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. :)

Sometimes I forget...

...how small we really are.

Thank you for stopping by and checking out my art! I really do appreciate it. :)

A Good Night Sleep

I love a good night's rest. Sometimes it doesn't happen but when it does, I do my best to remember to be grateful! :)

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. :)

Lil' Death Cartoon

aww  :)

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 :)

Pirate Cat

Just having some fun :)

The paint splatters and scribble inspiration comes from Skottie Young's awesome Cable/Deadpool comic book covers. Here's the reference.

Life Size Batman

I'm really happy to share this with everyone. This was a personal project done for a couple friends at church who have two boys that love the Batman. I thought it'd be cool to create the Dark Knight and give to them as a gift (something to hang up at home). To be honest, this project was more for me... I had a BLAST creating this start to finish. In my spare time, I like to draw comic and cartoon characters for fun... the difference with this project was that it was going to be for someone, and that made it all the more fun and close to my heart. Also, my girlfriend Heidi was away on a mission trip for three weeks, so this was a nice way to keep busy :)

The first step was drawing little thumbnails. Then, when I found a pose I liked, Heidi took some reference photos of me modeling in the front of the mirror. It was pretty funny and I realized how cool she is and lucky I'm with her :) Even though the photo shoot might have been unnecessary, I really wanted to "kill it" on this project, so I did my homework and gathered as much reference before starting the project (anatomy books, photos, etc.)

Next, I drew out Batman with pencil and inks on bristol board and scanned him into the computer for digital coloring. Since the final piece was going to be around five feet tall, I scanned the artwork in at 1200 DPI! The final digital file was under 300 megabytes, but my PC is sort of dated so every time I opened it or saved it in Photoshop, it took about 3-4 minutes to finish. After the coloring was finished, and I showed the art to a few friends for critique, I made several more adjustments and brought him to the printer. At work we have a plotter printer that I used. I think it's inkjet instead of laserjet so the colors where a little "less true" to what was seen on the computer.

The file took 30 minutes to be read by the printer and printed! The funny thing was that it didn't print the whole image and cut off a little bit of his foot! I tried it a second time with different adjustments in white space around Batman and the same thing happened. It wasn't a big deal though; I just printed off the part of his foot that was missing on the laserjet printer and pasted it on top of the big version.

The color difference of the laserjet and the inkjet is a little obvious but not a big deal. Prior to the printing, I found a big piece of cardboard at the recycling center and used it as a backing to the print out. The print out was spray mounted on top of the cardboard and then using scissor and box cutter, I cut out a silhouette of Batman from the cardboard leaving a white boarder around the figure.

And here's the final digital artwork.

My favorite part of this project was coloring Batman on the computer. The coolest part though is that I got to do something I love and then share it with others. With the second print out that cut off at the foot, I gave to my coworker who also has kids who love Batman and it was hung up above one of their beds. He sent me a picture and his kid's bed has Batman bed sheets so it looks rad hanging above it!

Our pastor at church said something really cool that stuck with me. He encouraged us to use our passions and find a way to fill a "need" in the world. I can remember experiencing this amazing feeling of joy when I was drawing caricatures at theme parks. There's something about doing a piece of art for someone who really loves and appreciates it that is so rewarding. When you can give someone something that you loved creating... it's pretty awesome.

:)

John Singer Sargent Quote

"Cultivate an ever continuous power of observation. Wherever you are, be always ready to make slight notes of postures, groups and incidents. Store up in the mind... a continuous stream of observations from which to make selections later. Above all things get abroad, see the sunlight and everything that is to be seen."

I love this quote. It reminds me of the importance of practicing mindfulness, being in the present (rather than you mind wandering in thoughts) and getting out to see the world.



On a side note, I've been drawing up the Dark Knight for fun in the evenings. The plan is to print it out to be five feet tall, mount it on cardboard/foam core and hang it up on a wall. The file is HUGE! Put it this way, it takes about three minutes to save and open the file in Photoshop :) More to come soon. For now, here are a couple screen shots of the work in progress. (The Magneto image is from the Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 game art and is being used for reference).

Season Panels

This was a fun little project I did at work (Embroidery Library) with the theme of nature and the change of seasons. The top image is how they turned out before handing off the project to the digitzers and the bottom image is the thumbnail sketches. In these four panels, I tried to create them to stand alone individually but look good if they were used together. I like doing drawings that go together for a series. Maybe it's something about designing them so that they all look unified. I also enjoy doing thumbnails and environment sketches now and then. Just another way to play with shapes, which is something I love to do.

Halloween Cat

Happy (early) Halloween! Black cats and and jack o' lants are the theme :)
This was a design I did for Urban Threads recently. Inspired yet again by the art of Skottie Young, the drawing above was a quick sketch to bring to a design planning meeting. A lot of my "rough" drawings are actually pretty tight, but this one wasn't as much the case. I think that's what I liked about it... not so much the art but the mentality of being open minded and just letting what ever comes through me (while drawing) to do so. I'm learning to silence my "inner critic" more and it feels really good and hopefully reflects in the art.

Hope you're enjoying the season and thanks for stopping by!

Snowed in on a Sunday

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!

Illustration Friday: "Bottled"

This week for Illustration Friday the theme is "bottled." This is the first time I've participated with this group and it was a lot of fun and a good challenge. My personal goal was to do this as quickly as I could (thumbnails to a finish) with out second guessing my first instincts. Comments and feedback are welcome.

On a side not, I discovered another great resource for illustration online. At Illustration Mundo, you can listen to a bunch of great pod casts with artists, illustrators, designers, directors, etc. Definitely a HUGE resource for anyone who does illustration or is an artist. Can't emphasise that enough! Some how these pod casts are related to Escape from Illustration Island which is another great resource that I'm learning about.

I just wanted to say a big thank you to the people that contribute their time and efforts to these sites. What a great way to share with the community and be a hub for inspiration.