Don't Sweat the Cute Stuff

Austin

2011-10-05T17:44:00.001-07:00

Eye-Gore

2011-04-28T11:09:00.001-07:00

IF - Rescue

2010-03-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

This is what was inspired by this weeks IF word - Rescue.
The mermaid girl is rescuing the sea turtle from a fishing net.

I will be working this up to a finished illustration.
It will probably take more than a week though because I am working up several rough ideas to select from to take to finished art.
I'll edit this post with the tight line art for this image if I can get it done before Friday.
If you would like to see the other roughs I am working on, they can be viewed here.

Fall

2009-12-30T10:28:00.001-08:00

Process Report -

Yesterday I finished the revision to the last assignment of my illustration class.

The revision was self imposed. I didn't like the digital collage version that I made so I decided to redo the art.

Here's the process I went through.

The original rough...

As I remember them the comments during the critique were as follows...

She looks very uncomfortable, both in body position and by having her straddle that very big branch.

There's too much going on with the multiple nests, squirell, the mouse, and the bug.

I agreed with the comments so I searched the "net" for some images of kids sitting in trees, as well as, robins, and fall clothes.

Then I reworked the rough and came up with this...

The girls clothes stayed the same.

Her posture was improved and I changed the tree to have a curving horizontal trunk that I found on the "net."

I added another horizontal trunk so she would have a place to rest her foot.

I added another robin and positioned him so that the beaks of both birds pointed to her hand offering up the piece of sandwich. This helped improve the focal point of the image.

I removed one nest from the bottom of the image, the squirell, mouse, and bugs.

The mouse will be appearing in another illustration along with several more.

I took this rough and decided that I would do an inked version.

One of my areas to focus on this year is black and white line art.

I believe I need more for my portfolio. And I like doing it.

So, this is the first inked image. It's more of a coloring book,open feel.

The type would be printed in black in the upper left leaves.

It could be used as is, or flat color could be added using Illustrator for a screen printed feel.

I liked this one, but I wanted to do a "fully inked version."

So I inked it again...

This time I used "heavy blacks" to make sure the focus stayed on the girls hand.

I focussed on texture and giving the robins some "personality."

I really like this version. It will go onto my web site and to my agent.

I still had the urge to paint the image in color to get that "fall feeling" with the color.

So I went back to the rough and transfered it to a piece of watercolor board and made a tight pencil drawing. Then I did an under painting using watercolors.

It came out like this...

I removed the upper right nest.

I have to say that this is the first time I purposely started with an underpainting, and I was worried about how the final art was going to turn out. So I put it away for a few days because I wanted to start the next step of painting it with gouache when I was able to sit down and focus on it properly. The holidays were here and there was no time for an involved painting session.

Around the 27th my wife got tired of looking at me a day and told me I needed to get back to work. So I spent all day out in the studio and painted the final version.

I was still worried about how it was going to turn out, so I started with the robin on the left to build up some confidence.

He came out like this...

I liked the way he turned out. So with my confidence restored I continued on with the rest of the painting.

It turned out like this...

I like it. It's not the usual bright "Yellow, Red, Orange" fall pallet. It's more of a muted version.

Now I can say I am done with this image. I don't feel the need to do any other versions of it.

I am considering using the multiple images in some sort of self promotional way.

There were a few revelations that came from doing several versions of this image.

The first was that I have always liked doing black and white art.

So I will do more.

The second is that I like to do animals realistically with some personality.

So I will do more.

The third is that my work improves when I search for reference materials and use them to influence the final art instead of making everything up from my imagination/memory all of the time.

So I will do more.

The fourth is I like to paint. And I need to develop my color sense and modeling of the form.

So I will do more.

Lastly I have talent that people want and I need to let them know it with self promotion.

So I will do more.

So my recommendation to you for 2010 is "to do more."

Good luck in the new year!

Color revision time.

2009-11-20T17:19:00.000-08:00

At this weeks Illustration class we showed our work for the emergent reader.

The comments on my work were mixed.

The main one that I need to focus on to improve my art is that the backgrounds are interfering with the ability to see the characters.

It was recommended that I change the colors, remove some color and show "the white of the page", and or make the background colors flat/solid and not so washy.

With that in mind I have played around in Photoshop a bit to do some quick revisions...

This is the original painting...

This is with a solid lavender for the upper part and a solid brown for the bottom part without touching the middle red and white bit.

