The State of the Union, Post 6

So to tie it all together...

What sort of an illustrator are you?
I'm an illustrator that has been all over the place in trying to find himself, but I think I have settled into a few areas. I'm a traditional drawer and digital colorer. I am also very stylistic rather than representational, and I lean more on a combination of my imagination and a little reality to create exaggeration and humor. I enjoy working in small to medium-sized formats. I'm open to subject matter when it comes to my illustrations, but I would love to have my art focused around my 2 other passions, sports and music. I am also mildly into the idea of doing comics and comic strips, as I enjoy working with Foo Foo. I guess to sum it up, I'm a little bit of a cartoonist, a little bit of an editorial illustrator, and a bit of a sports geek who wants that world to cross over into art.

What sort of career do you want to have?
I don't know if this is getting too specific, but I would love to have a full-time job as a sports illustrator, or an illustrator/designer for a sports team. I've done a lot of thinking on what got me into art in the first place and it was sports logos that had me hooked all those years ago. After thinking about it over this summer I realized that I still love those things and that a job in sports illustration is what I want to do. It just keeps coming back into my head. I would enjoy the subject matter and still be able to get stylistic in my work. I could be involved in a lot of design work as well, which I would really enjoy; and also, it could be a second-hand version of fulfilling almost every young boy's dream of being in professional sports.

Does your present body of work reflect your aspirations? Could it do so more strongly?
I wish I could answer yes to the first of these questions but I know I can't. The minute I realized that sports illustration is just that thing that I want to do, I also realized that my portfolio doesn't have a lot of that subject matter in it; so my portfolio could definitely represent those aspirations better.

10 images/themes/techniques/subjects/formats my portfolio needs to become more in-line with my aspirations:
1. Sports action shots (great baseball plays, touchdowns, etc.)
2. Logo experimentation (like when people manipulation the Rep. and Dem. party mascots)
3. People
4. Ad design
5. Illustration and article integration
6. Newsprint format
7. Gestural drawings
8. Stadiums
9. Mascots
10. Graphic Illustration (I'm thinking Michael Schwab-esque here)