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.

Brave New World Order Hats

Brave New World Order Leader promoting Brave New World Order Hats to all of us, square headed or not.

The best Greek design magazine, then called "DeltaD", now "+design", has a big interview with one designer or illustrator as a main subject in each issue. The same person, usually, makes the cover of the issue as well.

I made this illustration for the issue with my interview, feeling very strong on the subject. I believe that the country I was born in, (ex)Yugoslavia, was dismantled so it would be easies to make all of us wear the New World Order hats...

The Illustration was made with pencil on paper 5,5 x 8 cm, scanned on 400%, and retouched in the computer. I wanted the roughness of the enlarged pencil lines. I also wanted to show my disgust with all the politicians, domestic and foreign, who did the dirty job of initiating the war while talking about peace, freedom, human rights and democracy. Whenever I hear any of these terms in the news I feel it as an insult to my ears and I know that there is a lot of pain there.

Back then, in all ex Yugoslavia there was a curse - to see your house on TV with Christiane Amanpour in front of it talking about democracy, human rights and freedom. She played her dirty role in the whole story as well. My opinion.

Pushed Be Eaten

The article I illustrated here say that carieers in politics usually end the ugly way.

The magazine is STATUS.

Watercolur and ink, A4 size

Where is Osama Bin Laden?

This illustration was a cover of a magazine Krama. I made a pencil sketch, scanned it and put very quickly color in Photoshop to explain the idea to the editors. Although I liked the result, I planned to work more on that, but, to my surprise, they thought it was a finalized work and they were happy with it! After that, I had a good look at it, and realized that If I worked more on it, I'd probably overwork it, and, finally the illustration remained as it was.

The edges on the left side are the result of putting the color with the bucket tool over the pencil sketch. Many times the artwork is the result of lucky accidents, but it does not happen often when you work digitally...

Tarantino Caricature

Just finished it. Caricature step by step. I allways like to watch similar videos. The Music in the backgorund is by Kalman Balogh.

Illustrations for the STATUS magazine, again. 3 looks of James Bond.

Watercolur

Playing with letters

the image on the right is more or less like the original, the one on the left is turned inside out like a sock, in photoshop.

Kefalogianis-Mitsotakis

Images printed in newspapers usually lose contrast and fine tones. Having that in mind I made this illustration with simplyfied outlines and strong contrasts. I used to work with airbrush a lot untill I bought my first computer. This illustration was done digitally, but I used the logic of my airbrush work. It does remind me of my old airbrush works. I'll post one or two of my old airbrush works later on...

It was done in very short time, as all the illustrations I do for "Proto Thema"

PLAY

Ten Images For Ithaka

Poster Design Competition.

I sent this and one other.

Did not win.

PLAY

Carricature of Kerry, step by step

Tsunami in Sofokleous street (Greek Stock Market, like Wall street)

Greek Alphabeth

An old sample of my calligraphy. I did it in black ink, and added colur in computer.

STATUS magazine illustration

For years now I illustratie the"politics" collumn in Status magazine.

Mr. Putin was among the fist ones to congratulate Mr Karamanlis his victory at the elections. The article says it is because of their deal for the natural gas pipes passing through Greece.

watercolour and ink, A4 size

CD cover Jokes

Jokes told by famous Greek actors and musicians are the content of this double CD package. All of us who worked on this project, including the website filaki.gr did it pro bono, for a safe house for children.

I really enjoy working in watercolour

a sample of my calligraphy...

These are proposals for the coffie cup design for a chain of coffie shops.

More often then not, a client chooses something else, and the portfolio gets the best pages in the section "Unpublished"

One detail...

Fifty-something politicians rock!

This is the illustration for the article about fifty something politicians rocking the political scene these days. Magazine: STATUS

32x39 cm, watercolur and ink

This illustration was awarded as the best editorial illustration in Greece in 2006 at EVGE2007 (Greek Design and Illustration Award)