“I Heart Vectors” T-Shirt

| George Coghill

I Heart (Love) Vectors t-shirt design with heart drawn using vector paths.

Are you a vector artist? Have a poster of Pierre Bezier on your studio wall? Do the terms path, handles and direct select get you excited?

Well, here’s the t-shirt for you. If you look closely, you’ll notice the heart is in fact created as a vector object, complete with points and handles. Or perhaps these are “love” handles?

Whether it’s Adobe Illustrator, the former Macromedia Freehand, or your own open-source or alternative vector application, let ’em know where they can put their pixels.

And for you Illustrator-philes out there, check out the “I Heart Illustrator” t-shirt design as well.

20 Comic & Cartooning Photoshop Tutorials

| George Coghill

A collection of links to twenty great comics and cartooning tutorials over at PSDtuts. Lots of tips for inking in both Photoshop and Illustrator, coloring, using Photoshop layers to your advantage, achieving halftone effects and other comic-book style looks to your art.

A great resource. You can never have too much information about how other artists use graphics software to create their work. I often take tips from multiple tutorials and create my own workflow from just a tip here and a technique there.

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Cartoonist/Illustrator Tom Richmond On Why You Should Never Give Away Your Artwork For Free

| George Coghill

I know I have been in this situation many times — and email comes in and someone has a project with a small or non-existent budget. Usually it’s a personal project. Usually it’s for an existing piece of artwork.

Since most of the work on my website and blog are commisioned projects for clients, it’s easy enough to say no — the artwork they’re asking about was created for a client’s logo or mascot character and is not available to use by someone else.

But I do have some non-client work on my site, and this is where the free use issue comes in.

Tom Richmond, quoted over at The Daily Cartoonist, says

It would be so easy to just say, “Yeah, go ahead and use it”. After all, it’s already done and will take you no more time, right? So therefore it has no value?? That is the perception of many would-be users and sadly of some creators.

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SmudgeGuard – Handy Accessory For Wacom Users & Graphic Artists

| George Coghill

Yeah, I know – it looks kinda weird. And what is the SmudgeGuard exactly? As you can see from the product shot, it’s kind of a glove – one that only covers the pinky finger and the meaty area of the palm below.

Originally designed for artist lefties who were always smudging their work when drawing their palms across their artwork, it’s also useful for any artist working in pencil, charcoal or related media where a hand-drag can smudge the artwork. And, interestingly enough, it’s also quite useful for Wacom graphics tablet users.

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Commander In Beef

| George Coghill

Cartoon illustration of Obama & McCain fighting over a meatball on dinner plate.

A recent Obama & McCain humorous cartoon illustration I created for Time Out NY for the “Commander In Beef” article regarding what New York City chefs would prepare for the 2008 presidential candidates. The illustration was created for the dining section, and is currently being featured on the front page of the Time Out NY website’s dining section. The featured artwork is a spot illustration companion piece to the full page illustration I created for the print article:

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