Illustration Friday -- Under the Sea

This week's theme really made me think. I had so many things "floating" through my mind. Finally, I decided to do an underwater seascape. I wanted to try to do something different this week. Very rarely do I do scenery, so this would be something that would push me. 

Doodle of the Day -- 4-24-2006

WOO-HOO!!! My Wacom Graphire 4 tablet arrived today. Didn't get much time playing with it yet since I had to do some troubleshooting with it. End result was that I had to download the most recent driver to get it to work properly.

Anyway, I played around a little in Photoshop. This was the result. I am really excited about this. I think I have the hand-eye thing down pretty well. Now, I have to practice on the other tricks both it and Illustrator can do.

I am hoping that this will be a nice compliment to my "old school" drawing techniques.

 

Doodle of the Day -- 4-23-2006

I was playing around with my colored pencils and wanted to try different things. The three leaves on this Poison Ivy drawing are all done in different ways.

1.) The top leaf was done with the lights being applied first and the darks added on top.

2.) The right leaf was done with the darks being applied first, then the mediums and finally the lights added on top.

3.) The bottom most leaf was done with the darks first and gradually getting to the lightest color. The final touch on this one, however, is that I used the Prismacolor blending pencil (#1077) over the entire leaf.

 

Robot, Part 2

I started this the same time I did my other robot; however, I had decided to finish the other first. Although I wanted to finish this one, I wasn't sure how I wanted to do it. After careful consideration and a "just do it" from Cathie. I decided to move forward with a new technique I had never used before.

First, I sketched the entire robot. Next, I outlined it with my 005 Micron pen. I added the details at this time as well. The next step is where I was worried about the outcome. I colored the entire thing with Sharpies. After getting all of the green and browns done, I went back over it with my colored pencils for the finishing details such as shading and other colors.

Again, the concept for this design came from a variety of sources -- Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Star Wars, and The Black Hole to name a few.

I am actually very pleased with this and cannot wait until my next drawing where I plan on doing more of this technique.

Illustration Friday -- Robot

Here is my illustration for this week's theme, Robots. Honestly, I am not happy with how it scanned. The funny thing is that I am very happy with the real drawing. Anyway, I am working on a second robot. One that is more sinister and realistic, less cartoony. My new graphics tablet should be here Monday. Maybe I'll play around with it and submit a second or third robot this week.

My vision for this illustration came from a number of different robots I have been introduced to over the years, but it probably most resembles my favorite robot from the Disney movie, The Black Hole. I guess you can say this is sort of like a younger version of Old B.O.B.

Limited Time Only -- Gotta Check This Out

I've decided not to do a Doodle of the Day today. Instead, I would like it if you could take the time to visit another artists work. My wife, Cathie, had a story published on Friday. The story is called "Take My Kids and My Ravioli, Too" and can be found at Thieves Jargon.

Also, please take time to read her other works which are linked from her blog, The Bean Counter.

Thanks!

Doodle of the Day -- 4-17-2006

I have seen many great pieces of work by Steve over at 'Go Flying Turtle' using this type of medium that I wanted to give it a try. I am calling it "Massacre by the Blue Fish." It was done with Sharpie's and my Micron pen.

Doodle of the Day -- 4-16-2006

I usually only post a single drawing (okay maybe sometimes I do two), but today I thought that I would post an entire page out of my sketch book. While we were all sitting in the backyard, I started out by drawing my youngest son while he was sweeping. The rest of the page includes a portion of my wife's ring (the real one has three of those flower-type arrangements), her new bracelet that she just got for her birthday, a sunset, a bottlecap, and a not-so-nice dinosaur

Blog Update

As you can see, I have done a complete overhaul on my blog. This is still the original Son of Moto template available through Blogger. I only changed the background image and colors.

The background is based on my tattoo. I re-drew it since I did not have the original any longer. I colored it, scanned it, and played with the layout in Illustrator. After getting the layout correctly, I finished the coloring in Photoshop.

Next, I saved all of the original Son of Moto GIF's to my laptop. I changed the colors in Photoshop to the ones in my final design. After learning a little about CSS from my sister, I was able to fix an issue I had with my site and change the background and text colors. Thanks, Melanie.

The last step was uploading the new graphics to a public web server and making all the final changes in my template to where the files are now located. I saved it and then republished it.

Illustration Friday -- Spotted

Here is my take on this week's Illustration Friday theme, Spotted. I was thinking of doing a few things for this one -- my dog Spot, decorated Easter eggs, a spotted whiptail lizard, or a Moffet with spots.

In the end, I chose this one. Hopefully, it needs no explanation. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

Flashback: 1990 Art Project

I haven't done a Flashback in a while and I don't have a doodle for today, so I will post this.

