This past summer, I took part in Winnipeg’s annual Anime convention Ai-Kon. I manage to snag a table by winning 2nd place in their mascot contest. While things didn’t quite work out as expected, I did manage to put together some pretty great pieces. And they are all ORIGINAL DESIGNS. Though many of them play off existing manga/anime tropes and character design.
You can get prints here, or download some wallpapers for your smartphone here.
While going thru some old images on my computer’s hard-drive, I found a bunch of images I did for a drawing challenge I did for myself. I tried to do one good personal image a month for as long as I could. I managed it more or less for four years. These should be most of them. They have all been posted on the blog at one time or another. All were done using various programs (a few of them were traditional media work as well).
Click on the image for a larger version. Enjoy!
World Art Drop Day is fast approaching. Last year, I had 2 little ones running around and was limited to what I could do for it. It also totally slipped my mind that I never even had a chance to blog about it! No time like the present to fix that!
Last year, I was out of town. But I wanted to participate in World Art Drop Day, so I put together several sketch cards to drop in our geocache.
Two sketch cards done with whatever cabin craft materials I could find.
Into the geocache you go!
They were quick and easy to do (and as far as I know are still there) and it looks like I will be in much the same position this year. The good news is, I have quite a bit of stuff lying around from my foray into Anime Conventions to drop into a geocache or two. So follow me on Instagram and Twitter to find some clues as to where to find them should you happen to be in the Whiteshell on September 5th.
Sorry about the lousy photo. Some things I’ll be hiding on September 5th, 2017.
Doodles, doodles, and more doodles. A whole collection of doodles and sketches I have done over the past year. Some of these were just random doodles with no real purpose, others were exercises or warm ups for other drawings, and others I might have some future plans for. Very nearly all were pencil sketches first and were inked later with a brush pen. Mostly a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and a few other various disposables from Kurateke and Tombow. Enjoy!
Time to start this up again! This image was originally done for a Threadless post a while back. It is a pen and ink sketch with some colour thrown in from Photoshop. I re-did the colours a bit for this image. I could sure use from tranquility in my life right now! Enjoy!
After a long hiatus this summer, this is my first real blog post in a while. But summer is pretty much over, and I am ready to start things up again. So here we go!
This past week, I patricipated in World Art Drop Day, where artists all over the world left little gifts for people to find. Just check out out the hashtag #ArtDropDay in Twitter, Instagram and most likely Facebook. Or you can go to this page where it all started.
Last year, I drew out a series of artist sketch cards and hid them in various locations while taking my son to his daycare. This meant a lot of outdoor locations. And a torrential rainstorm. Read about it here. This year I wanted something a little more durable.
I fist started out with the idea of vinyl stickers. And while I did find Some nice places online, it was just too much money for just a few stickers I would need. It’s not like I was plastering the entire city with stickers!
I decided to 3D print a figurine instead. I had already settled on a theme of robots and it seemed like a natural. I hadn’t printed out anything of my own in 3D for a while so it was a good exercise to do.
I originally started out with a sketch. I sketched out quite a few different robots until I settled upon the design of the pillbot.
Once I had a sketch done, I used my iPad and a program from Autodesk called 123D Design to build most of the parts.
Once I had all the main pieces put together, I put everything into a 3D program called Blender. Here I could fine tune some shapes and get him posed.
Once I had the little robot posed, I output an STL file and sent him off to be 3D printed at the nice folks at Shapeways. He is printed out on a very fine detailed translucent plastic. I then quickly gave him a very thin coat of primer to help bring out the details.
If I were to do it again, I would have attached the arms to the base for some added reinforcement. While it printed out just fine, one of the arms did break off and I had to glue it back on. Hopefully the people who found the figurines found them fully intact.
Thoses of you who are interested, these little guys are now for sale online at Shapeways. I have the same robot in a few other poses and I may make them available if there is any interest in these little robots. Follow this link to purchase.
Just be aware these robots would not make very good toys for very young children. They are very small and fragile. The would be okay for a much older child (like a pre-teen or teen) or the young at heart.
Enjoy!
Happy Canada Day from eyeopeningdesing.com! A quick sketch done on my iPad (except for the flag) of the Northern Lights character I ultimately developed last year. Click here for details.
While doing a little research on personal art projects for a future blog post, I decided to compile all the @Sketch_Dailies submissions I have done since I first started doing them last year. Being a busy guy, I don’t always have the time, but I like to make certain I submit something every couple of months or so.
Many of these submissions have been reworked since I originally posted them to Twitter, and some are still the originals as posted to Twitter. It also contains one image I didn’t have guts to post. Not telling which one! Click on the image above to get a much larger, and more detailed image.
You can read a quick blurb about the @Sketch_Dailies project from a post a wrote a while ago here. Enjoy.
This little comic is inspired by the works of Scottie Young, a really great cartoonist and comic book artist. If you haven’t already, you should check him out.
This comic panel features two of my favourite DC heroes from my childhood in the 80s. The blue guy with the horns is Blue Devil and the green guy with the antennae is Ambush Bug.Both of these characters have problems with their suits not being able to come off. Blue Devil’s suit is magically grafted onto him and if I remember right, the zipper is stuck on Ambush Bug. I thought I would be fun to make fun of it as potty accidents are a staple of growing up. As I am rediscovering the hard way these days.
Enjoy.
Animals, animals, animals. everyone loves them right? Always popular, well done animal art prints never fail to fascinate. Here are a few prints on Society6 that have a certain “animal magnetism.” Enjoy.
After joining Society6, I discovered there was quite a bit of art on the site. Some quite good. But it could take quite a while to wade through all that work. Even with the site’s discovery features, it can be quite a daunting thing to find stuff you like. Every month I’ll be posting some links to works I think are worth while.
Eye Opening Design 