Work Buddies 2

work buddies 1

Sketch A Day Journal days 5-8

Some Recent Sketches

The monster on the far left is the creature in 'Night (or Curse) Of The Demon,' from 1957. The guy at the bottom started out as Richard Ashcroft from The Verve, but it morphed into something else.

Sketch A Day Journal days 1-4

Picked up this small journal at Urban Outfitters. I like the way the pages are broken up, with each one split into two sections. Unfortunately the paper is fairly thin, so if you do any inks or even darker pencils, it follows through to the other side. I'm going to refrain from inks for the most part for this book...I might have to skip over and just draw on the two right pages...we'll see.

Here are the first four days worth of drawings.

Speed Inking a Futuristic Vampire

The theme for this sketch came from a list of ideas that's part of a communal sketchbook art project at my job.

Coordinated by one of our art directors, he had about twelve of us at work sign on board to each fill up a 40 page Moleskin sketchbook...there's no set formula and you can draw whatever you like, but as inspiration he came up with a list of 44 different ideas and pasted that list on the inside of the sketchbooks, which he handed out to each of us. I liked the concepts and ideas and knew it would push me to draw things I normally might not.  This page just said 'Futuristic Vampire.' I've done five so far, including this guy, as well as 'Robot Vs Monster,' 'Goth Fairy,' 'Currency,' 'Good 'Ol Barbarian chick or guy,' and 'What's Under My Bed?'  I'll post some of the drawings I do on this blog as I do them, but for the majority, I'll wait until the entire sketchbook is filled up before posting anything.

Here's a video for this one; I hadn't thought of filming the pencils, so it's just the inks.

Recollections - Halloween 2011 Vampire Lenticular Stickers

This lenticular Vampire sticker set was one of the more fun projects I've had the opportunity to work on over the last year. It was part of a large Halloween collection that's made it's way to Michael's store shelves this week. Lenticular stickers are the kind that change their image when you move them from side to side, allowing for a transitioning picture.  Check out the movie to see how it works. I used public domain portrait photos from the 1800's that I painted over in Photoshop to create the Vampire creature effect.

Inka Dinka Do Halloween Clings - Scary Pumpkins & Haunted Night

Here are two more of the stamp clings I did last year for Inka Dinka Do.  The final vectors for Haunted Night were done by Craig Parrillo.  The gargoyle door knocker is all his.

Scary Pumpkins

Haunted Night

Inka Dinka Do Halloween Clings - Witches Brew

I worked on a bunch of Halloween cling stamp designs last year, while freelancing at EK Success.

They've  finally made their way to Michael's, Joann's and other craft stores and the Inka Dinka Do website, where you can buy them online, if you so choose.  This one sells for $4.99.

Here's a direct link for Witches Brew on the Inka site:

Witches Brew

For Alex

These were done inside copies of my Monsters and Graphic Art books, for a co-workers boyfriend.

Jolee's Boutique - Halloween 2011 Dimensional Stickers

These are a couple of the dimensional sticker designs I worked on for Jolee's Boutique® last year, which just went on sale at Michael's, JoAnn's and other craft stores this past week.  I only did the pencils for these, while the factory in China did the finished vectors before the actual production. I worked on two others - Vampires and Costume Party. I'm not sure about Costume Party, but the Vampires design wasn't produced, although the factory did do finished vectors for it.

I've also included one of my sketch pages when I was working on the Witches sku, with some unused elements.

The 'Lil Loose Limbed Krew™

Some recent sketches.

SPEED SKETCHING A (cute) MONSTER 6

Here's the second of a new bunch of cute monster characters I started sketching the other day...did little sketches that I've expanded upon in these speed sketch videos.

SPEED SKETCHING A (cute) MONSTER 5

Had some fun with this dude...started as a small sketch on regular printer paper...I've got a bunch more in this style..a bunch of friends for him. I'll get around to drawing some of those guys next.

SPEED SKETCHING A MONSTER 4

Here's a movie I made of me drawing a horned demon beast dude, drawn on toned scrapbooking paper. It works well with the white-out pen, but soaks up the lower numbered Copic grays. Finally figured out I needed to go to at least a Cool gray 6 for it to be effective. Total actual time was around 25 min. Music is The Chronomancer II - Nemesis, by The Sword from their album Warp Riders.

SPEED SKETCHING A MONSTER 3

Finally got around to filming this one more properly, with a tripod mounted camera, directly over the drawing. Total real time was around 20 min.

SPEED SKETCHING A MONSTER 2

This was actually the first video I shot, and, unfortunately, my hand obscures most of the actual drawing process. Total real time was around 15min.

SPEED SKETCHING A MONSTER 1

I've finally gotten around to filming myself drawing 'live' and posting to YouTube, joining the ranks of the many others that have done the same. Many of those are done in Photoshop or some other computer drawing program, but mine are done traditionally, using paper, pencil, ink and a white-out pen. This first video was done before I had access to a tripod, hence the angled view of the art. The next one was filmed with the camera mounted on a tripod directly overhead for a better viewing experience. I've sped up the actual process by 400% in IMovie..the actual drawing time for this one was about 15 min.

INKADINKADO CLING STAMP DESIGNS

One of the projects I worked on last year at EK Success was for their stamp division, Inkadinkado. Myself and my co-worker, Craig Parrillo were given just a couple of weeks to produce around 45 stamp designs, some of them pretty intricate florals and flower illustrations. We did pencils and finished vectors on many of them, but luckily, another illustrator, Kaitie Kunsman, at the time working in a separate department, was brought in to help us out with finishing the vectors. She was able to complete a large number of designs in a very short time,  allowing us to finish the project on time. All the Spring designs we did are now in Michael's, AC Moore and other crafts stores and can be seen here on the Inkadinkado website:

Inkadinkado Stamp Designs-new releases-Spring 2011

Beginning from the bottom of page 3, through page 5, all the designs in green, are the ones we worked on.

Shown here are some of my pencils and finished vectors (aside from the filigree in the bottom left, which was vectored by Craig) for a few of them.

RECOLLECTIONS-COWBOY

This is the last of the designs, currently in Michael's stores,  that I worked on,  from the 13 that they chose out of the initial 48 created.  There are three more sku's in the stores, though, from this line, which were designed by Dan Fenelon. Those are seashells, track and field and poker.  For this one, I did the pencils and Dan did the vectors. Some of the elements on this include gold foil, gold thread (around the brim of the hat), thread for the tassles on the vest, and actual rope. You'll notice on the pencils and the vectors, that the rope was drawn. At that point, we didn't know how these would end up when completed by the factory. Kind of funny, considering more time was probably spent drawing that icon, than any of the rest of them.