Projects & Places - Greg Epkes
Art for advertising & editorial
© Greg Epkes 2017

Projects & Places

Grounded in traditional drawing, painting, graphics, and scratchboard, I have adapted all this and more to digital technology. As an Iowa-born first-generation German, I received my BFA from Kansas City Art Institute, worked in licensed character development for a major San Francisco studio, and in newspaper graphics and design at the San Diego Union-Tribune and Anchorage Daily News. My long commercial career includes national projects for ad agencies, design firms, and corporate brand managers associated with food, beverage, health care, finance, and entertainment and leisure entities, and for publishers. I've received several awards from the Society of Newspaper Design and the Society of Illustrators and the 2005 Los Angeles Society of Illustrators Show featured my artwork. I enjoy working from my studio in the forested southwest hills of Portland, Oregon.

I worked on a series of books written & illustrated by another Oregonian illustrator & designer, Von Glitschka, published by HOW Publishing.
The below artwork was the first of a series of books written & illustrated by Von Glitschka that I collaborated on called "CRUMBLE, CRACKLE, BURN". Artists were given a texture and were asked to utilize it within a vector based illustration in any way.

The eskimo illustration was created using Von's supplied texture file masked into my Adobe Illustrator vector based artwork created from my sketch.

Forest FestivalTake and Make Art: Hundreds of Royalty-Free Vector Illustrations for Discriminating Designers

From Amazon: "Inside this book, you will not only find hundreds of unique, custom-designed pieces of royalty-free vector illustrations from the super talented Von Glitschka, you will also find something potentially even more valuable–the hitherto undiscovered cure for designer’s block. You’ve heard of writer’s block. Well, designer’s block is just as bad. Maybe even worse. And inside this book is the cure." Available at Amazon

EskimoAdobe Illustrator Art 'Crumble, Crackle, Burn - 60 Stunning Textures for Design and Illustration' was released in May 2007. HOW Publishing

The figurative illustration below was created with a sumi brush scanned in, vectorized and edited with Adobe Illustrator, I then masked the assigned patterns over, under & within the vector based drawing to create the end result.

Female FigureHOW Publishing Adobe Illustrator Art 'Crumble, Crackle, Burn - 60 Stunning Textures for Design and Illustration' will be released in May 2007. How Publishing

The below cowboy artwork was the second of a series of books called "DRIP. DOT. SWIRL." written & illustrated by Von Glitschka that I collaborated on. Artists were given a pattern this time and were asked to utilize it within a vector based illustration. I was given the "basket weave" pattern which I used thought out the illustration based on my sketch.

Topic: HOW Publishing books, Brush & Ink