I recently created this pinup Santa girl illustration for a local company that produces home-brewing beer kits. The client was developing a special holiday/Christmas blend, and wanted to also include an incentive in the package — in this case it was to be an empty 24 oz. beer bottle with a pinup Santa girl silkscreened on to the bottle.
Cartoonist and illustrator extraordinaire Tom Richmond has an excellent in-depth guide to drawing hands over on his blog. As per usual with Tom’s instructional articles/blog posts, he goes into far more detail and insight than one could possibly imagine he would have time for, even down to supplying illustrated diagrams explaining everything.
Here’s a quote demonstrating the level of insight you’ll find:
Many people think the knuckle of the finger rests directly behind the crease that represents the base of the finger right under the bottom finger pad. Now turn your hand around. That main knuckle is SIGNIFICANTLY lower on the hand. In fact it’s below the upper pad of the palm that curve below all the fingers. A lot more of your finger resides inside the palm/body than you might think. Understanding that is a big part of figuring out hands.
At some point I can see Tom collating all these posts into a book of some sort. His blog tutorials are better than any book on cartooning I’ve ever seen, and this one is no different.
Probably one of the more difficult parts of the human body to draw, and Tom is a master at the cartoon hand. Head over there and learn from the best.
Another brief video in my instructional series introducing some great new features in Photoshop CS4 for artists, cartoonists, illustrators and anyone else who sketches or draws using Photoshop.
This video features the excellent new Spring-Loaded Keys feature that allows you to access a tool temporarily by holding down the key for that tool, similar to using the Spacebar for the Hand tool – only for every tool in Photoshop now.
“Basket Case” is a new t-shirt illustration design I created featuring a wild-eyed disc golfer cartoon character in the Kustom Kulture/Odd Rods/Ed “Big Daddy” Roth style — complete with veined eyes bulging out of the head, a wild and crazy grin with an exaggerated, wagging tongue dragging out of the mouth.
Available for purchase — and customization — over at Zazzle. Click here to get yours now!
I recently started up a group sketchblog, Monster Monday. As the title suggests, the idea is to create artwork of a new monster every Monday.
Monster Monday was inspired by other group sketchblogs such as Illustration Friday and Sugar Frosted Goodness, which I have participated in in the past. As opposed to a weekly generated theme, I wanted to work on something that I naturally loved to draw, and also have an ongoing theme. I know I get caught up in the day-to-day work and having to work on a new weekly theme while challenging, also resulted in my not participating on those sites.
I wanted to create something that had a regular theme of something that I already liked to draw. Monsters. Monsters by their nature inspire creativity since they don’t exist. You can make whatever you want. For me, it was about making the weekly project fun and as pressure-free as possible.
Sharon Steuer’s free “Zen Of The Pen” PDF is an excellent introduction to the inner mysteries of the vector pen tool in Adobe Illustrator.
Update: Sharon has kindly asked me to remove the link to that PDF, she’s working on an updated version. I highly suggested you head over to her website and sign up for updates. Sharon is the mastermind behind the excellent Illustrator WOW! vector tutorial books for Adobe Illustrator.
The pen tool is one of those obscure graphics programs tools that everyone tries once, and then gets so confused by that they never get any further with it. And understandably. It looks like a fountain pen, but it doesn’t act like one. Click and “draw”, you get weird “handles” sprouting out from a dot. Ignore that, and some annoying rubber band line gets stuck to your pen tip, all distorted out of — not even a straight line! Right there most Illustrator users think to themselves “this program sucks”.
But they couldn’t be further from the truth…
Vector artists and Adobe Illustrator users – rejoice! You no longer have to toil away in obscurity. Let the world know where your heart lies.
This t-shirt will get a knowing wink from those in-the-know. 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?
People may go on and on about the (former) Macromedia Freehand, or their own open-source or alternative vector application, but you know what vector software you love the most.
I know, I know. Not everyone is ga-ga over Illustrator. Well, no need to fret — the “I Heart Vectors” t-shirt design is available as well. Regardless of your allegiances, I think we can all agree it’s “Points, Not Pixels”.
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.
