It's Alive!!!!

This illo was for a great client I did work for a few months ago. A series of safety posters that they blew up into banners. To keep the resolution good for them when they enlarged the images, I had to draw everything in Adobe Illustrator, making them Vector images. Aggh. I haven't worked in Illustrator much , so the images took me a lot longer than expected. But the cool thing was the client basically gave me free rein on these. I used a more cartoony style than most people ask me for, but it's the style that I really PREFER to work in. This client loved it. Hopefully more clients will let me do this in the future.

BTW... I did have 40s cartoonist Dick Briefer's great, toony looking Frankenstein Monster in mind when I did the face here. And I don't know if it's evident in the final, but I was kind of thinking of parts of the outfit of Marvel's Frankenstein comics from the 70s.....

Teaching....

Over the years, at different periods of my life, I've taught private art lessons to kids. It's been quite awhile, though. And I've never done it during the actual school day... as a "real teacher". UNTIL tomorrow...

Yep, tomorrow morning at 8AM, I add "Substitute Art Teacher" to my resume'. I'll be teaching Drawing I and Drawing/Painting at my daughters' school. I'm nervous and excited all at the same time. I can't imagine how cool it would've been as a student ( WAY too many years ago to go into right now...) to have a successful professional commercial artist come in to teach my class. I was always looking for that, looking for inspiration. Looking for someone to tell me that what I felt called to do was something I could actually make a living doing.

Hopefully I'll make that high schooler, who's still inside of me somewhere, proud tomorrow....

iPad toon of the day

Getting more comfortable with drawing in ArtStudio now. Looking very similar to what I can produce on paper. More to come...

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Brady's Blog....

My daughter, Brady Ann, is writing more papers in school these days ( 6th grade), and needed a laptop for class. So she got an iPad for Christmas. She's quite the artist, and has been drawing a lot lately on the iPad. She is posting regularly on her own blog, so if you want to see what a talented twelve year old can do with an iPad, check it out....

http://bradyparham.blogspot.com/

iPad toons....

Another recent pic in ArtStudio on the iPad. I'll do a quick tutorial on what I've learned about drawing on the iPad soon.

For now, I'm just glad that my iPad drawings are in the ballpark of what I can do
With paper and ink .


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IPAD TOONING...

A few days ago I drew on the iPad at a big party at a convention. Here's one from that night.


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Location:iPad toonz

One mean lookin' dude....

Playin around with this awhile back. I'm gonna do something with this character one of these days. At least I hope to. He's been rattling around inside my head for over two decades in one form or another.

Basically it's a story of this battle scarred tough guy in a post- apocalyptic world who hunts down aliens, chimera, and fallen angels. A little Mad Max, a little HellBoy, a little "Left Behind", all mashed together.

Some day...

Happy New Year!!!

Yep, Baby 2011 is here, and ready to go!

2010 was a good year overall, but he was getting kinda old...

Recent Work: Merry Christmas!!!!

7-11

Drew this guy recently in the parking lot of a 7-11. I saw him outside and since I had my iPad with me, I decided to sketch him ( long story, but I was early to the airport to pick my parents up, and pulled in the 7-11 to sit until they called me from baggage claim). I am trying to get my iPad sketches as good as some of my friends' live digital work at gigs on the wacom, that way I can book more digital gigs. I think I'm getting close...

Gunslinger, part 2

An old, crusty gunslinger from the same job.

GunSlingers...

I've got this client that I've worked with for many, many years now who prints up simple card games for people to buy. He always wants drawings in a sequence... kind of like a limited animation scene. He only wants black and white images ( too bad ), but they're usually a lot of fun to draw. This time around, the theme was "gunslingers". The job was to draw a few gunslingers, in three poses: About to draw their gun/guns....
...drawing their gun(s), and...
...getting shot. This guy was the first one I did, a kind of " Marshall Matt Dillon" from "Gunsmoke" or "Hoss" from "Bonanza".

My Dad was a big Western fan when I was growing up ( John Wayne was his favorite), so I've watched plenty of Western TV shows and movies myself.

BTW, I think I colored this one just for myself. I'll try to find it and post here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hmmm. Today makes you think, you know?

We got a call from an Aunt in Iowa whose Dad ( she married into the family) just passed away unexpectedly yesterday.

We also got a call from an artist friend whose Mom is in terminal condition. They were surprised she made it till morning, up in the ICU of a Georgia hospital.

So, all this has me thinking today even more about how good my life is, and how blessed I am. Give thanks today to HE who gave it all to you, and hug your loved ones a few extra seconds today, okay?

Here's hoping you and yours have a Happy Thanksgiving Day.

iPad 4.2 : Where the heck is my Screen Lock?

I was ecstatic to download the iPad 4.2 operating system today. Mainly because I've been waiting to be able to create folders for my bookmarks. I now have my seven pages down to one and a half- Woo Hoo!

BUT.... ( insert imposing DUM DUM DUM music...)

They changed the screen lock button to a mute button! ARGGH! I was perfectly fine with toggling down the volume switch to mute. It was bad enough trying to read a website with the screen changing orientation on me, but I could only imagine how frustrated I was going to be trying to draw on this thing now.

