the Letter

Here is an illustration I did recently. I think it turned out Okay. i tried using a pencil on the drawing instead of my usual pen and ink. I like the softer look, but it was a booger trying to color it.

Nashville flood poster

My son, Kyle, has designed a great poster that will support flood relief in Nashville. You can click HERE and buy one. Don't be shy... Nashville needs your help.

Angel vs donkey

the sketch


the final art
I recently made this illustration for a magazine article. The segment I illustrated was a brief story about a donkey in a Christmas pageant that saw the spotlit angel in the balcony. The donkey HEE-HAWED and sat down to the delight of the audience.

As I was creating the pink fog in the balcony on a Photoshop layer, I was ever so thankful for digital art. I'm not sure how I would have handled painting the fog with watercolors like I used to do. It took a bit of experimentation to get the effect using the brush tool and low opacity, but the beauty is I could try over and over till I got something I liked. Yay for digital art!

Postcard art

I just finished up some art for a postcard ad and thought I would share it with you.
The assignment was a frazzled teacher with three kids running amuck. Don't you love the word "amuck?" Try to slip it in your conversation today when you are talking with someone. This was the first sketch I submitted. It didn't fly... the teacher looked too old. Oh, well...

Sketch 2wo went over better. So, maybe I should have done this one first. Mental note to self: Send second sketch first next time...

Here is the final image with lots of bright colors as requested, a twist of lime and a dash of Tabasco.

Pet Shop

Here are some of the pets I designed that you can collect by playing PackRat on Facebook. It is a challenge for me to make icons that are so small. I try to make the images as simple as I can, and then cross my fingers and hope they look good when they are reduced down to 64x64 pixels. Click to enlarge.

Pet Shop collection

I just completed a set of Pet Shop images for the PackRat game on Facebook. This is the hamster. Sign up and see if you can collect them all.

hamster

Here is a sketch of a furry little friend that will be part of a current project. The sketch looks different blown up to this size. Supersize my hamster and give me an order of fries...

printed books

Now that I have told you all about illustrating the little educational books, I will show you the most recent copies I have received. *Drumroll*... aaaand here they are!
ta-daaaaaaa...

And here is a peek inside.

And now my next hurdle is to fight the Federal Taxes battle. Time to fire up TurboTax and chew on a few pencils... sigh...

book project - color

Well, I'm back from Argentina now and ready to 'splain the rest of this project to you. Argentina is very nice this time of the year and actually resembles my studio. In fact, it is EXACTLY like my studio.

When I took on the assignment of illustrating 3 books at the same time, I vastly underestimated the amount of work that was going to be. OY! So for the last month I have been working 12 hour days (8am-8pm) including weekends. OY, OY!

But the good news is, it is now finished! WOOT! While I am catching my breath, I will complete the process for you.


This is the scan of my inked page. It is scanned in at 300 dpi and 100% actual size.


Here is a detail shot of the mom and baby guppy. You can see my wobbly line work and see that all lines are touching... no gaps anywhere. This is important for me in quickly applying the color. Shapes that are not enclosed can be closed up and colored later, but it takes more time... and time is a very valuable thing on this project.


So, here we are. The finished illustration. The client always wants lots of bright colors for younger kids. So I stick to clean, bright colors and dump them in with the paintbucket in Photoshop. Bam, Bam, Bam! It is so quick. If I had to "paint" in all of the colors it would probably double the amount of time it would take to color these... and I don't have that time.

Once I have applied the flat colors I go back and do some actual painting. Like on the eggs. I think if I do a little bit of this here and there It helps add some variety and keeps everything from being so flat looking. I selected the blue of the water and ran a paint brush through it to give some variety there too. "A little dab will do ya" is my thinking. I don't like illustrations where everything has that airbrushed look, but a bit of softness here and there helps. I also change the black line to color on some things which makes the black lines on the main characters pop out more.

If you are interested in the nitty gritty of how I color in Photoshop, just go over to my sidebar and under LABELS click on Photoshop tutorial. This is a step by step of how I do it. I have a newer version of Photoshop now but the process is basically the same.

Well, that's it! I am glad to finally get this project and my blogging about it all wrapped up.

Oh... and I changed the title on this blog. Did you notice? What do you think of the new improved header?

book project - inking

I know what you are thinking. You think I forgot all about promising to come back and tell you about the next step of my book project. After all, that was a month ago. You think I am off hiking the Appalachian Trail in Argentina or something... WRONG! The fact is I have three of these books to illustrate and I have been working furiously to get the other two penciled in. I finally did, and now I am able to get to the inking phase of this book.

Here is my editor approved, 100% full size sketch with revisions and extra cheese. I put a sheet of Clearprint Design Vellum over it to do my inking on. In olden days of yesteryear, I used to trace the sketch onto watercolor paper with a lightbox so I could ink it and color it with watercolor. Now I can skip one whole time consuming step by going right to the inking stage on the vellum. At this point I can still make slight adjustments in the placement of things by just moving the vellum a bit to put the object in a slightly different position. The tweaking never ends...