I remember my art teacher, James Sabol, as being pretty laid back. One class, he said to find an object anywhere in the classroom and draw it. I went into the back supply room and there was an old skull in a box. Since I was going through my alternative mod stage (which was especially controversial since I was at a Catholic School), this fit the profile.

Here is the outcome. Pretty poor quality and scan job since it has not been preserved by any means for the last 15+ years, but here is none the less.

Doodle of the Day -- 4-11-2006 (aka Where the hell is Grimace?)

While I was driving into work today, a minivan passed me with a Grimace character suction cupped to the window. It dawned on me that they no longer use him or any other "old school" characters in their commercials. Where did they go?

Was Grimace merely a zygote who developed into another more popular purple monster? Did Hamburgler finally get locked up? Was he framed? And what about the Fry Guys? Are they now known as Moffets? Oh, and that chicken thing. Not sure what her name was but did she transfer to Purdue? For those who may be too young to know these characters, they were once Ronald's friends in McDonald's commercials. Now long gone.

It saddens me that my children will not know the characters I learned to love (and fear) during my Saturday morning cartoons? Which "old school" characters do you miss?

Doodle of the Day -- 4-10-2006

I've been lax on my daily doodles. I have no real excuse other then the weather is getting nicer and work (my real job, that is) is starting to pick up. Here is my latest doodle. I wanted to experiment with shading. This is a rock my son found in our yard and brought to me to hold. Thought it was a pretty good candidate.

New Banner -- Feedback Welcome

As I mentioned a few days ago, I was working on two small projects for myself. I took my time and finished the one -- a new banner for my blog. The second one is going to be put on the back burner for the time being until I am inspired again. I'm just not feeling it anymore on that drawing.

Anyway, please feel free to let me know what you think of the banner. Both positive and negative comments are welcome.

One last thing, I will leave you with a quick doodle of a green apple I did while my boys were eating their breakfast.

Illustration Friday -- Speed

Here is my submission for this week's Illustration Friday theme -- Speed. I drew a pile of white crosses. The term "white cross" is one of the street names for Metamphetamines, aka, speed. I figured I would try a different approach since there will be all kinds of cars, animals, and cartoon characters for this theme.

Doodle of the Day -- 4-5-2006

Well, sorry for not having a doodle yesterday. I started two small art projects that I will hopefully unveil this weekend.

Anyway, I was doing my weekly disk cleanup and defrag of my hard drive today and felt this was an appropriate thing to draw. No, this is not the actual drive I did these tasks to. I am a geek and have computer parts and cables everywhere. This just happens to be a hard drive that is corrupt and sitting on my desk. One of these days I may try to do some forensics on it and see if there is any worthy data to keep on it. Until then, it works as a great paper weight. ;)

He's my favorite Ice Age character. What about you?

I'm sitting here with my son tonight and the Kids Cuisine dinner in the freezer is plastered with Ice Age 2 logos and characters. I loved the first one, especially Skrat, and am anxiously awaiting the second one to come out on DVD. On the back of the meals box, there is a nice picture of Skrat. I just had to draw him. He is so funny. 

Doodle of the Day -- 4-3-2006

So, have you ever had one of those Mondays where it was slow at work? Not only was it slow, but you were unmotivated to start anything new. Well, I had one of those days today, Since I have been bringing my sketch pad to work with me, I doodled a couple of things. This is what I created:

This is my USB Flash drive. It was actually a take-away gift from a vendor seminar I went to a couple of months ago. You have to love it when they give the good things out. I also got a travel mug that is obnoxiously thin and tall.
This second doodle started out as the top of the building outside of my office window. I did this while I was on a training call -- a two hour training call. Since I was not particularly motivated to do work things today, this quickly became a random doodle. I must stress that the building across the street DOES NOT have castle windows, although it would be pretty cool if it did.

Illustration Friday -- Spring (In Color)

Since I did not want to color over my original pencil sketch, I spent some time trying to figure out the best way to do an inked and colored version of my previous post. Finally I took a piece of printer paper and was able to trace the outlines onto it. After, I inked it using my .05 black Micron pen and colored it with a combination of Crayola colored pencils and Stampin' Up Watercolor pencils.

Here is the final product. I feel that it turned out exactly as I wanted. 

Illustration Friday -- Spring

When I saw this topic, I was like, "What can I do? There are so many possibilities. How can I narrow it down to one that fits my drawing style?" My first idea was a clock "springing" forward on a March calendar.

Last night before I went to bed, I drew a real rough draft to get the concept on paper. This morning, I planned on working on the version for IF. I started drawing the clock, however, it didn't feel right. At that point, Father Time popped into my head. After I had him done, I wondered if this expressed Spring enough. I felt it needed something else; hence, the addition of Mother Nature next to him.

I am submitting the pencil drawing. I am debating on whether I should ink it and color. I may play around with it and see what happens. If it looks good, I may post that version.