Sketch of a cartoon man’s head with an evil grin. this was sketched out on a newspaper using a ball-point pen. Drew this the other night while having some beers with friends down at Ray’s Place in Kent, Ohio.
If a large, blank(ish) piece of paper and a pen is around, I can’t help but draw.
My friend Preeti snapped the photo for me.
Just saw this over at design blog BittBox: when drawing with the Shape tools in Illustrator (rectangle, circle etc.), holding the tilde key (the squiggle key to the left of the 1 key on U.S. keyboards) and then dragging the mouse will result in lots of duplicates of the shape following the trail of your mouse pointer.
I recently had the opportunity to try out a Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet, having purchased one for my Dad this holiday season. Dad is not a graphics guy by any means, but I use my Wacom tablets for so much more than just drawing and graphics applications – and love it so much – that I thought the Bamboo was a perfect accessory for another ardent computer geek.
In short, the Bamboo is a great entry-level tablet for casual users, but graphic artists will want to seriously consider investing in one of the pricier, but more fully-featured Intuos3 models. Read on for full details.
Months ago a fan emailed me to get the OK to use one of my sketches as a tattoo. I usually give the go-ahead on any not-for-profit use of my personal art (that said, unless I actually do give the OK, it’s not officially OK). In this case since it was a personal sketch I had done I was cool with it.
I have a few tattoos myself (all done by the venerable Eric Starr over at Arkham Tattoo in Akron, Ohio). I can sympathize with someone who finds the right art for a tattoo – I had Eric ink over a bunch of early stuff that I became less than enthralled with – and now have a huge Japanes-style koi fish shoulder piece in addition to my original Mayan God/Ancient Astronaut glyph.
Recently sketched up some cartoon Frankenstein drawings for a current project.
Client wanted more forehead on these but I thought they came out pretty cool for what they were. I have to agree they don’t have the classic Frankenstein look to them, but I was kinda going for something different anyways.
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This Goth Girl cartoon character sketch is one of a series of characters I am currently developing as a series for a client. The entire set will include all sorts of cartoon characters with different personalities, lifestyles & looks. More details on this project as we get closer to completion…
The goal here was to find the look and keep her cute. The original incarnations of the little goth came out a bit too old and also a bit too punk/heavy metal, but since the Goth will have an “older sister” Rocker Chick for the group, I’ll be able to use those initial rough sketches for the Rocker Girl. The Rocker Girl will probably be more along the line of a Suicide Girl — with clothes on!
Once I had the face & head down, I moved on to getting the clothing right; the obligatory striped stockings, skull t-shirt, spiked wristbands, black rubber bracelets and combat boots completed the look. I especially like how the long pigtails came out for the hair.
An interesting aspect of this project, developing 12 characters in a family, is keeping consistency. I have found that some characters have lent themselves to more wild exaggeration than others, and I have had to tone down the look of some of the characters which I would have otherwise gone a bit more wild with. In order to keep the overall look of the group I have had to sacrifice some stylistic choices.
It’s a great experience and process as I have been coming up with variations of characters that I might not have other otherwise pursued.
Just stumbled across these handy Mac OS X software applications to help designers and artists simulate the effects of color blindness on-screen: Sim Daltonism and Color Oracle.
Sim Daltonism works as a floating palette which converts an area under your mouse cursor to the selected type of color blindness — it works similar to the Apple Digital Color Meter sampling utility. There are 8 different types of color blindness to test. Color Oracle works as a menubar item which converts the entire monitor to the selected mode of color blindness, but only offers the three most common forms.
This puppy dog cartoon character illustration was created a mascot/logo for a recent client. His nickname is “News Hound”, hence the word “Press” on his dog collar name tag.
The pup went through quite a few rounds of sketches, even before sending “initial” sketches to the client. I had a certain look in mind and wanted to get this guy just right. The proportions were key, as was allowing for the nametag on the dog collar.
This drawing of a surfer dude cartoon character was sketched for a current project. He came out pretty cool and I thought I would share as the final will most likely be tweaked in response to client input. The other characters in the series are leaning towards a different body/head ratio as well, so he’ll have to be adjusted. Sometimes what works for one character doesn’t work well across multiple characters.