Flyleaf - All around me (NEW VIDEO)

Love this song.

Hot off the Wacom: Hiking Couple

Did this job recently for a new client. This is one of a series for various usages, including on their website. The description I had for this illo was that it was just supposed to be a young, twentys-ish guy and girl out hiking.
This was my original sketch. I liked the guy's hair here, but they didn't. Oh well. So, I changed it for them on the final.

Lex Luthor!

When "The Toony Bin" http://toonybin.blogspot.com/ character design challenge site had "MAD Scientist" as their challenge, I HAD to try a toony Lex Luthor. Soon, I'll try to color and post the Superman I did as a companion piece. Hope you like my Lex!

Life Springs 10 Days Baja Mission Trip

Recent Work: Greg Tipton, Ten Days Missions

This is a caricature I did recently for a friend and real inspiration of mine.
Gregg Tipton is the founder and director of Ten Days Missions http://www.tendaysmissions.org/ , the organization we recently went to Baja Mexico with. I wanted to try a colored line technique I've been working on, as well as a bit more layered, watercolor look to the coloring. Hope ya like it!

The newest artist in my house...

There must be something in the water in my house. Here's my youngest daughter a few months ago... before her third birthday this month... with her self portrait. I was amazed when she picked up her "Magna Doodle" and when I asked her what she was drawing, she said "I Draw Me". This is what she produced:

It's even funnier when you realize that up to a few months before this, she really had very little hair. Her hair did look a bit like this, just a spot on top. I was blown away. She draws all the time and her Pre-K teachers have already pegged her as "the artist" in the class. Too cool.

Thundercats!!!

This is just me playing around with a cute, toony version of one of the Thundercats characters for The Toony Bin character design site.

BajaDos, part 3

It's funny, in "real life" I "need" a comfortable chair, and my fancy easel, and my special drawing paper that's just the right size and weight. Well, maybe it's not so funny, ya know? On the mission trip to Baja, I was perfectly content in the BLAZING sun, no shade for miles, sitting on two concrete blocks in the middle of a sandy field, drawing on a sketchbook barely bigger than my hand. And the people loved the drawings, as a bonus.
When you're using your talents for the one who gave them to you, it's incredibly fulfilling.

I told my wife, I've never felt so fulfilled... so confident that I knew I was in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing... in my entire life.

Baja Dos, part 2

Here's a pic of our mission team from our local church, HighPoint Church, here in Orlando Florida. This was taken at the Orlando airport before we flew to San Diego, and then got on a bus to Rosarito Beach in Baja Mexico.
Each morning, we were bussed out again to a small village named Terazzas. We built a church, built a house, fed a vileage full of people, and told people about the love of Christ. This first day, though, all I wanted to do was hide behind my pen and paper!
I drew lots of caricatures of the locals while I was there. Nearly 200 of them, most of them on two different days.

It was cool to use my talents for HE who gave them to me, and to see people's faces light up when they got the drawings. God truly does use the simple things, sometimes...

Global Tribe TV - Former NBA star Keith Tower reports from Mexico

A few weeks ago, my wife and oldest daughter and I went on a mission trip with our church to Baja, Mexico. It was an amazing, life changing event. Here is a quick video posted on YouTube with our pastor, Keith Tower, talking a bit about the trip. At the end, he references me and my family in the story about the guy with the withered hand that was healed on our trip. Praise God! He is alive and is still in the miracle business!

Tarzan!

Growing up back in the 70s, when I wasn't reading comic books, I read the original Tarzan novels. He's always been one of my favorite characters, so awhile back, I thought I'd take a cartoony swing at him in my sketchbook :
The "real" Tarzan was quite different from the Hollywood versions of him, of course. In Burroughs' books, you really got the feel that he was barely controlling the "animal" side of himself. I put the scar over his eye, since I seem to remember that from the books...the scar would appear whenever he'd go into an "animal rage". The closest Hollywood ever got to him, in my opinion, was "Greystoke" (parts of that were dead-on), and, strangely enough, Disney's Tarzan (minus all of the talking, SINGING animals).

In the comics, I kind of liked Kubert's take and Buscema's, but there was a series about ten years ago, that was drawn by Mark Wheatley (don't remember the writer), that had a lot of the true spirit of the ape man.

Oh yeah, and since I'm a child of the 70s, I remember faithfully watching both the reruns of the goldenboy Tarzan of Ron Ely, and the Filmation cartoons. The latter, looking back, were awful. But, I spent a lot of my childhood playing in the yard, reciting the opening, "I am Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle. This is my domain, and I protect those who come here. AHHHOOOAHHHHHH-ahhhh-uhhh-ahhh-ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

Long live the King of the Jungle!!!

