Graphic Design and Illustration.

Posts from the ‘Illustration’ category

A Walk Down Memory Lane

I was recently going through some old (at least 10 years old) drawings of mine and thought they could use some freshening up. Originally all drawn by hand in a sketchbook and a Pental brush pen (I’ve lost so many of those over the years, I should buy stock in the company). These have been scanned in to the computer, cleaned up only minimally, and coloured using Photoshop.

I have a bunch more waiting in the wings, so there will be more of these old-but-new-again posts in the near future. And speaking of new posts, I’ll be posting another installment of my webcomic hopefully this weekend.

Compass Illustration

As the title says, a compass. All vector with only a little bit of reliance on various special effects like transparency, that, while Illustrator has had for quite some time but for technical reasons we’re not allowed to use at work. Lots of more technically oriented print places are generally unhappy with transparency effects. The thing to watch out for is the RIPS used to process the files just before making printing plates (or film if we’re old fashioned) generally do not like transparency effects and sometimes the workarounds can lead to unsuitable results (as in my professional work). So your mileage may vary depending on your printer. For me, it just means I’m pretty disciplined when it comes to my vector drawings and I only use the effects sparingly in my personal work.

Image of the Month – April WIP

Image

And by the skin of my teeth. Though it is somewhat of a cheat. I labeled it a WIP (Work in Progress for the acronym challenged) as it obviously isn’t quite finished yet. I actually sketched this guy out on a cloudy day in Punta Cana (yes, they do have those occasionally) but only just scanned him in mere moment ago.

Eventually, (as in a few days from now) I am going to print out a reduced scale of this scan out onto some textured paper I have lying around and mount him to a 2.5 x 3 inch trading card and finish him off in acrylic. Then, later (much later) by the end of summer, the wifey and me should have a geocache set up somewhere in the Whiteshell with this guy in it as a trackable item. It should be interesting to see where this guy eventually winds up. Assuming of course we don’t pick a place that too well hidden for people to find!

So stay tuned and I’ll post a pic of this bad boy once I have him all finished.

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It Came From the Black Sketchbook!

Well, I’m back from the Dominican Republic. My cousin, Brent is now safely married off to what seems to be a very nice girl. And I think I now have discovered that while two weeks at an all inclusive resort is all well and good, it’s REALLY REALLY hard to get back into the swing of things now that I have returned to reality. So my apologies to the long time from my last post. Hopefully, I will have a post in the not to distant future relating some of my time in the beautiful Dominican Republic.

So with no further delay, may I introduce you to a little sketch. A total rip-off of the the infamous B-Movie monster, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Maybe we’ll see more of him in the future.

Image of the Month – March

This one was almost going to be a cheat. The weather here in Winnipeg has been rather bizarre as of late. While it has cooled down a bit to more seasonally cooler temps, we’ve had quite a few VERY warm days. We should still have quite a bit of snow on the ground, but we haven’t had any snow on the ground for a few weeks now. Anyways, on one of the warmer days, I was out for dinner with my wife at Montana’s Bar and Grill. What’s interesting is the butcher’s paper they use for table cloths and the crayons they leave for you on each table. I always wind up drawing a dinosaur or dragon or some such while waiting for my meal. I also usually wind up with a server having a bad day whenever I go there. So the sketch I made of a dragon almost became my image of the month. Instead, it became the genesis for this month’s image.

Posted below is a really crappy pic of the dragon I drew at Montana’s and the other two pics are of drawings made by my lovely wife. Not only beautiful, but talented as well!

Dino Update

I wasn’t happy with the way the dino sticker turned out afterall, so I updated him a bit. I think I was trying too hard putting in texture into the dino. I won’t even try to resubmit the new design. I just wanted to improve the image for my own sake. I finally decided on a slightly modified halftone screen to harken back to my good old days of reading comics in my youth. Now that’s a dino to be proud of!

Oh, and in case anyone was iterested. The dino started out life as a marker drawing, was scanned, and tone was added in Photoshop.

Sticker Craziness!

Just to see what would happen, I entered these stickers into a contest. I think the contest might be a bit more “street” oriented than what I would normally go for (I’m considered rather whitebread in Mr Rodger’s Neighbourhood, so judge yourself accordingly) but I was curious as to what I could do with the subject matter. It was basically a black and white, 3″ x 3″ ticket. And hopefully a tie-in with the artist who was co-sponsoring the event. Seems pretty simple. I guess I will find out after the 1st of April, when the contest closes.

The dinosaur was a bit of a stretch for me (unusual since dinos were my first love) but the robot turned out pretty sweet. I may have to use the design in another piece sometime. As for the panic dude, I had drawn something similar to him once before. I think this new version I did turned out better than previous attempts. Probably because it is truer to myself in terms of drawing style than the art style I was attempting to emulate.

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Webcomic – Curse of the Tiki Toki, Page 1

So here’s my first installment on the Clint McQueen series, Curse of the Tiki Toki. It’s going to be a very simply drawn comic with a few Photoshop embellishments. I want it to remain fairly visceral and dynamic. And quick to draw 🙂

I’m going with a square format for each scene. It’s a little odd in dimensions, but an art supply store here in Winnipeg recently went out of business and was practically giving away its left over stock in merchandise. They had these very small, square-ish sketch books. I bought an armload of them with this webcomic thing in mind. The books are very portable, so I can take them around anywhere, and being rather small, it will force me to draw quickly, simply and focus on only what is important to get the meaning across for each and every scene I plot out. Should be fun.

I am also going to try and be a little disciplined in when I put these out. Since this is the third Sunday in the month, I’m going to try for that. Except for the next installment. I’ll be away for the next installment, and while I will be bringing the sketchbooks along and plotting out the scenes, I have no intention of brining along a computer to complete the scenes or post them to the internet. I’m certain the throngs of readers  (yeah, right) I have acquired will understand 🙂

So stay tuned for next month, when we see just how Clint will get out of the predicament I put him in, and maybe why I put him there in the first place.

A Bit Early But Happy St Patrick’s Day Everyone!

I’m going to be pretty busy the next few days, so I’m posting this a bit early. Black and white only (my first love) and all done in Photoshop. Lots of crazy textures. And pointlessism (not pointillism) is a lot more fun in the digital age! Enjoy!