Here are my archaic tools. I found this old ink bottle holder many years ago. It keeps my ink bottle from sliding off my drawing board. I don't like the narrow openings on most ink bottles so I found this little bottle with a wide mouth that I fit into the holder. A few rounds of duct tape helped it to fit in the hole better. Duct tape just makes everything better doesn't it? I have tried different pen points, but seem to just like the basic #102 crowquill available at any art store. And there is the little piece of paper where I test the ink to make sure it is flowing before I put the point on the REAL thing.

Here I am pretending to be inking, but I'm really just holding my pen while I fumble around with my camera in my left hand and try to take a picture. I have spent a large part of my life influenced by and imitating comic strips and editorial cartoons. I love the line work of many artists from Ronald Searle to Walt Kelly to Jeff MacNelly to Bill Watterson to Charles Schulz... the list goes on and on. I seem to be addicted to the black line. And I like the feel of drawing on real paper and inking with a real dip pen. I may end up doing all this digitally someday... SOMEday... but not today. Today I will get actual ink on my actual fingers. And it ain't easy to get that stuff off, believe me!

OK, now I have to get the linework into my computer and my Epson scanner does this for me. 80% of all the illustration I do fits on the basic 8.5 x 11 inch vellum and I can scan it. About 20% of the time I have a larger illustration and have to scan it in sections and stitch it together in Photoshop. Once I have scanned in the inked drawing, I can clean it up in Photoshop with the eraser. I usually end up dragging my finger through the wet ink somewhere and Photoshop has saved me thousands of dollars that I would have spent buying white out paint.

Oh, if you happened to miss out on the first installments of this project, just click on "book project" over on the side bar and you will be up to speed in no time. chop chop

Well, now we are all ready to color this piece. I will post something about that soon. But first... I need to go to Argentina and do some hiking.

propagate

SocMo likes to propagate dandelions in the spring.

I woke up early today and as I was lying in bed this idea came to me for the Illustration Friday word. I didn't have much time to spend on the illustration, so once again I dashed out a quick image and slapped it up here. Gotta get busy now with the rest of my day...

adrift

After an unfortunate accident while lighting a gas grill,
SocMo found himself ADRIFT in space.

olympics

SocMo is getting psyched up for the Winter Olympics!

muddy

The record snowfall melted away leaving a MUDDY mess, but SocMo quickly adapted by making a mudman.

We had snow on the ground for a whole week! That hasn't happened here for many years. It finally melted and we got 4 inches of rain to wash it away. We now have extreme sogginess.

After I penciled up this idea and scanned it, my problem became "How do you make something look like mud?" My only plan was to make it brownish and shiny. I played around with it for a while in Photoshop and at some point decided the mud needed more color. So I introduced a bit of color which made the mud a bit more interesting. As usual, at some point I get tired of messing with it all and pull the plug. And post it. So there you go.

What I'm reading

I went to the library and came back with a STACK of books! Heavy reading, no?

flip chart

I did 100 animal spots for this flip chart a loooong time ago. I finally got a copy of it, so I thought I would post a picture.

Here is one of the inside pages. Nice bright colors! I like it!

focused

When SocMo is FOCUSED on texting, bad things always happen to him.

I heard some science guys explain how multi-tasking is an illusion. We think we can do many things at once, but our brain can only focus on one thing at a time. It has to jump back and forth. This is very obvious to me when I try to read something in the paper while watching TV. When I read a headline, I totally miss what is being said on TV. And when I am listening to what is said on TV, I can't read the paper. Duh. The little old brain can't do both at the same time.

Just about every time I am annoyed by someone's driving... they sit at a green light too long, or drive reeeeeally slowly, I notice that they are using a phone. I know everyone thinks they can talk and drive at the same time, but I think we should really be FOCUSED on guiding that mass of steel we are propelling along the highway. Drive now... talk later.

OK... I'll get down from my soapbox now... I gotta pull a friend out of a manhole...

iPadawan

Have you ever wished you had a Jedi padawan with you when you were in a pickle and couldn't find your lightsaber? Well now you can. This handy iPadawan is just the right size to take along with you when you need a friend in a galaxy far far away...

iScroll

Just discovered in an ancient pyramid. The introduction of the iScroll with a writing stylus which lets you actually print words right on the parchment. Cutting edge Egyptian technology by Horus Jobs.

CLUMSY

"Clumsy" is the Illustration Friday word of the week, which reminds me of the time SocMo was taking his pet goldfish for a walk... and fell down the stairs. SocMo may be clumsy, but he has excellent juggling skills. Good thing. Nothing was broken but the eggs SocMo was carrying in his pocket.