I try with each new one to branch out a little into territory that I haven't covered. This gives me the opportunity to try new things and expand my skills and also gives the recipient a unique portrait.

When I started working on Carrie's, I wasn't really sure what direction I wanted to go, but I always start with the same basic "skeleton" file in Illustrator and move on from there. Carrie's portrait started out much like my other portraits, particularly Brad.

Not finding this particularly satisfying, I looked for ways to make this portrait more original. My first idea was to fill the blocks of color with patterns that I also created in Illustrator.

This is a technique I hope to apply to some project in the future, but it wasn't really working for this particular image. So my next idea was to use actual found photographic textures instead of drawn patterns. I searched through folders and folders of photos I've taken through the years on my hard drive to pull out patterns with which to test the technique in Photoshop.

Once I saw things come together with just test photos I decided this was the way to go. I grabbed my camera and stepped outside to take photos of any textures I could find.

The great thing about the outcome of this project is that in addition to learning new techniques, I've begun a library of textures and patterns that are now at my disposal for future projects.

A day of technological leaps forward.

2009-12-06T22:55:00.002-05:00

Well look at that. I've got a blog! Not only that, I also acquired a gmail account and a Google Wave account. What this all means I have yet to determine. But exciting things are ahead. I promise. Just be glad I didn't join Twitter.