Nostaglia

I still remember how He-man asked us viewers "When was the last time you said, 'I love you' to your parents? Why don't you go do that right now?"

The Great Salt Lake Blizzard!

So I had to do a quick summary of my feelings of the blizzard last week.  Here it is.

Online Store Posters

Here are the posters I illustrated for the Online Store.

latest drawing

This was for the Relief Society, the idea was taken from a talk about how we are the Lord's hands.

Trying my hand at type

I am working on a Halloween ‘esque project and thought it might be a challenge to design a custom typeface. Some of the letter combinations work better than others but not too bad for a first try.

1500's style hands

I had to do a quick study on hands from illustrations of the 1500's. Not that I am there yet, but I am learning a few things. They seem to be very long and elegant, fingers much longer than I am used to drawing. I also find it interesting how they usually depict the fingers in multiple positions, but the thumb is often held very still or in the same pose. Interesting stuff. Any thoughts or good reference anybody might know of would be appreciated. Thanks!

Darth from the Steampunk Days

I was wondering what Darth Vader would have looked like during the late Victorian Era. Thought my 10 year old son would think it was cool but immediately showed me about half a dozen video characters that looked very close. Originality sure is hard to come by.

Payson Canyon

 

 Hey All, This is my first time posting here. This is a photo I shot on Tmax 100 a few years back while hiking in Payson Canyon. I kinda like the way it turned out. What do you think?

Eyes

This idea has been on the back burner for a while. Eventually it began to take shape as a cubism drawing. I completed it using PowerPoint as the illustration medium. The line work is all vector based bezier and spline curves. Hope you enjoy its wierdness.

Larry

Unique Lamp Post

I was on a walk in the Avenues just below the Capitol building off of State street in Salt Lake City. I saw this unique set of five foot tall lamp posts on the front porch of an early 1900s home that has recently become a beautifully restored landmark bed and breakfast. I took a picture and then came up with this illustration. I added an element of modesty to the creature which is a cross between a canine, a woman and a bird. I used a Pilot V Ball Extra Fine Pen to do the cross hatching, on Strathmore Watercolor cold press 140 lb paper.

Banana Man!

So I am back to the land of the living. July was a hectic month, but in any case, BACK TO CREATIVITY!! Here is a menu poster I designed for "The Banana Stand" (they sell delicious chocolate dipped frozen bananas, go buy one now!). I wanted something to look nice and clean, but give it a nostalgic feel. Not sure how well it works since I have done all this work super fast, but I have really enjoyed the strange color palette that has developed. I eventually plan to illustrate other banana characters such as "Sprinkles" "Nutz" and of course "The King". More to come later.

New Art

Here is my latest series of illustrations. Going for the vintage travel poster feel.

Transportation Illustrations

Some drawings that were scanned in and traced in Illustrator. This is for a project I am currently working on.

More Drawings from Larry

Here are some additional drawings from Larry N. View and enjoy.

unicorn snake

Just trying to be less un-creative, ya know.

Unicorn

My first unicorn drawing EVER!

Posting on Behalf of Larry Nielsen

Larry asked that I post this image of a home on State Street located near the Utah State Capitol building. Lots of detailed pointillism.

My worst nightmare

Intrigued by the different snake bodies that have been submitted I wanted to contribute my worst nightmare. Can't think of anything worse than a bat with rabies and a rattlesnake.

Study of Skulls

My character drawing skills have always been lacking so I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look at the structure of the human head. Found some interesting features that may help me in the future. I find the jaw line especially interesting.

Flying Snake

Travis' scketches were pretty cool, so I thought "Why don't I do a flying feathered snake?" Hopefully it's not too much a character I saw on "Darkwing Duck" or "Duck Tales". And in case you were wondering I have not seen the viking vs. dragon movie and yes he does have a forked tounge, forked tail and a necklace.

little boy blue

A sketch of Ryde. He's definitely cuter in real life :)

Runner

Looks like it might be a little while before I will be running due to an injury but I can still draw a runner.

Some dude on fire

Can't say what exactly inspired this drawing but I am fond of it. Sketched in pencil and underpainted in Photoshop.

When drawings go bad

No explanation needed...

lucky sketch 13

I am getting rather used to drawing on the bus. At first I hated it, but I feel I have adapted to the unstable environment. Still the bus will make me mess up, but overall it has become more enjoyable. This study was to draw faces facing right. For some reason, I always default the faces looking to my left, so I wanted to practice breaking that habit. I thought it went well.

