SNAP INTO THIS ILLUSTRATION, OOH YEAH!

There are some people in this world that just scream “draw me.” And then there’s Macho Man Randy Savage—who leapsoff the turnbuckle and demands it.

I recently had the absolute pleasure of illustrating the Madness himself in a commissioned piece, and you better believe I went all in. I chose his early pink-and-yellow gear (because peak ‘80s wrestling should look like a highlighter exploded), and I captured him mid-flight, elbow cocked, coming right for ya. If you ever had the joy of watching Macho Man sail through the air with all the grace of a sequined missile, then you know exactly why I had to draw him this way.

A Little Madness Goes a Long Way

Randy Savage wasn’t just a wrestler. He was a force of nature. The voice? Gravelly perfection. The promos? Unhinged genius. The in-ring ability? Unreal. He could go from top-rope acrobat to technical wizard in the blink of an eye, making every match feel like the main event.

But here’s a fact that might surprise you—before he was snapping into Slim Jims, Savage was swinging for the fences. Yep, Macho Man played professional baseball! Signed by the St. Louis Cardinals right out of high school, he spent a few years in the minors as a catcher. When an injury took him out of the game, he did what any reasonable person would do—reinvented himself as one of the most electrifying wrestlers of all time.

A Flying Tribute

This illustration is my love letter to one of wrestling’s greatest performers—a guy who made everything larger than life, from his wardrobe to his elbow drop to the way he said, “DIG IT!” And if you have a favorite athlete, musician, or pop culture legend you’d love to see immortalized in art, you know where to find me.

OHHH YEAH!

The Wicked Witch of the West

Here's another Sketch Dailies sketch. Today's hashtag was WICKEDWITCH so here you go!

With her little flying monkey groupie in tow, the Wicked Witch of the West has spotted her prey! Come join the fun over at Sketch Dailies and connect with me on Twitter so we can have some fun together. When you connect, say hello!

Conan O'Brien and his mad monster party

I posted a little sketch for the Twitter account @sketch_dailies yesterday. The prompt was #CONANHAIR so we had to hook it up with anything and everything as long as it had Conan's famous coif. Here's mine:

Morning sketch

Morning sketch for a painting of my grandpa as a viking shot caller. Yeah, they had those. Still have major kinks to work out but the potential for goodness is there. See you soon!

Swing your arms from side to side...

...c'mon it's time to go do the Mario!

Oh hey there, whatcha doooin'?

Anywho, I just painted the brothers Mario for PaletteSwap!

Here's the uncropped version of the painting.

While painting this illustration, I was thinking a lot about what it would be like for two Brooklyn-based, Italian plumbers to get transported into the Mushroom Kingdom. These two guys (brothers) know nothing of the crazy, upside down world they've just found themselves in. There's evil mushrooms, dragons that fly in mechanical clown heads, and mutant fire-spitting plants- and the only thing to make it any better is all the gold lying (or floating) around. But there's no store to buy stuff, so you can't do anything with it! You just get to try again if you happen to fall into a bottomless pit. Yay you!

So in terms of the Mario brothers' posture, there's a bit of irritation and unhappiness there. I figure that my brothers and I would probably be pretty irritated with our new home rather than go around joyfully stomping the life out of evil mushroom people.

It's been a while since I made a painting for PaletteSwap (here is a link to my old PSwaps). This time I wanted to go for a classic! Super Mario World was and continues to be one of my favorite SNES games. I love so much about it: the explorable, ever changing world map, the secret ways of beating levels, the art and the adventure. I remember playing it with my own brothers and just poring over different ways of beating the levels...I played it consistently years later with my (now) wife. It's a go-to classic and I can't wait to play it with my kids. Although their built-in cranial micro processors may not be backwards compatible. Gaaahh technology...FOILING MY PLANS AGAIN!!

Ahem, sorry about that. Here's my PaletteSwap:

I found a really nice, clean, high resolution image of the original SNES box sold in the states and mussed it up a little with the powers of Photoshop to give it an older feel. Enjoy!

Super Mario was created by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka

Super Mario Bros. and all related material is copyright Nintendo