National Chicken Month!

OOPS! September has almost slipped by and I have not posted this CHICKEN! This is from a calendar I did many months ago. It's not too late, though... take a chicken to lunch today! Or... have a chicken for lunch today... whatever. :o)

JUGGLE

SocMo uses his awesome JUGGLING skills to draw a crowd as he continues his run for president of the United States.

The SocMo for president campaign is now gaining momentum across the country. Ones of tens of people are deciding that SocMo is probably good enough for them. If you want to join them and support a candidate that has no spine and is made of socks, then join the SocMo for President campaign.

If you have absolutely nothing else to do, and you like to spend your valuable time poking around sites on your computer, then you may want to CLICK HERE and see SocMo in his SECOND appearance on Illustration Friday (October 2005)... AND he is Juggling! WOO HOO! Hey... I actually entertained myself, looking back at some of the old posts.

WEDDING

SocMo thinks a WEDDING is a great place to get in a little campaigning for his presidential run.... plus there is free cake!

SOCMO-mentum

SocMo's exploratory committee says that he now has the MOMENTUM for a presidential run. Yes, SocMo is making a run for the Whitehouse... or the outhouse... whichever is closer. If none of the other candidates inspire you, join the millions... uh... thousands... er... tens of people who have decided to GO SOCMO!

If you would like to join the SocMo bandwagon and a chart a new direction for our country, just head on over to the SocMo for Prez Store. You will be able to pick up a T-shirt, mug, calendar, or mini-poster of your fearless candidate. Wear a T-shirt to work or school and enjoy the blank stares and puzzled looks you get. Dribble coffee down your shirt from your I GO SOCMO mug. Count off the days till the whole campaign mess is over on your I GO SOCMO calendar. Carry your bowling ball around in the I GO SOCMO tote bag.

Act now! ... operators are standing by... help spread the word!

MOMENTUM

The disc chasing doggy is using his MOMENTUM to catch the frisbee which is using its MOMENTUM to sail away. This is something like the nature program where the lion is chasing the poor little antelope. But no one gets hurt in this version. I have been told by experts that plastic doesn't feel pain. So there. :o)

I got an e-mail asking about this painting I did a while back. Someone was interested in buying it or a print or something. They have a dog that they play frisbee with and they liked my image. So.... I went to Cafepress and applied the image to some items to see if that would work for them. If you are interested in a disc chasing dog on a T-shirt just check out the products at Jones*Mart. You can be the only one in your town... or state... or continent to have a Disc Doggy shirt. Be unique.

While I was messing around with this image, I realized it would work very well for the Illustration Friday word. It was painted in acrylic on a panel. Thanks for looking, folks!

line art

Being led to the furnace... can you say asbestos underwear?


Coming out of the furnace... it's party time!
So... I had to do some B&W images for them 3 guys being tossed into the fiery furnace. Now, what were their names? Moe, Larry, and Curly? Anyway, I was happy, but a wee bit surprised that my sketches were approved. I like to do little characters that are 2 heads tall. They are funny looking and very cartoony. But they got OK'd like this... so I inked them up.

In the old days I would just turn in the line art and that would be that. But now, since I send everything on a digital file, I had to convert this to something. I scanned at 600 dpi and saved them as bitmapped tiff images. I have been told that 600 dpi bitmapped tiffs are the way to go for line art. You get a nice crisp line in print this way.

The new thing for me on these is that I tried adding some halftone dots for just a bit of tone. I think it worked OK considering I was pretty much making it up as I went along. I am not a Pro with Photoshop. I sloooowly figure things out and this is my latest discovery.

But... I LIKE the dots. Three cheers for Photoshop!

ALPHABET

SocMo can belch the ALPHABET underwater!

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SocMo is back by popular demand! The word for this week's IF challenge did not inspire me at all on Friday. No ideas came on Saturday either. Sunday I had an idea dealing with alphabet soup. it was OK, but I wasn't really excited by it. It would do if nothing else came along. Monday I was looking at some IF entries and saw some alphabet letters that were very ROUND. Hmmm... round letters... like BUBBLES! Bubbles are underwater.... SocMo can be burping the alphabet UNDERWATER!

BINGO! Once I have an idea that I like, it is fun do draw it up.

One word of caution.... don't try this at home. SocMo is a professional, highly skilled underwater alphabet belcher.

You can click on the image to get up close and personal with it.

VISITORS

This is something I have been working on this week and it fits the Illustration Friday theme. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are just VISITORS in the fiery furnace. They won't be staying long. Got places to go... things to do...

This was more fun 'n games with Photoshop. I threw in some brick texture from a building I took a picture of downtown. The idea here is that the guys are "cool" in the furnace, hence the blue colors and shades. Also gets that blue/orange thing going on, doncha know. A great color combo.