#12 - banana posse

Since we are about to start our family summer tradition of "The Banana Stand" I wanted to explore some characters that could represent our chocolate dipped frozen bananas. So this is what I came up with. We have Banana Boy, Sprinkles and Nutz. I figured Nutz would be a bit crazy. I also tried to explore a bit with how the eyes look. So many ways to draw eyes.

sketch 11

One more post. This session was maybe a little less than inspirational. No genius ideas. I do like the horse design. My wife wants to sew a horse shape on to my daughters shirt. So at least I accomplished something. But it is good to keep me sketching.

sketch session 10

Here is my sketch session 10. I did another sketch of my birds-snake, for no reason other than to compare working on the cintiq to working with pencil and paper. Though I love the feel of pencil on paper, I think I like the cintiq a little bit better. I loved how on the computer, I could zoom in real close and get nice detail. Unfortuantely in the real world, my pencil led is the same size no matter what I do. So using sketchbook pro with a cintiq is a nice setup. But barely better than pencil and paper. I would say this is the first time I like drawing better on the computer. But I am sure the more I do it, the better.

Octopii attempt 1

I am making a big wood monstrosity for my living room so I needed to start some sketches for it. And I was kinda thinking what better to put up on your wall when you live in a desert but an octopus. Plus, you know how I feel about Blue planet and glowy fish at the bottom of the ocean. I was thinking an octopus would be a good starting point since it has been eons since I have sketched anything other than people. What could be easier than drawing a bunch of swirling lines? But alas, the anatomy of an octopus started tangling my brain. FUN fun fun to attempt though.

OK me too, even though I'm late

I got these awesome old (like 1960s) Time LIFE books from DI. This lady was a creation from a Spanish flamenco dancer I saw while perusing Spain.

A Week of Caricatures

For some reason I have been asked to create some characters for a new campaign. I am having fun trying something new.

sketch nine

My goal is to produce at least 30 sessions of sketching. Nothing too long, but still separate sessions of sketching. So I am trying to catch up. I did this for some storyboards which I will later animate in AfterFX, so they might not make as much sense in the sketch form. But having fun creating expressive characters.

numero 8 - bus sketching

Okay, did some sketching on the bus ride in, so pardon the... sketchiness. Okay, all sketching is sketching, but bus sketching is not nearly as stable as sketching on a non moving surface, so I feel the final results are not as sharp as I would want. But today was mostly random stuff, just whatever. But what I like about this challenge is that it is getting me to think of sketching during times when I would have otherwise not have thought to.

Character sketches

Some sketches over the weekend. Trying to create some simple characters which for me is awkward. But hey, the purpose of this blog is to sketch and improve, right?

The Big Cake Show

My wife insisted that I watch a new reality show called "Cake Boss". Those cakes were huge, and decorative, but I don't know how anyone would actually flap their gums around one. Here is a logo concept to pay homage to the show.

Puzzle on my Desk

I have a wooden 3-D puzzle on my desk at home and thought it would be fun to sketch. I was surprised at how difficult it was to get the angles and proportions correct. It's not perfect, but enjoyed the time drawing.

Sketch number seven... Eagle Snake!

Do you think if an eagle caught this snake as prey, it would feel guilty for eating it? Do not ask me why the snake turned out to have an eagle head, it's just the way I roll.

Also, I did this sketch on the computer, using a Cintiq tablet, and Autodesk Sketchbook pro. At first I didn't like it, it all seemed fuzzy. Then I realized I was drawing at 72 dpi. Fine for video storyboards, but not for real sketching. Once I changed that, I really liked it. It was nice to be able to zoom in really tight for more detail. Downside, is then you feel you need high detail in every inch of the drawing. So it is easy to get carried away. Another plus with computer drawing is layers of course, but being able to zoom way in and zoom way out, I could use hand strokes to my advantage. If I needed a smooth curve for the curve of the body, I could zoom way out, and keep it smooth and simple with a small hand stroke, whereas drawing on paper, I would need to cover a much greater distance with my hand, leaving more room for unsteadiness and mistakes. Now I need to draw a version on paper, just to compare.

Number six

Okay, I did these sketches on the bus, so it was a little annoying trying to keep a steady hand. Speaking of hands, I wanted to sketch a few hands since hands are always tricky. But then as my mind wandered, I came up with iVillan. A Plankton-esque iPhone that wants to take over the world, and makes statements only in the reference of i. It is impossible for him to say you, or they. Only i. There is no "team", in the word "i".

Ugly Logo

Working on some logo designs for a project. I was drawing out every visual cliche I could think of to get them out of the way and came up with this.

This is one of the finals that was rendered for the client.

T-Shirt Process

Several times a year I create a t-shirt for the Riverton Parks and Recreation Department pro-bono, or exchange for race entries. It is a way to do an experimental project vs. some of the more straight forward assignments things I do all day. I presented a day of using older buildings that are no longer standing and using a modern illustration method with runners in the foreground. It was kind of crazy to stylize the photographs but tracing in Illustrator really helped out.

I also wanted to add an antiqued appearance to the shirt. This is done by bringing in a bit-mapped texture into Photoshop.

Within Photoshop I use the "Select / Color Range" function and select only the black. While the black is selected within your photo "Command-C" to copy the texture into your pasteboard.

To apply the texture, simply create a channel mask in the layer you want to add the texture. The amount of texture can be modified with the "Brightness/Contrast" adjustments within the channel, not the image part of the layer.