Yoda at the Mall

While doing some last minute Christmas shopping at the mall, Yoda decided to try his first Orange Julius. His life was forever changed.

Inktober Head Sketches

 A couple of head sketches from last month (Inktober). I'm looking forward to doing more of these in the future possibly as commissions and just for fun.

About six weeks ago, my wife and l became parents for the first time. It's been both exciting and challenging for us. It's made me think about priorities and what's really important in life and how being an artist fits into all of that. As I'm thinking about this I can say that I'm looking forward to making things (school t-shirts, lunch notes, birthday cards, etc.) for my son and my wife to show them I love them.

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.

Super Cat

Some more after work sketching for fun. I used to draw more of these types sketches for my wife when we were dating. It's sort of my way of saying, I'm thinking about you and I love you.

Wolverine Eats a Bratwurst

This drawing felt appropriate to share on Memorial Day. A good weekend to be outside, fire up the grill and hang out. I'm also remembering to be grateful for the men and women, past and present, that have given their lives to preserve our country's freedom.

Cats Riding a Scooter

Today is my one year anniversary with Heidi! It's been a great first year together. So thankful to be on this journey of life with such an amazing person and my best friend.

Baby Super Heroes

This blog post is the follow up to the first Chibi Super Heroes post I did back in July, 2013. There are 6 new characters including Deadpool, Hulk, Wonder Woman, Spawn, Venom and Dr. Octopus. I finished these about a year ago. Between moving and planning a wedding these cards stayed in my portfolio and never got scanned in until a couple weeks ago. I do my best to finish projects and other commitments... even if it doesn't happen right away.

Each super hero character/card is 3.5" x 2.5" on bristle board using colored pencils, markers and pens. They're a lot of fun to work on and a fun challenge to redesign characters to make them look like they go together. I think these would look super cool if brought into Adobe Illustrator, cleaned up and made into a poster or print of some sort. Maybe some day... :)

Ninja Cat T-Shirt and Stickers!

He slices! He dices! He... takes frequent naps through out the day. He's the Ninja Cat! :)

New T-shirt and Sticker design added to the RedBubble store.

Hope you guys enjoy, and special thanks to my fiance for helping pick out the color scheme.

David and Goliath Drawing

One of my favorite stories from the Old Testament, David Vs. Goliath. Basically, David was the underdog in the fight and Goliath was used to being the champion. Even though Goliath was much stronger, David put is faith in the Lord and boldly defeated his enemy with a single stone. 

A really great Bible resource online, Bible Gateway, has the full story here. 

Thank you for stopping by and hope you have a wonderful Christmas this season. :)

Chibi Jesus

The Good Shepherd.

Autumn Animals

Chibi Superhero Sketch Cards

For fun, I've been drawing fan art the last couple months. These are some new sketch cards sized at 2.5" x 3.5". Making these cards has been really great for several reasons. First, they're not a huge time commitment. Second, it's rewarding after doing several of these in the sense that you're creating a collection. Third, I really enjoy drawing super heros and cute/anime cartoon characters lately. These little guys where drawn on 11" x 14" bristle board with markers and pencils. I thought it would be easier to draw them all on one big sheet of paper instead of cutting the cards out separately and then drawing on them. Working this way helped me frame the characters more easily. It also gave me space to do some color studies next each hero as well. I look forward to doing more and have all ready started another batch! Any requests? :)

X-Men Post-it Notes

A few post-it note drawings from home and on my lunch breaks at work. I really enjoy playing with shapes and design, and every now and then it's fun to draw my favorite super heroes. There's a bit of nostalgia mixed with this. Growing up, I loved playing the X-Men video games for Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. Those games hooked me for life (in a good way) and are part of the reason I love to draw.

Thank you for visiting!

Cats in a Scarf

Happy Valentine's Day :)

Cartoon Monster Designs

This was an embroidery design assignment from work and I wanted to share a little bit of my process. The top image is the sew out of the design after being digitized, the middle image is the vector art and the bottom image is the pencil rough. My job is making the drawings and the vector art. You can find the machine and hand embroidery files at Urbanthreads.

I usually start with a pencil sketch to get approved before going on to Adobe Illustrator and drawing it again on the computer. The process seams to change depending on my confidence with the subject. Sometimes I use thumbnails, sometimes it's really loose and gestural drawings. In this case I stayed pretty tight and clean and also tried to keep each monster unique. I get so much inspiration from animation and character design artists and am always looking for ways to plug that into my drawings at work.

Thank you for stopping by and checking out the art. And thank you everyone out there for making your own creations and sharing them with the world! Cooking, quilting, designing, crafting... everything. It's a treat to share art on this blog and a treat to experience what everyone else it making in the world.

:)

The MAD Scientist

and his faithful companion... Professor MeowPurr

Superheros and Villains!

The first image are some character designs of superheros for kids. This was sort of like a dream to get this assignment for work. Definitely would like to do more cartooning and character design art in the future. 

The bottom image is a drawing of my favorite Marvel villain/vigilante, Venom. It was drawn today over my lunch break. The goal was to do a 15 minute sketch but it turned into 30 minutes. It was exciting; giving myself a time limit really made me think about how I was going to make what was all ready created in my head, and then actually do it on paper. The drawing was made with an ink brush and white out on blue construction paper glued to the back of computer paper.

Ninja Squirrel

Flying Monkey

Another drawing that makes me happy :)

Zombie Kitty

Hello, Zombo :)

A couple more trading cards from last month. Each card is drawn with marker and ink on 2.5" x 3.5" illustration board. Also, like before, these original artist trading cards are for sale ($20) and all proceeds go to the local food shelf in Wayzata, MN. If interested, shoot me an e-mail at taylorsmith03@hotmail.com

Thanks for stopping by!