So, I did some googling and found a solution, which I've shown in the screen capture above ( yes that is me and my beautiful girls and our dog on the screen). To lock the screen orientation, double-click the Home button on the iPad and slide the gray tray all the way to the right to reveal a lock, volume, and brightness controls and iPod playback controls. Yay! Crisis averted!

iPad toon

I just returned from the ISCA convention in Vegas, and man, am I behind here in the studio! Lots of people wanting their caricatures drawn. Thank God, right?

Anyway, no time for much bloggery, but thought I'd throw this quick sketch up here that I did on the iPad the other day.

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The King, Part 2

I changed a few things before I colored this piece. Boomhauer's can changed to a bottle, all of the cans are now the same size, I added the recycle bin, etc. More than in the opening of the show, I played with colors in my version. All of the blue pants contrast with my orange-y fence. The blue bands on the cans are right against that as well, "popping" them out. The recycle bin is orange, against the blue of the pants right next to him.There's a lot of yellow in that fence, which butts up against a purple of the roof of the house. The red hat is against the green trees. All kinds of stuff going on.

If you haven't tried "King of the Hill" before, do so. It's running twice a night where I live ( Orlando, FL ).. And if you dont' like the art, like I didn't at first... well, do what I did, and redesign it!!!

The King....

I don't know why exactly, but during "The King of the Hill"s decade or so run on TV, I never really watched an episode. I didn't have a real reason that I know of. Sure, the "shakey line" art style bothered me, but that didnt' bother me too badly on "Beavis and Butthead", also by Mike Judge several years prior. I think it was the early Sunday night timeslot it had.. I was never at home watching TV that time of night. On any night.

But I did notice something very early on about "The King"... Hank Hill, the father of the show, and it's namesake, I suppose, bore an UNCANNY resemblance to my maternal grandfather. George Suttle, "Papa" to me, hung the moon. He lived long enough to get to know and love my incredible wife, Barbie, but passed on just before the birth of my oldest daughter, now twelve. I had him for 28 years or so, and after my Dad, he was the best man I've ever known. I need to dig up some photos of Papa to post here.. so you can see the resemblance between him and Hank Hill too.

Anyway... these past few months, I have become a HUGE fan of "King of the Hill" in reruns. Hank looks so much like Papa, and does have some of his qualities. But Hank is a great character all on his own. As are all the characters. The show is set in Texas, in the Bible Belt. I am from South Carolina, the virtual buckle of the Bible Belt. So, a lot of the conservative attitudes of the show are familiar to me. In fact, a lot of them I share. That's one thing I like about the show... they are true, in their writing, to the characters, but don't really talk "down" about their beliefs and attitudes too much. It's not a show that makes fun of the small town, religious, conservative Americans it portrays. Well, not too much. Pretty remarkable these days, considering how liberal Hollywood is.

I was watching an episode of "King" tonight, and had a sketchbook in my hand. Every once in awhile, I like to do my own versions of cartoons and movies I like. The goal, rather than copying, is to pretend it's a character design job, and put my own twist on the characters. Still keeping the basic character designs, but tweaking them to exist in "my world". Next, I'll show my color version....

Booster

After watching some toons the other night with my girls, I decided to try my toony version of Booster Gold, a DC Superhero. Thought I'd let you see...

IPad stuff

My location at this Vegas gig a couple of weeks ago left a lot to be desired.
I was in the hallway, which sounds great, but turned out to be a real detriment. If I was drawing someone, they kind of blocked the screen and that made me almost invisible. So most people passed right by, into the convention hall without seeing me. In fact, it wasn't until the last day that I ever had much of a line for people waiting. And when I drew them, they said they hadn't seen me for the past two days. Ugh. Oh well.

What I did find out on the last day, with people waiting, is that I was actually drawing pretty quickly, learning curve and all. It turns out I was drawing these , under sketch, shading, and all, in less than five minutes. That was good to know.

Oh yeah, one other weird thing about drawing and projecting... The iPad VGA adapter doesn't fit really well on any VGA cord I could find. So a couple of times at the show, the cord separated from the adapter and I lost my signal on the monitor. Yikes. But I figured out how to work around it so it didn't happen anymore.

I learned a ton at this gig, and am looking forward to my next iPad gig adventure.

PS... I lost my cool new iFaraday stylus at this show! Yep, the lack of a pen clip caught up with me. I vaguely remember putting the stylus behind my ear between drawings, and NOT clipping it back to the cool magnet it has. After that, I have no idea what happened. I had to finish the show with the Griffin stylus, which turned out okay. I hope whomever finds my stylus enjoys it!
But I do miss it. :(


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iPad gig in Vegas

I keep promising to talk about things I learned on the Vegas gig, but finding the time to do so has been a challenge. Sorry! Well, for one thing, I found that Running through the VGA cord slooooows down my iPad a bit. Not sure why, but everything just seemed to move slower. Curved lines even turned out straight until I slowed way down while drawing them. So that hurt my speed. Add to that the fact that trying to email by 3G took forever, and my power on my iPad drained really quickly. I would've been better with two iPads! I'm considering doing that, buying a second one for gigs. For a few hours I would've been fine, but for an all day trade show, well, I was sweating it. Add to that the fact that I was trying to send the pix to people via 3G ( Wifi was nonexistent here), and my power just got SUCKED away. One day I had to stop projecting for a bit and just hooked up to a power outlet to recharge while I continued drawing. With only one port on the iPad, drawing, recharging, AND projecting wasn't an option.


To Be Continued.....




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