Savage!!!

I always loved all the pulp hereoes as a kid...Tarzan, The Shadow, and DOC SAVAGE, the MAN OF BRONZE! Here's a sketch from one of my sketchbooks last year that I colored in Photoshop tonight, just playing around.

Mighty 1

Another character, from a story I've been tinkering with for, oh, about TWENTY years.....Maybe he and his story will see the light of day one of these decades...
Yeah, I know, a little bit darker style than I usually do. It's fun to change gears every once in awhile. These are all just bascially quick sketches, with some grays added in Photoshop. They're rough like sketches, but I kinda dig 'em that way.
I think the rough, dark, scratchy style kinda makes sense for the story. Yes, there's even a cyclops in it. Man, I wish I had time to do this story justice....

Running Super

One of my funny superheroes I've been playing around with developing for a few years now....
Just a quickie sketchbook sketch with some Photoshop color thrown on. About all I have time for right now. There's some cool lines and "Flow" here in his body, I think.

Hulk

I love drawin' superheroes...

Brady Shake

I drew this one of Brady at "Five Guys' Burgers and Fries" yesterday .She's drinking a Huge milkshake. That's a supercool "Omnitrix" bracelet from the supercool cartoon "Ben 10" that she's wearing. We were on our way to a local comic book show (where we saw Thomas! He and Barry and Jenni were displaying all their incredible looking books and showing off the amazing product they're producing through their printing biz), when we grabbed a bite to eat together here. Oh yeah, she's got her Batman Tshirt on too, but it's not quite visible. Yeah, she's definitely my kid....the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. A true comic geek already. Just a whole HECKUVA lot cuter than me. (thank God she takes after her Mommy). Anyway, I kinda liked how it turned out, so I thought I'd share. Just a rough sketch....

Funny Faces Comic

Anybody who knows me knows that comic books have always been my first love. When I was a kid, I dreamed of drawing Batman, Superman, all the big guns for Marvel and DC. As I got older, though, I decided I really only wanted to do my own characters. My good friend Ted Tucker and I even used to self publish our own book, Lunar Donut, many years ago so we could do that kind of thing. The book was doing pretty well, for a small press title, until real life set in, and we went back to our "day jobs" of drawing caricatures. But I'm still the biggest comic fan you're likely to meet.

For the past few years I've been very involved in the National Caricaturist Network, and have written and drawn an autobiographical strip (another love of mine) for their magazine, Exaggerated Features. the strip is entitled "Funny Faces". Sound familiar? After a few years of this, I have enough pages in the can that I'm thinking of printing up a comic of all my strips so far.
Here is a very loose mock up of a cover idea. Input appreciated. I'm about 85% sure I'm going to do this soon. Just a little concerned of being stuck with more boxes of comics in my garage...Lunar Donuts have been in there for years.....

Brady Number Fun

My daughter, Brady, did this sketch today, and I thought I'd share. She tells me it's of a line of people waiting at a movie theater concession stand. There's a lot going on here, and it takes a minute to look at, to appreciate it all. What impressed me was that there were people of varying heights, varying races, and varying clothing and hairstyles. Plus, there's some really good hands here. Not to mention that there's background! There's a checkered floor, a counter with a cash register on it, a movie marquee with times on it above their heads, and way in the back (perspective!), there's an arcade with a driving game in it. Good grief! I don't do backgrounds NOW half of the time. And she's not even EIGHT yet!
Keep reading, though, because this gets weirder.

David Cowles, a friend and huge inspiration of mine(www.davidcowles.net), was in town with his daughter a few weeks ago to see Disney. We had dinner with them one night, and Brady bonded with them over a game of "number fun", drawing on the "To Go" bag as we waited for our check. What you do is someone draws a number, and gives it to the next person, who has to figure out how to make it into a drawing. I was surprised that Brady was holding her own with them. At the end of the meal, David promised Brady to send her some "Numbers Homework" in the mail. True to his word, a few days later, a small sketchbook arrived in the mail, each page with a different number on it. Some were easy, but some were pretty hard...like the number "seventeen"...SPELLED out. I was impressed again with Brady's creativity, and she did about half of the book in one sitting (she'll finish it soon, David, and we'll send you some of the drawings!). SO....I decided to give her a project of my own. We have a "Summer Fun Sketchbook" that we're keeping this year, and I gave her some "Number Fun" pages to do in it. This drawing of the crowd at a movie concession? It started out as the number "Fourteen". See here for yourself:

Here it is again, superimposed over the final image:
I was impressed with the drawing itself, for the reasons I pointed out, but now I was speechless. I have no idea how she came up with all of this. Wow

More Travel!

Here's one from the latest batch of the TravelSlut drawings. She's put this character I designed on business cards, stamps, all kinds of stuff now. And the websit's soon to follow. It's cool when a great client really likes your work and runs with it, using it like this.

Super!

I LOVED this movie! Is it perfect? No. Is Routh as good as Reeve in the part? No. However, all in all, this is a really good film. Not as good as I would like, but much better than I had hoped for. I really thought they were gonna butcher it. But Bryan Singer has created a great film, and a fitting homage to the first two Superman movies from the 70s. Please, if you haven't see this film yet, go see it NOW! And if you have, go see it AGAIN! We can't let something like Pirates of the Caribbean 2 beat it at the box office.

