First Trip

We have just come back from our first trip to Russia in our quest to adopt our second child. We were fortunate enough to spend about 10 hours with him and simply fell in love. He's very shy which makes him very different from Yuri so it'll be interesting to see how they get along.

Great Client

Below are a couple of projects I recently finished, all for the same client, although different art directors. This series of whimsical icons was very refreshing to work on. I love this style of work because it's stylish, elegant and so different from what most clients request from me.



As simple as these images look, they are far from easy to do. With very clean images like this (the same can be said for logo work), everything has to be perfect. Every line and shape will be noticed so it must be just right.

New Content!

I have finally updated my portfolio on my BlackRockGraphics.com website. I squeezed in many more images to the point where I'm now concerned I have too much junk on there. Take a look and let me know what you think.

You'll notice I've removed the "Graphic Design" section and replaced it with the new "Comics" category. Even though I do a fair amount of design still, this reflects a change in my workload. Unlike my first two years as a freelancer, 80% or more of my work today is illustration.

ZGraphicNovels.com now live!

The new Z Graphic Novels website is live with some cool trailer videos: www.ZGraphicsNovels.com

Z Graphic Novels

The largest Christian book publisher, Zondervan has just published a new line of graphic novels. My Community Comics buddy, Bud Rogers and I have acted as the managing editors for the whole line up (okay, Bud does all of the hard work but I try to help)... with another Community Comics partner, Ben Avery writing two of the six titles.

Later this month, Zondervan will have a new website built to promote their graphic novels: www.ZGraphicNovels.com. Community Comics will be providing comic content for this site that will be updated weekly. I'll have an announcement here when it goes live. In the meantime, go out an buy these books!!!!

Expecting

It appears Leah and I have found our second child. His name is Konstantin (Kostya for short) and he's 13 months old. I doubt we'll keep his name the same... it's so hard to find first names that work with Schwartzrock.



If everything goes well, we'll be traveling to Russia in August. As many of you know, we adopted our first son, Yuri, from Russia three years ago. Here's an early photo of him fascinated with the flames in the stove, wearing his favorite boots. To prove we don't let him run around the house naked all of the time, I've attached a proper photo of the whole family.

Triptych

I was commissioned to create these images for three large banners for a friend's church. Apparently not everyone was excited about these huge banners at first, but in the end, the congregation didn't want them taken down. I can't tell you how nice that is to hear.