This one has a solid blue top part, solid red and white stripe, and a solid brown bottom part.
This one has a solid white upper part without touching anything else.

Let me know your opinion on the best way to proceed.

These are the "finished" pieces I showed in class...

Even tighter line art

2009-11-05T10:05:00.001-08:00

These are the the line drawings that I print out onto watercolor paper.
I will reduce the opacity to about 10 or 15% so that I can see the lines to do the watercolor painting .
After the painting is done I will go over it with either pen or a combination of pen and colored pencil.
After the paintings are finished I will scan them and add the type using Adobe Illustrator.

I should say that I don't usually revise my art this many times.
Usually the process is roughs, tight pencils, transfer to the painting surface, and then paint.

Updates on IF art

2008-10-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

I have updated some of my recent IF drawings from past weeks.
I changed the line work on this one by making the out lines of the foreground characters thicker.

I'll be painting this one in the future.

I colored these with markers as studies for painting in the future.

And this last one is the line art for last weeks IF- Sugary.

IF-Clique

2008-09-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

The word of the week at IF is "Clique."

When I hear the word I think of a switch being pulled or a button being pushed, not a specific group of people.
Since the word is clique and no click my mind started thinking of French buttons being pushed and French switches being pulled.
So ... for some reason the question, "What noise does a light switch make when Toulouse Lautrec turns off the lights?"
So I started picturing Toulouse up on a stool with very long legs using his cane to turn off the lights.
So now I have Toulouse Lautrec on my mind but I want to be true to the meaning of the word Clique.
I also wanted to draw people since most of the time I draw animals.
So thinking about Clique more I pictured a school hallway.
Then I thought of girls because they seem to be the most "Clique-ish" in high school.
Those were the elements floating in my head that resulted in this...

The scene is a meeting of the "Lautrecies" clique interviewing a potential new meber to see if he "measures up" or down in this case. Across the hall 2 members of the "Floppy cats with flower pot hats" clique are wispering and gossiping about the potential new member because he's actually a "plant" of theirs.
Notice the pot on his head and the discarded floppy cat on the floor.

I'll be coloring this one up in the future.

I also did 2 drawing s for last weeks IF- Island.
I didn't get them posted though. So here they are...

This one started out as just the bug sitting on his Cheerio island.
I didn't think it worked well enough for island so I added the rest of the guys and decided to come up with a new idea.

I like this one much better.

The mouse has hitched a ride in the old message in a bottle only to end up being hijacked by the pirate seagull.

IF-Clutter

2008-09-09T08:52:00.000-07:00

This weeks IF word is Clutter.
I've been busy with work and remodeling around the house for the past few months so by the time I get an idea and get it finished it's usually Thursday night or Friday morning. Too late for posting. Most times I don't get the idea finished.
Since I have a few ideas Cluttering up my sketch book/computer from IF's past I figured they would be appropriate for this weeks post.
The first one is from the week when Seed was the word-

As you can see I grew up watching cartoons in the 70s-80s.
Obviously I didn't have time to finish coloring it up.

This one is from a couple of weeks ago when the word was Detach-

I looked up the word and came up with the definition of Detachment, which referred to a special person or group sent on a mission. In this case Pirates use the detachment to send one pirate who is unliked or has been especially bad out on a dingy with the captains parrot, who is disliked because he never shuts up. So the detachment is a form of punishment.
I finished the line art for this one but didn't get a chance to color it or come up with copy to fill all of the word balloons.

This one is from the word Fog-
My idea was that this undiscovered species of sloth - the giant landwalking 2 toed sloth - was used as a form of transportation by the local pygmies. the down side of riding the sloth is that he is very gassy and creates his own fog as he goes along. Since sloths are slow you're in for one smelly, foggy ride.
This is just the sketch. That's as far I got.

Well that's cleaned up some clutter from my mind and moved it over to the internet.

Work is alien to me

2007-09-27T13:03:00.001-07:00

This is another sketchbook inspired piece.
Just an alien at work.

Chicken with Carrots

2007-09-26T14:49:00.000-07:00

This was inspired by a quick sketch of a chicken in my sketchbook.
Watercolor and pen on watercolor paper.

IF-Juggle

2007-09-24T19:02:00.000-07:00

This is a a page out of a bok that I'm working on.
This is before the textures and pattern work is applied.
The elephant's shirt gets to be an orange color after texuring so it sepeartes from the border.
This look is different than what I usually do because they asked me to try and match another artists look.