Bride

Same client as the Silhouette Girl above. This one of a bride. I am experimenting with the colored lines technique. Kinda like it. Everything's so girly and pink about these drawings. But that's okay...I'm secure in my heterosexuality. And, oh yeah, I DO realize this one looks like the "Teacher" character from the educational products company, with just slightly different proportions. Well, she recently got married, is all! Now the kids will have to call her by her new name.

Ah, I figured they were different clients, different markets, so I decided to use my default pretty blonde girl again. Actually, if you've ever seen my wife, this looks like a cartoon version of her alot, ao that must be where that "template" comes from in my head.

Silhouette Girl

Just wanted to see if this thing still worked! Been awhile since I posted. This is a simple job I've been working on, some spot illos for a repeat client. She had a clip art of this kind of thing, a girl walking her dog, (the bottome one, with the pink around it) and wanted me to redesign it, with my own flair. Mine is the larger one, with the cell phone. Yes, I know it's"Barbie-esque". That fits in with the client's corporate image.

Class FINAL

Here they are, all of the characters, including Gary, in their final incarnations. You can see, the client eventually went witht he Asian Gary I preferred. I really loved doing this project, as it is the kind of cartoon illustration I want to do more of. Even thought the Gary design, in particular, was a bear, going back and forth a bit, the client turned out to be a real pleasure to work with. I can't wait to see what they do with these little guys!

Big Group

Besides the Class thing, and tons of events I've drawn at lately, this has been my big time consumer lately. Yes, there are 26 (!) people in this one. About half of the faces were drawn digitally, the rest drawn traditionally and scanned in. Of course, it was all colored digitally,a nd will be emailed out to the client.

Now I gotta start on the 68 people group......

Class 6

Believe it or not...the client LOVED my "throwaway" idea of making Gary Asian! Go figure! He even decided to change the character's name to Ming, to reflect the new look! I was against this name change, however, as it reminded me of Ming the Merciless, from Flash Gordon. But, hey, it's not my character...it's the client's, right? Regardless, I still refer to him as Gary, just 'cuz I like it better. Anyway, the one drawback to this "Asian Gary", the client felt, was the eyes I'd given him. OR lack thereof. He thought it might come across as racist. So, he ordered a sketch of Gary with pupils showing. I also changed his nose a bit, to reflect his Asian look. I really liked version seven, with the small eyes, but waited to hear what the client thought....

Class 5

I finally finished this project for the client, and all turned out well. However, there's a lot I haven't told you about the design process, still, since I've been so busy with everything lately. Let's try to catch you up over the next few days or so on Gary. The next stage in character design for Gary was that the client asked to see him now without glasses. Remember, the original request was that he be overweight, with glasses and braces, dressed very nerdy. JUST like Carl from Jimmy Neutron, remember (see earlier Class posts). Now, he's skinny, no braces, and no glasses. By this point I was so confused as to what my client wanted (remember, though, he is a very nice guy and has been paying a small fee for each of these revisions), and was really upset that now Gary was truly looking like Alfalfa. I'd went from a Carl ripoff to an Alfalfa rip off. On a whim, I just said to heck with it and threw in another, unasked for sketch that went in yet ANOTHER totally different direction....I decided to let him see what Gary might look like if he were Asian....

TO BE CONTINUED......

McD's

Tonight, I remembered to take my sketchbook with me when I ate out. Finally! Brady (my daughter...you know that) and I walked in, and there were three obnoxious teen boys ordering in front of us, at McDonald's. I still don't understand why, exactly, but one of them had a guitar with him. Goofing around, he was just wildly strumming on the thing, making up nonsensical lyrics...while I was trying to order our food. Grrr. I did say something to him, since I couldn't hear myself think over his "playing", and he did apologize and tone it down. But, the entire time we were there, he and his three friends passed the guitar around and "played". I guess they were just being silly...I looked, and there were no teen girls they were trying to impress. Maybe they were high, come to think of it. Anyway, weird scene. I drew one of them, shown here, very quickly in my sketchbook, and when I got home just now threw some Photoshop color on it.

I'll try to remember my sketchbook more...

Brady's Blog

For any of you who know me, my daughter, Brady, is the apple of my eye. She was born with lots of orthopedic issues, most of which she has overcome (thanks to lots of doctor's visits, surgeries, and mostly prayer). For that reason, she's never been able to run around and play as much as "normal" (hate that word) kids. But, man, can she draw. She's got a real cartoonist's eye, talent, and sense of humor. She says she's gonna take over the family business one day and draw caricatures like Daddy. So, fairly regularly, she and I do training exercises together. I have set up a new Blog for just her artwork. Check it out sometime.
bradyparham.blogspot.com

This is her drawing of National Caricaturist Network luminary and good friend, Joe Bluhm.

From recent Gigs

Here's a pic from a recent gig I did.

Digital Painting

The latest results of me playing around with my wacom and practicing painting digitally. Not finished, but coming along....

Man, I look mean here....I'm really not mean, I'm just drawn that way!

TravelSlut

Okay, let's take a quick break from the Class project. No more kid drawings today...only slut drawings. Yep, TravelSlut. That's this lady's business name. She wears enormous wigs like this, and she wanted a cartoon of herself done in this persona, to use on cards, website, etc. This client, despite her unusual business name, was a lot of fun to work with...no fuss, and loved the drawings I gave her. I need more clients like that! I like that I'm getting more and more of this kind of stuff, more pure cartooning and character design work. I'm gonna have to do a MAJOR revamp of my personal website soon to reflect this.