I'm still working on finishing the 100 animals that I posted sketches of. It's turning out to be a loooooong process...

stay tuned....

hockey player

Well, I took another stab at making an image with Photoshop tools. The good news is... I keep learning new things each time I try this. At this point I am more focused on just making the shapes than I am with designing the image. So this guy is a bit wonky.

Isn't wonky a fun word?

CAPTAIN (kangaroo)

Well, the Illustration Friday word for this week did NOT inspire me to any funny business. However, I am still interested in figuring out how to use Photoshop to create stylized images... so I took a crack at making Captain Kangaroo. And yes... I am so old I do remember Captain Kangaroo. (sigh)

I know it may not look like much, but I struggled for about 2.5 hours in making this. The learning curve for me is very steep. I feel like I am groping around in the dark. I tried something different this week in making the image. I used the pen tool. It worked really well for me. With a lot more practice I think I could get the hang of this.

While thinking of the word CAPTAIN, I remembered a movie I liked a lot. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a fun sci-fi adventure film that came out in 2004. It was created on a bunch of Macs. If you like action/adventure films... check this one out. It has some great flying machines and robots. There is nothing better than flying machines and robots!

Oh... you can click on the Captain to see what he is like on steroids.

EMERGENCY

This was mostly an experiment. On a whim, I sat down and armed with only the Photoshop selection tools, the paint bucket the dissolve brush, and a desire to try someting different, I tried to make a picture. I have never done this before so it was a real challenge to try to make a picture this way. It would be a slam-dunk using Illustrator... but I wanted to see what I could do with Photoshop.

I found it hard to do what I wanted to do. With a little more practice and experimentation, I might figure out some things. If anyone knows of a tutorial anywhere that demonstrates how Photoshop is used like this let me know.

Click on the image to see a larger version... if you dare.

Thanks for dropping in and looking.

animal 100!

Animal #100... a zebra with a balloon! A bit anticlimactic, eh? Actually, on the page the zebra appears on, I have to draw 100 balloons. Oh, joy. I just couldn't face that. I am thinking I will make a group of 5 balloons, and then copy and paste them around till I have 100. Photoshop to the rescue.

I actually just got the sketches back and see that there are quite a few changes on them. Mostly larger balloons for the text to go in and things like that. Out of 100 spots, you have to expect they will want to make changes on some of them. That's just how it goes.

Since I switched to the new Blogger recently, I now have the option of Labels. If you go to the sidebar and click on ANIMALS, you can see ALL 100 animals on the same page. Cool beans!

the humor of Publix #8

I am not rich... but I am fairly crispy...

animals 96-99

We are almost done! Here is a chipmunk putting beans in an egg carton. I have to draw an egg carton from time to time. I do't like to draw egg cartons. I always have to go find one and look at it. Next we have a worm on a clock and a seal clapping. I like the excited hedgehog the best of these.

the humor of Publix #7

sa-Wheeeeat!

animals 92-95

Today we have a counting octopus, a llama with a party horn, a roaring lion and lizard that collects candles. I have a collection too. For some odd reason, when I eat an ice cream bar on a stick, I lick off the stick... really good... (lick, lick, suck, suck, lick, lick) and lay the stick down. I was cleaning up the top of my desk recently and found I had two fist sized bundles of little wooden sticks. Wonder what I can build with them?

the humor of Publix #6

Creepy crawly goodness! Pretty clever doncha think? I would certainly rather have these crawling around my house than the OTHER kind. If I stomped on one of these, I could just sweep it up and put it on my ice cream.

animals 87-91

We are breaking into the 90s today. How exciting! 90 animals that is. Temperature wise, it is going to hit 100 degrees today WITH humidity. Ah... summer.

Can you stand on one foot with flamingo for 87 seconds? Give it a try. Or you can do math problems with spider, or try on hats with horse or check out the calendar with crocodile. And then there is bee. Bee is busy (bees are always busy, right?) buzzing around 9 flowers with 10 petals each.

Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting instalment... same bat time... same bat channel...

MISSING

SocMo has found his MISSING dart board, but can't remember where it was hanging.

If you are visiting from Illustration Friday, I am still posting more animal sketches every day plus some fun cracker boxes. Cracker boxes? Yep. CLICK HERE to take a look.

the humor of Publix #5

and... we're back! That's what they say on TV, and I wanted to say it too. One more time...... aaaaaaand we're back!

If you are just joining us, I am posting some boxes I have found in my local grocery store that have funny labels on them. Of course, today's box makes a reference to that classic movie, Casablanca. Humphrey Bogart looks at Ingrid Bergman in the last scene as the plane is waiting to leave and says, "lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" My favorite part of the movie.