Personal Projects
All Images, c. Kevin Sprouls
This week, a few illustrations that were produced for individuals as personal projects. Aside from working for the corporate world, magazines and advertising, I often take on assignments from folks who appreciate my work.
One such person is Jay Brooks. Here’s his bio, followed by the potrait I created for him:
“Jay R. Brooks has been writing about beer over 24 years, and is the former GM of the Celebrator Beer News and was the chain beer buyer for Beverages & more. He is currently a syndicated newspaper columnist for the Bay Area News Group with his bi-weekly column, “Brooks On Beer,” which appears in at least half-a-dozen papers, including the San Jose Mercury News, the Oakland Tribune and the Contra Costa Times. He contributes to most major beer periodicals, and general circulation magazines such as Playboy and Reason. He has appeared on both television and radio talking about beer, and has given numerous presentations for the California Craft Brewers Association and the Brewers Association, at their annual Craft Brewers Conference, among others. Mr. Brooks studied brewing at U.C. Davis and has judged beer competitions on five continents, including the Great American Beer Festival, the Great British Beer Festival, the World Beer Cup and many other competitions, both local and international.
He is the author of “California Breweries North,” published in the fall of 2013 by Stackpole Books, and has also contributed to the “Oxford Companion to Beer,” “1001 Beers You Must Taste Before You Die,” “The Pocket Guide to Beer,” and several other books. He’s currently working on his next book, “How to Brew Beer, The Science Behind the Pint” for the Ivy Press, which will be published in the spring of 2017.
In early 2015, Brooks developed a Beer Appreciation certificate course for Sonoma State University, which he began teaching for the 2015 spring semester. The 12-week course will be offered twice a year, and he’s also working on creating an advanced class to be launched in spring of 2016.
Brooks co-founded San Francisco Beer Week, the North American Guild of Beer Writers (for which he’s currently its co-President), and also started the Bay Area Beer Bloggers. He also writes about beer online for a variety of websites, including his own Brookston Beer Bulletin (BrookstonBeerBulletin.com) and the BANG’s Eat • Drink • Play (http://blogs.mercurynews.com/eat-drink-play/).
In 2014, Brooks was made an honorary “Knight of the Brewers Mash Staff” in Belgium, knighted by the Belgian Brewers Guild.”
portrait of Jay Brooks
The portrait above contains the interesting logo that Jay designed. He requested this to be included in his image.
An interesting project came to me from the bibliofile, Joseph Finder. Mr. Finder needed a bookplate designed for his collection of tomes. The job started out with a rough sketch…
Next, I fleshed the basic design out…
Author sketch
My client approved the sketch, and we went on to the finished illustration…
bookplate finished art
Joseph was kind enough to send me the printed product, along with his signature:
bookplate
On this occasion, the client returned for another illustration — one of the portraits like I pioneered at The Wall Street Journal — of his daughter and her husband:
double-portrait “Emma and Jack”
We’ll put the bookmark in here. I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief survey of my work. Until Next Time…
