Boxers or Briefs?

The next time you fly, be a pioneer! Be the first to board your plane wearing my patented Cargo Undies®. Cargo Undies® come with my break through pocket technology that allows you to take along bomb making materials AND a pocket full of tater tots, for those long international flights. No more fooling around with that pesky Duct Tape! And Cargo Undies® come in both Boxers and Briefs.

Call now, operators are standing by...

4th day of Christmas

four (4) calling birds... using iPhones, of course...

UNDONE

Christmas was almost UNDONE this year by the swine flu. But not to worry... all is OK.

A Merry Christmas to all!

3rd day of Christmas

and the third little french fry cried "Oui, Oui, Oui" all the way home...

two turtledoves

Ahhh... and just who wouldn't want a pair of turtledoves? They are the perfect Christmas gift! They crawl around on the ground, and then try to fly away only to find they can't fly very far and fall back to earth. It's hours of entertainment for all!

A partridge in a pear tree

OK... this is a stand in. The partridge went to Argentina for the holidays, and the pear tree was chopped down for firewood.

And so it goes...

HATCH

I HATCHed some dinos recently. I got a request to make five (5) little images of ANYTHING I wanted for the PackRat game played on Facebook. It is a game of finding and collecting images. The incubation period of hatching these dinos turned out to be a rather long one. The challenge was to make an image that is 64 pixels square. That is pretty small. My first idea was to do some dinosaurs. I have liked dinos ever since I was a little kid. So, while watching some bad TV shows in the evenings, I would sketch dinos and see if I could cram them into a tiny little squares.

Then... I started thinking that maybe birds would be easier to fit in a square. So I started drawing birds. I liked the birds, but on another day I started thinking about marine animals. That would be fun. This is what happens when anything goes. I had a three way tag team wrestling match going for a few days between all of these things. Finally, I came back to my original dinos idea. Dinos rule!

Here is my drawing board with some of the many pages of sketches I did while working on this project. Click on it to see it DINO sized.

Unbalanced

Some people think you have to be UNBALANCED to wear your hair like this guy.

Last week I ate in a trendy, happenin' restaurant in Nashville. I know it was a cool place by the look of the young people working there. One dude had a very thin, razor sharp mohawk. It was not this color, but it was very impressive. We were wondering what he would do if he had to wear a hairnet. With a hairstyle like that, he couldn't be an up and coming country music star. He couldn't wear the obligatory cowboy hat. I guess he will be stuck behind that counter for a bit longer.

Fast... NOT!

You don't have to be FAST to outrun zombies... just faster than the guy running with you.

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Click to enlarge either image

It's October? Already? Where has this year gone?

October makes me think of Halloween, and Halloween makes me think of costumes and monsters. When I was about Junior High age I was fascinated by the classic monsters from old movies. Such as Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, the Mummy... and the Creature from the black Lagoon. I thought this being the month of Halloween and all, I would draw up some of my favorite monsters. First up is the Creature from the Black Lagoon... out walking his pet FLYING fish, Seymour.

Walk Like Groucho Day!

It's a GERM of an idea. Let's see if we can spread it around like Swine Flu... or H1N1 as they call it. Which really looks like Hiney flu, doesn't it? But I digress. This is Groucho's birthday and Richard Thompson is trying to make it the official "Walk Like Groucho" day. I suggest you go to Walmart and walk like Groucho down the tube sock aisle. No one will even notice you there. They are all busy wearing their Three Wolf Moon Shirts and combing their mullets.

(P.S. For a good time, read the reviews on Amazon for the Three Wolf Moon shirt.)

PATTERN

Not much has been happening here on JONESAPALOOZA lately, has it? It's high time to slap up some thing new! ...Let's DO IT!

I was drawing a chameleon the other day, and had the thought that I could work him into an Illustration Friday image. So... here you go. Meet Rufus, a chameleon who is having trouble finding the right PATTERN to use for blending into his surroundings.

This is pencil and Photoshop... click on the image to enlarge. I dare you.

Thanks for looking!

WELCOME

(click to enlarge)

I watched the amazing BOBBY CHIU paint a monster (actually several monsters) on his blog... and then just HAD to draw one myself. I grabbed a pencil and started drawing. Something fuzzy... with wings... and ears... and a tail. I haven't drawn with a pencil like this in a long time. It was fun. I usually use a mechanical pencil to sketch with. It is handy to just click to get more lead without a pencil sharpener... but I picked up a "Thoro Black" drawing pencil and it made such NICE lines! Sometimes just a simple change of tools or materials can cause you to have a different experience when you draw.

After I drew the monster, I thought I would add a WELCOME sign on the cloud. Since WELCOME is the IF word of the week. You just wouldn't believe how many clouds don't welcome flying monsters. It's a pity. : )

I scanned in the drawing and then had some fun playing around with layers and colors in Photoshop. I have a lot to learn there, but it is becoming more familiar to me all the time. So that's it. Go watch Bobby, grab a pencil, and draw a monster.

STRONG

Are you STRONG enough to hold up a door?

Kids... don't try this at home! This should only be attempted by a highly trained, professional door holding monster with a good insurance plan.

Caution

One should exercise CAUTION when attempting to belch the alphabet underwater! Kids... don't try this at home...

Wrapped

If you go out walking your pet, make sure the leash is WRAPPED around your hand, or the critter might run off!

This picture was inspired by the Chicken Nugget Lemon Tooty blog. The idea is to find a drawing by one of the kids and then do it in your own style. The drawing that grabbed my attention first was great! There really wasn't much I had to do but draw it and WRAP my style around it. Cool monsters!

Here is what I worked from.

There is still time to participate in this fun challenge... if you are really FAST!

SHARKweek day5

pencil and Photoshop

Sometimes I see a flock of birds in a yard pecking around. They look like a little herd of cows out to pasture. And I wonder... what if birds were the size of cows?

Imagine walking along and having a cow sized bird land right in front of you. From out of nowhere. That sharp beak, those talons, the IMPATIENCE and jerky movements... I'd be scared. Really scared! The only thing worse than that would be flying sharks!

This is the last episode of SHARKweek for this year. Hope it was fun for all 12 of you who followed along for the week. I'm gonna take a nap now...keep an eye out for large birds or flying sharks for me, will you?...

SHARKweek day4

pencil and Photoshop (click to enlarge)

It's a struggle to keep SHARKweek going sometimes. Last night around 9 PM I was doodling up some ideas. Some were pretty good, but I just lacked the energy to do them. I was out of steam. (I am a steam-powered, steampunk artist) So I called it quits for the day.

This morning after a cup of java, I selected the easiest idea I had, and knocked this one out. Again, I am experimenting with Photoshop. I found a texture box to click on the brushes and also wet edges. I don't think any of that will actually show up on the screen, but I think it might if it was being printed.

Well, enough of this rambling. Only one more day of SHARKweek to go!

SHARKweek day3

pencil and Photoshop (click to enlarge)

SpongeBob Squarepants meets SpongeShark Mickeypants.

Around 8:30 last night I remembered that I needed another image for my ongoing SHARKweek here. So I started thinking about the name SpongeBob and playing around with it. I wanted to make it fit a shark somehow. I came up with SpongeShark and then tried to think of some other kind of pants to add to the name... and came up with Mickey pants. At 9:00 any idea is a good idea. : )

After I had drawn my shark, I thought the picture needed a little something else. Why not toss in SquareBob himself? I added him floating upside down and that was it. I had just started coloring it when a big thunderstorm blew into town and I had to shut down and unplug the computer.

This morning I finished it up and here you go! Dang... now I need another idea...

SHARKweek day2

Who I would MOST like to see eaten by a shark.