New Web art

2007-09-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

I finished the art that I will be using as my home page when I revamp my web site.

The art was painted with watercolors with a little bit of colored pencil detail and the line art was done with a mixture of PITT artist pens.

This is the original sketch

Illustrated Alphabet Letter X

2007-09-10T07:13:00.000-07:00

X is for Xylophone.

I was asked to "pinch hit" on the letter X for our upcoming SCBWI Gallery show this October in Chesterton,IN.
I didn't want to go with the standard X is for Xylophone at first. Because it's standard and I don't normally do standard.
I played with the idea of XXL and doing a scene with a giant and some small characters, and I played with the idea of X marks the spot where I was going to do a pirate hunting for treasure. But I figured that was getting too far away from the X, so I decided to go with xylophone after all but not make the instrument the focus of the image.
The art was made with watercolors, and pen on watercolor board.

IF- Visitors

2007-08-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

This is the rough art for the new home page of my web site. It will welcome "Visitors" to the site.

The Udder piece of art

2007-08-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

This is one of the options I had come up with for the Illustrated alphabet project.
My wife saw the line art for this one and said, "You're not sending in that one are you?"
"Yes", I said because I like to mess with her.
"No you're not." "What else did you draw" she asked because she knows I do multiple ideas at this stage.
So I showed her the one in the post below this one, and she told me to send that one in.
And not to bother finishing up the cow one.
Well, I'm a guy and I thought it was funny so I worked it up in the past couple of days.
Below is what it turned out looking like.

The art is supposed to be up for bid at a gallery show so I think the wife was right in picking the cute one below.
I'll post more about it with pics of the show in October.

2007-08-10T10:09:00.000-07:00

My SCBWI group is going to be showing at the Chesterton Art Center in Chesterton,IN during the month of October.
Part of the show is an illustrated alphabet. Each participant was randomly assigned a letter to illustrate in a 7" by 10" image area.
My letter was U.

How many U words can you see in this picture? I drew 13 of them. If you find more than that let me know.

I'm pretty sure that one of them is so well hidden that you will never "see" it.
Here's a hint. It's right in front of your eyes.

All of the art will be for sale or available to bid on.
So if you live near enough to Chesterton, IN come on out and take a look at the art.

Check this out!

2007-08-10T09:22:00.001-07:00

My first book!

Painted frame art

2006-05-03T19:28:00.000-07:00

These are my latest experiment in trying new directions in painting.
They're made of pine, particle board, and MDF.
The characters are cut from MDF on my scroll saw and sanded a bit.
Then everything is painted with acrylics.
The lady bugs are set apart because I plan to add a plaque with a sappy message about family or something as soon as I find a good one.

Fez bird

2006-05-03T09:42:00.000-07:00

Here's the newest bird painting.
He's a Shriner bird with a heart.
5" x 7" acrylic on canvas board.

Hang tags

2006-04-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

I was wandering through Michaels Craft store a while back and found these blank hang tags on sale so I thought I'd get them and see if I could do anything with them. They measure about 2" by 5". I colored them with pen and marker - some have colored pencil on top of the marker.
The marker partially bled though to the back so I have to figure out what to do about the back side. I'll probably glue a decorative paper to it. The space at the bottom is meant for the "To: From: "
These are the results.... Let me know what you think.

The 3 tenors

2006-04-07T11:40:00.000-07:00

These three have been in Florida all winter practicing their 3 part harmony.
Now they're back in town and ready to sing all through the summer.
5" x 7" Acrylic on canvas panel.

Lil' Red

2006-04-07T11:15:00.000-07:00

Lil' Red is happy to see the first lady bug of spring.
4" x 6" acrylic on canvas panel.

3 feet colored

2006-03-29T11:06:00.000-08:00

I got alot of positive responses on the black and white version of this piece, many asking to see it in color.
I'm glad I listened, because it turned out great.

Birds in progress

2006-03-21T12:15:00.000-08:00

These are in the beginning stages.
All of the works you see on this site are for sale.
If you are interested in buying anything you see you can e-mail me privately for the size and a quote.

Bird Series

2006-03-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

I am currently developing a painting style using acrylics on canvas.
This series of paintings has birds as it's theme.
The paintings are more decorative than illustrative as they don't have much of a story to them.
Here's the first batch.