Animals Dancing: Drawings and my Design Process

I thought it would be fun to share my sketching and design process from a recent series of characters I created for work. The theme was "Dance Party" and my assignment was to come up with six cartoon animals that each referenced a style of dance.

At work, I draw everything digitally. It saves a lot of time and makes corrections simple and easy. The tablet I use is a Wacom Intuos 3 (medium size). It took me awhile to get used to drawing digitally with one of these. My lines still don't come out the way I want them to and sometimes I have to redraw a line several times to get what I'm looking for. These are meant to be rough drawings at this stage. The drawing program I use Sketchbook Pro.

For the poses, I tried to stay loose and be gestural. I tend to exaggerate the pose slightly in the beginning, so that when I add more details the pose won't look stiff (ideally).

Here's a link to the final product. This set of animals was designed for machine embroidery and are for sale at Embroidery Library.

Thank you for stopping by and checking out my work. I hope this was helpful and inspiring. Please leave a comment or send an e-mail if you have any questions.

Wolf Sketch

After work, usually around 4:30, I like to treat myself to a quick sketch before going home. It's a nice way to wind down and have some fun. Lately, I've been drawing all my roughs (for work) on the computer using a program called Sketchbook Pro. It saves time and if there's a revision, it's easier to make an edit on the computer rather than redraw something from scratch. So getting back to the real sketchbook and holding an actual pen or paint brush feels really good!

This drawing took about 30 minutes. I really enjoy the spontaneity that comes from working fast.When I give myself a time limit I'm usually trying to put down as much information as I can and so the analytical part of the brain shuts down giving unexpected results. It's fun!

Wolf Portrait
Ink Brush, Colored Pencil and White Out on Toned Cardstock

Hipster Fox

I had a blast designing a series of hipster animals at work last month. Here's the link to the rest of the animals as Embroidery Designs.

http://www.emblibrary.com/EL/Products.aspx?Catalog=Emblibrary&ProductID=x11348

On the side, I've been working on a personal project with my wife. The goal is to create a theme of art prints to potentially sell on Etsy. Heidi's been so great at giving feedback about what works, what doesn't work and how to make it all go together as a set. This fox design on top was test in Adobe Illustrator to play with textures. Basically it's all grain filters and gradients. I'm liking the results and plan to apply it to the personal project.

It's been fun learning about Etsy and how it can empower creative entrepreneurs. The hardest part for me is being okay with the return rate vs. time invested in creating the art possibly being minimal. It's really about the journey though and learning more about the business side of being an artist. :)

Autumn Animals

Tattoo Inspired Animal Designs

Some more art from work. The original concept for these started out a year ago with a peacock design I did and the style sort of evolved to an "inky" tattoo look. These were are a lot of fun to design. Because their simplicity, my favorite part of creating these was the decision making process; what to include and what not to, and making the image read as a particular animal. They are a bit abstract and hopeful they read well. For each animal, there are three designs to the series; a corner, a border and a feature (used for machine embroidery.)

Hope it's a great week for you and thanks for stopping by.

Merry Holidays!

It's that time of the year again. Here's a couple of my favorite Christmas/winter designs from this year.The Santa designs are from last year and where a lot of fun creating. I'd really love to do more character designing; it reminds me of caricature and graphic design which I used to do a lot more of when I was in college.

Best wishes to you this season and a Happy New Year! :)

Animals with Balloons

Another animal design project for Embroidery Library. I have to say, my art directors are really talented and have a good eye for things. They see things that I can't in my own art and know how to tweak certain things to get them looking better than before. It's all a team effort and I'm really grateful to have the experience of working with them and the other artists at this job.

Thanks for stopping by and happy early Mother's Day!