Merry Christmas, Mother #%$@&*

Seriously, Happy Holidays and to prove my point here is an exploitative X-mas poster.

Thanks!

Here is my other thank you card for a family friend. It is based on an inside joke, but I tried to make the connection on the back of the card. Either way it was a fun card to make.

Thank you card

The past couple days I have been making Thank you cards for family and friends for unrelated things. This one is a card to The Lil' Happy Invisible Creature Club who sent me some nice things.

This is the break out of pieces used.



This is an animated gif of the actual reveal of the monster and note.

Wall Art

This is a little video of some Graffiti artists at work. Very amazing work and the cinematography is great too.

Thriller

Tis the season, I decided to sketch up (for every halloween) a dead celebrity as a zombie. To start things off I have done Michael Jackson. And in ode to the "king of pop" and the season here is a little mood music.



Step 1: My pencil of MJ zombie-fide.



Step 2: This is the Adobe Illustrator black outlined version.



Step 3: Here the final image is in full zombie-color.

Hot Stuff

Due to my love for smoked Tabasco and some extra-free time I drew up a fake add for Tabasco. I used a black Fine Point , red Twin Tip and an Ultra Fine Point Sharpies.

I was trying to mimic the awesome style of Mike Mignola, an ode to Hell-boy.

Monday Illustration

Here is an quick sketch from today. I have been reading Sherlock Holmes for the last couple weeks and this guy popped into my mind. One of Sherlock's many villains possibly.

I used an extra fine point Red Sharpie for the drawing.

I Love Dust

I Love Dust is a "multi-disciplinary design boutique". And they do a wide range of excellent work, but for me their illustrations are truly inspiring.

I Love Dust

Happy Halloween

It's a bit early but I doodled this little baby today.

Ben Balistreri

The character design work that Ben Balistreri draws up is out of this world! He does a lot of work with a number of animation studios, his recent work has been featured in "How to Train Your Dragon".

My recent favorite of his are his viking food-on-a-stick drawings (as can be seen to the left).

Ben Balistreri

Chico and Rita

This is a trailer for a new film that looks beautiful in the animation, story and music. It is an independent animated film about a romance between musicians. Even the poster was beautiful.

Rabbit Break Down

Here is a quick break down of an even quicker sketch.

Step 1: Roughed in pencils and then went back over them to add details of the face, hat, clothes and shoes.


Step 2: Inked in the outlines and details of the clothes and shoes.


Step 3: Then added shadows under the hat and over the clothes where appropriate.


Step 4: Scanned in illustration to remove the paper lines.

Mash Up Friday

I know this has nothing to do with illustration but it's a pretty awesome mash up of RATM, Cypress Hill, House of Pain, The Beatles, and Joan Jett. To make a connection with illustration, music does have a huge effect (on me) when drawing or coming up with concepts.

Hot Draw

This is a quick illustration I did tonight. I tried to keep it simple and clean with a little shading to add to the flame. I used Adobe Illustrator for the overall layout and Adobe Photoshop for the shading.

Spanish Fly

Here is a fun animated music video for "Spanish Fly" by Ten Kens. The animation was created by Blackbelt Kids.

Rock Band: Beatles

The animated intro for the Rock Band: Beatles game that uses some killer animation. It was produced by Passion Pictures.

The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!

This is a thesis film that Jake Armstrong created that is simply amazing. It is a sad story though.

Aly Fell

Since Halloween is near I think it is appropriate to pimp the very cool and eerie work of Aly Fell. His style looks like it is rooted in the vintage pin-up paintings of Gil Elvgren. He added enough black magic to his paintings to make them feel right at home during Halloween.

He also does some very excellent character design work.

Aly Fell

Pen Recommendation

I had met a talented illustrator, Sam Spina, who showed me a brush pen that he liked using. The only catch was that you could only get it by buying it from over seas from Japan. A little bummed, I let the idea of having that pen go. Just a couple months ago I was hunting through a local art store here, Meininger's, and I came upon the elusive brush pen I was seeking!

It really is a great pen, it is a Pentel GFKP. The one I bought came with two water proof ink cartridges but the pen is so versatile that you can refill the cartridges with other types of ink and keep re-using the cartridges. I haven't ever been so excited and pleased with a pen like this one.

Salesman Pete

Here is the trailer for the full length short (below).



This is a wacky zany short about Salesman Pete and his adventures. I love the style of this animation and use of cgi and still illustrations to tell this wild ride!

Jesus 2000

I am currently scanning through old links and websites to see what would be a good post. This one, I feel, fits the bill. I don't know much about the creators (CRCR) but the animation is outta-site. They took christ to a whole-nother-level.

Alan Ariail

The blog belonging to Alan Ariail is very helpful when dealing with typography. The man is a master to designing and laying out typography. His blog is very descriptive to his process in crafting font that you have seen in stores such as the "Simply Orange" typography.

Alan Ariail

Andrew Wilson

Here is another one of my favorite illustrators, Andrew Wilson. From his manga style characters to his tattoo-style illustrations his work has been a huge inspiration to my own work. I absolutely love his chipotle menu illustrations, showing you that anything can be used to illustrate on.

Andrew Wilson

Rockabilly Wolf

This is a brief description of my process. This all came about through listening to a whole bunch of my rockabilly tunes and decided to draw a down and out Rockabilly Wolf. The next posts depict the process I followed to get to the finished image. I skipped some steps seeing that I was just doing small detailed things that aren't important. To help set the mood, plus some of you asked me what "Rockabilly" is, below is a video of the Stray Cats performing "Runaway Boys".



Step 1: Rough sketch work helps me figure out the basic layout of what I want to accomplish.



Step 4: Draw out a clean version of the wolf so when I scan it into my computer I can easily trace my lines.



Step 8: Tracing the clean sketch to define the outline of the wolf's head and the shadows. I spend so time detailing the line work to make certain areas thicker than others to help define the shadowed areas.



Step 11: Pick out the basic colors for the wolf, his hat, his eyes, teeth, nose and cigaret.



Step 14: Add textures, highlights and any details (like the veins in the eyes).



Step 15: I finish the illustration with a "Looney Toons" style background and call it done.

Noah Van Sciver

Here is another Colorado artist who I have come to enjoy his comics alot! His style is very connected to the likes of Robert Crumb. I had the awesome opportunity to meet Noah, he was great to talk with and he left me inspired and motivated to create my own comics.

Noah Van Sciver

spinadoodles

I am a huge fan of Sam Spina's work (example left). He does a daily comic about his life (link below). Oh, and he is a local artist too!! I really dig his line work and his ability to get his comics done quickly. That is one thing I struggle with is being able to just get my illustrations done without second guessing my work.

spinadoodles