Keelan's Eats: Beefy King

I admit it...one of my favorite things to do is EAT. So, occasionally I will be adding restaurant reviews to this blog. Hope you find it interesting. And, if not, well, hang out a few days and there will be more art again here. Or something. Anyway, my first food entry over here.... the myth, the legend.... BEEFY KING! Is that a cool sign, or what?
Forget Arby's, and all those other pretenders. There is no comparison to Beefy King's roast beef sandwiches.
An Orlando, Florida ( that's where I live ) institution since 1968, this family owned business on Bumby Avenue is tops in my book.
Please.... a great sign, amazing roast beef with tater tots on the side, and an interior that looks like you've stepped back in time to the Brady Bunch era... what's NOT to love?

Long live the King!

Recent Work

This is one of a group of illustrations I did for a good client of mine. Since over the years I've done so many gift caricatures, whether they're of single people or huge groups for corporate clients, it's fun to do this kind of thing. My guidelines were " Two young hip people, one guy and one girl, using lots of tech.... laptops, blackberry, cellphone, ipod, etc. At large conference table." It's on their website, and in some printed materials for them, so in order to have a lot of flexibility with the images, they requested I leave plenty of open space around the characters, with no real background behind them.

I'm actually getting a lot more of this type of project where I can do my character design/cartoon illustration style, and I like it. I'll try to post some other recent examples as well.

The Toony Bin: Cereal Mascots

The Toony Bin's character design challenge this week was for Cereal Mascots. I figured most people would do Toucan Sam, Snap Crackle and Pop, Tony the Tiger, stuff like that. So, I found a site that has tons of cereal mascots on it as a reference. I saw these two characters, Klondike Pete and his donkey, Thorndike, from a cereal I barely remember called Crunchy Nuggets. The original illos of them were pretty great, actually. I don't think I improved on them one bit! LOL
Really, I just thought they looked fun to draw, and wanted to play around with a couple of new Photoshop brushes for the coloring. I think there's some interesting things I learned with the brushes, but I have a long way to go with them before I do a convincing watercolor look. Actually, this looks a good bit like colored markers now that I look at it. Anyway...

Crissman Quads

From the files....

About two years ago, I had a good client of mine contact me. She wanted me to do some artwork for some friends of hers. A young couple, they'd just found out that they were having QUADRUPLETS. Naturally, I might add...no fertility drugs involved. That's EXTREMELY rare.

Their friends and family wanted to start a website where people could make donations to help out financially if they wanted, but mainly just so that people could follow the quads' development.

I was glad to help out, and did the above drawing for them.

http://thecrissmanquads.blogspot.com/

Keelan Eats... Boy, does he!

Awhile back, a dear friend of mine encouraged me to keep this particular blog all business, for fans of my art, and to keep personal stuff, well, personal. I agreed in theory, and started a few other blogs for those who want to read more personal ramblings. One of those is my workout blog "Keelan's BodyShop" and the newest is, "Keelan Eats". On this one, I plan to put in restaurant reviews from all over the world, from mine and my family's travels. ( BTW, if you've eaten with me before at cool places and want to send me some photos of those restaurants so I can post them, I'd really like that.. I hate to miss out on mentioning places I've already been to).

Anyway, I've always appreciated reading restaurants reviews so I don't have to try things "blindly", and my family and I eat out so often, that me writing my own restaurant review blog was probably inevitable.

If you're interested, give it a visit. Hope you find it entertaining and useful!
http://keelaneats.blogspot.com/

Let's TOON Caricatures! : New Look

Yep, times are a-changin', and so is my Let's TOON CARICATURES book. I am coming DANGEROUSLY close to the end of our second printing of this title, and I am shopping it around to some new printers to do our third. Someday, I am going to update the entire book and bring it closer to how I actually draw these days ( I drew some of the material in the book a DECADE ago). But for now, I am just updating the cover (and maybe a page here or there... we'll see). With a new kid, a new dog, and an ever evolving drawing style, I had to do SOMETHING.



In contrast, here's the original (current) cover. I don't want people to think it's a totally revamped version of the book, so I wanted to stay in the same basic style and look of the original image. That was a bit of a challenge, to meld my current style with that of a decade ago. I think it worked pretty well, though. It DOES make me look forward to a totally new version in the future. One of these days....

The book continues to surprise me, training artists around the world for over six years , and it's sales are actually stronger than ever ( thanks to a combination of Amazon.com, our websites, and our retail stands).

Here's to the future... the new cover is just the first step!

Harley Quinn

A good buddy of mine ( hey, Loco! ), mentioned he'd like to see my take on the Harley Quinn character from Batman Animated. Since I've been playing around with teh trial version of Sketchbook Pro 2010, I decided to sketch her for him in that program. Finishes and letters were done in Photoshop, by the way.

Mr. Saturday Night

This week's "Toony Bin" submission. I didn't know exactly what they had in mind with the subject, but just decided to let my pen roam. In the new Sketchbook Pro 2010, to be exact. I downloaded the trial recently, and have been trying it out. There's a few things I'd change here and there (isn't there always?), but overall, I liked how this guy turned out. BTW, I even colored it in Sketchbook... a first. All I did in Photoshop this time was the chalky bg.

Batgirl!

BATGIRL from the 60s Batman series. Hope ya dig...