Inspiration Series: David O' Keefe

In the "Inspiration Series" I'll be highlighting beautiful Beatles work I've come across, but sadly do not own.






From David O' Keefe's Website:

In 2007, David left his day job to pursue his passion of painting and sculpting pop culture icons. O'Keefe's work is transformative, capturing not just the likeness of his subjects, but their personalities as well. He has recently released an epic depiction of the characters from The Godfather and of the entire I Love Lucy cast. His company, David O'Keefe Studios, distributes his work through galleries across the country.

Tim Sale

Tim Sale is one of my biggest influences and is truly one of the nicest artists in the comics industry. His work on Batman: Long Halloween and Batman: Dark Victory defines the character for me, and his Superman For All Seasons is one of my favorite Superman stories of all time. Tim's passion for and knowledge of the history of illustration is infectious, and wouldn't you know it, he's a HUGE Beatles fan. Just this last weekend at the CTN Expo in Burbank, Tim created this beautiful piece for the Beatles book, depicting George, John and Paul as they appeared very early in their career in Hamburg, Germany. This is before Ringo joined the band, when Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe were temporary Beatles. Big thanks to John Higashi for whispering whatever sweet magic he did to get Tim to do this piece for us.

Ben Balistreri

Ben Balistreri is an amazing character designer and storyboard artist. He won an Emmy for his designs on "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends", one of my absolute favorite cartoons of all time. He's also been nominated 6 times(!) for Annie awards in storyboarding. His graphic novel Seaweed: A Cure for Mildew is a really fun read, and contains a great sketchbook and development section worth the price of the book on its own. I approached Ben at a convention to do a Beatles piece, and while he was too short on time to complete it at the con, Ben very nicely said he'd do a drawing if I sent the book to him afterwards. I never expected Ben to do a full color piece with all four Beatles! This piece is legendary!

Scott Campbell

Scott Campbell (Scott C) is one of the quirkiest, funniest storytellers I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Scott works in video games (see Brutal Lengend), and still finds time every day to post a new comic strip to his daily comic blog. His "Ninjas All Over the Place" print sits in the prime spot over our mantle, and the staggering genius of the piece makes me laugh every time I look at it.



Here's an image of the Ninja print from Scott's Blog:



How great is Scott's Beatles drawing! He did this one out of his head, with no reference, while he was holding a conversation with a group of friends! Amazing.

Michael Daley

Blue Sky Studios storyboard artist Michael Daley did this beautiful drawing of John Lennon for me at SDCC 09. I love the simplicity of John playing music under a tree.

Pascal Campion

Pascal Campion is a really prolific illustrator whose work I first saw in the Flight Anthologies. His blog is full of beautiful paintings inspired by his family. He admitted not knowing a ton about the Beatles, but did a very lovely drawing for me anyway.