Free Time

These are a couple drawings from a while ago. The first one is a portrait study done by Yim Mau Kun. Studying other artists work helps me stay limber and learn some new tricks. Whether consciously or unconsciously, I do them in hopes that their genius becomes apart of my work as well. The second one is a drawing of Michael Jackson from about a year ago. It was a rough drawing in my sketchbook and was later cleaned up in Adobe Illustrator.

Happy Holidays to everyone and best wishes to you in the new year!!

Season's Greatings

Happy Holidays everyone!

Flapper Designs

My art teacher in high school told us about combining two different ideas to make something fun and different. Like the person that came up with chocolate and peanut butter together... that's genius... OK maybe not genius but it was a good enough idea to the people that began Reese's candy.

Lately animation has been a huge inspiration to me and these flapper designs where my effort to combine that with my love for graphic design. It was also an experimentation with style. I feel like some things worked and others I'd probably revisit and change. The last two designs are my favorites, particularly because of the gesture and angularity of the poses.

Thanks for stopping by!

T-Shirts and Stickers for Sale!

The Holidays are coming up quick! Do you know a certain someone who needs some new t-shirts? Or maybe you all ready have the gift in mind but want to customize it with some unique graphic art? Well look no further! The Taylor made art shop is open for business!

Check it out!

Halloweenies

Happy Halloween!

Published

Ignore the watermark. I don't have the file on this computer with out my name written across his forehead.

Back in 2007 when I first started playing with digital painting, I did a caricature of my favorite late night host, Conan O' Brien. Last year I was fortunate enough to be asked for the rights to use the image in Marlo Thomas's new book "Growing Up Laughing." I was more than happy and agreed to let her use it. It is an honor and privilege!

Blast from the Past

Going old school here. These are caricatures I did back at Legoland, California in 2008/2009. Our thing was that we would draw you doing just about anything, but usually I tried to steer my customers towards the direction of a Star Wars character, zombies and my favorite super heroes.

I do miss drawing live caricatures. There's something about interacting with a client in person and when you do a good job, and the customer loves their drawing, it's a really good feeling!

Rubber (Stitched) Duckies

A couple months ago I was fortunate enough to draw and design a series of rubber ducks at work. I first created a "template" to keep the size and angles of each design the same and then began drawing up ideas for the individual ducks. This was fun to brain storm with my creative directors and I'm really glad this project was a team effort. To me, it's always nice to have a second or third person look at my art before I take it to a finish. They spot things that you sometimes miss (proportion issue, an object looks like something that you didn't intend it too, etc.) There were 20 ducks in the series with my favorite being the punk duck.

Thanks for stopping by!

Sketchbook Caricatures

This first drawing makes me happy. :)
It's a caricature of my friends Dan, Natalie and Marko. I had a really good time seeing them and my friends in San Diego last month. I draw my friends sometimes for the sake of a memory exercise and it also puts me in a good mood. I liked how the stylization turned out so I decided to put it to the test on some celebrities. The next drawing is a caricature of the band Green Day. If I would do this again, I'd work on the likeness and expression a bit more. Otherwise I had fun playing with the shapes and simplifying.

thanks for stopping by :)

Zombie Pinup

I've been having a lot of fun with Adobe Illustrator, lately. This is the colored version to the pencil sketch I posted last month.

Enjoy!

T-Shirts

As an artist, it's good to keep your feet on the ground and know that there's always room for improvement. Today was a good reminder of that.

What a lovely day for a slice of humble pie :)

Fun and creative T-shirt designs over at Threadless.com !

Skullcake

Deadly and Delicious!

Hot Couture Cat Designs

Art Nouveau Butterly Woman

Wow! That's about all I say right now... that and my friends are super talented. Seriously, I start surfing their blogs or listen to artist interviews online and I get super inspired!

This is a drawing from a couple months ago I did for as an embroidery design. One of my favorite artists, Alphonse Mucha, was the main inspiration for this piece. I'll start sharing more of my roughs and finishes from work. It's my hope that I'll contribute some more inspiration to others just like so many other artists all ready do.
:)

Zombie Pinup

This is rough drawing I did at work for a zombie pinup design. We didn't use this for the final design but I'll still finish it in Adobe Illustrator and make a t-shirt design out of it. There's still a few things to add to it and I'll change the eyes too.

Well, it's three weeks and counting for the big San Diego Comic Convention! It's a great place for inspiration, meeting new people and getting feedback on your art. But most of all, I'm really looking forward to seeing my friends from Legoland and Studio 2nd Street again!

Happy 4th, everyone!

Steampunk Embroidery

Embroidery Designs

Here's a couple images of the embroidery projects I've been working on. The bottom image is a Jacobean design I made and it's embroidered onto a walker. On our website, the customers can upload pictures of their projects to share. It's always cool to see how others are using your designs.

Anyways, I thought I'd share what I've been up too lately. I get super inspired when I'm surfing other people's art blogs so this is to give back to everyone else that's doing sweet stuff with their art and sharing it with the world! If you'd like to see more or are interested in embroidery, here's the links to our two sites. Urban Threads and Embroidery Library. Thanks for stopping by :)

Inspired

A couple of weeks ago, my friend shared a link with me that has become my new source (or fix) of inspiration. The website is CHIUSTREAM and it's a series of interviews with professional entertainment artists run by Bobby Chiu. Very cool stuff, especially if your interested in character design, storyboards, comics, animation, etc.

I listened to the interview with Alvin Lee at work the other day and was really inspired. So I went home and drew Street Fighter characters all night. This tough guy in the image above is Akuma. His teeth are even gnarlier than his hair!

Good stuff, man :)

New Job

OK. So I wanted to share what I've been up to as of late. Since moving back to Minnesota (about 5 months ago) I've been fortunate enough to continue making a living as an artist. It's pretty fun too. The company I draw for now is called Embroidery Library and we sell embroidery designs over the internet. In a nut shell, we create the art work, digitize it and then sell it on our web site. Then customers can buy and download the designs to their sewing machines. The projects I work on range quite a bit so I posted some rough drawings, vector art and a few what the final product turns out like. After I create the vector art, the drawing is handed off to a digitizer who figures out how the design will be stitched out. What I really like about it is that there are different rolls with the job. Some days I'm an illustrator, others I'm more a designer and along with that there are design planning meetings where a group of us get together and brainstorm ideas.

In the short amount of time, this job has helped me grow as an illustrator and work faster in production. I've always liked to take my time and make things look really nice, and I still do, but that's not always a luxury and so you get good at cutting corners and still making good designs.

I'm really grateful to be apart of this team, to say the least. :)