Riding Out Wall Street

I did this illustration last week for a story about finding places to put your money rather than the stock market. I've got about 35 cents in my pocket. I think I'll put it on the shelf next to my keys. That's safe! Wait! Where are my keys?

Here are the thumbnail roughs I did when I received the assignment.

And here's how it looked when it hit the page!

Sorry I'm so brief today. Company's coming and I've got lots to do! Thanks for looking!

If you like it/hate it leave a comment or tweet it at me. I'm always happy to hear from even my most brutal of critics... like mom.

A Very Old Illustration of Ray Bradbury

I saw the spine of a Ray Bradbury book on my shelves this morning and I remembered this illustration. I was motivated to look on the blog to see what I had written about it. Alas, it appears I never posted it. I think this was done in 2003 or maybe 2004, and that was a few years before I started the blog. It must have slipped through the cracks.

I had a wonderful time working on it. Making art for the newspaper, every once in a while you get to do something for a story that is exactly what you've wanted to do all your life. Drawing a big illustration for a story and interview with Ray Bradbury might have been the first and most perfect intersection of dream-job and practical work I've ever had.

With a lot of effort and home-study I was beginning to have some confidence in my digital painting and used every trick I had learned up to that point. I was completely thrilled with how it came out. I don't remember who came up with the headline -- it certainly could have been me, and I hope it was! -- but doing the headline in the style of the old Amazing Stories logo almost put a tear in my eye when I finished it.

The End.

June 18th edit: 

I've just noticed that there have been more visitors to this blog entry lately and I felt I should point out that I wrote and posted this piece about three weeks before Mr. Bradbury's passing -- it might seem odd to the casual visitor that there is no mention of that. So, that's why.

I'll add that I think he was a huge, huge talent. Without question, he is one of the immortal writers of the 20th century. Thank you for all your wonderful work, Mr. Bradbury.

Sorta Unfinished Characters

Here are a couple more character design experiments. Not that great, and not even finished, but there have been chores and a household emergency to tend to this afternoon.

I probably will not get back to these any time soon, so might as well post them now.

Pardon the very hasty background.

Quirky New Character Design Doodles

Here are a couple of character design doodles. They are somewhat unfinished, but I set a deadline for myself on these and I fudged on that already.

For my next attempts I will try to design more mainstream, serious characters. I don't know why, but my efforts turn slightly silly when I don't pay close attention to their evolutions.

Drawn in Photoshop!

Drawing From Life

I started working with a live model today. This drawing (done on an ipad) is not very good but I hope to improve with practice.

The model is Miss Evelyn Beatrice Durham and she's brand new at this, too.

As I finished the drawing, I looked up and saw that it was 2:04 pm. Precisely one day and two minutes after she first made the scene.

The End.

No, wait.

A Beginning!

 

Testing Paper and Blogsy

Testing an ipad drawing app and also a blogging app.

Does this work?

 

The End

 

Quick Little Painting

Completed several errands today, cleaned up around the house, took care of a few monotonous chores, and made a huge chunk of progress on a very depressing project for work.

Rather than go to bed with only drudgery and sorrow in Tuesday's wake, I found a picture I took of my wife last Christmas and did a hasty study.

Painted in photoshop at a very low res, so that I couldn't fuss and make it last too long. About 25, 30 minutes.

Time for bed!

Facebook Bootcamp

The distinguished Charles Apple wrote a very kind post over on his blog that includes my latest illustrative effort for The SJ Merc, Oak Trib, CCTimes and all those other SF Bay Area papers I work for.

I intended to write a longer post focusing on the drawing process – roughs, refinement, coloring, all that – but I haven't had the time. And the forecast for today and tomorrow is busy, busy, busy. I may not get to it for weeks!

So, rather than let the fizz fade entirely before posting the picture, I offer it now with the half-hearted promise of a mildly interesting and chatty update featuring a slew of scribbly, unfinished, unrefined drawings. Yeah! Can hardly wait!

Props Of Unusual Size to Mike Swift for the story and to Alex Fong for art direction, critical input and making sense of it all. As always, the people I work with make me feel like I get to do the easy part.

To be continued . . . ?

Junky Little Drawing

Started this drawing a month or so ago. I set it aside, unfinished. Forgot about it.

Found it this morn. I tidied up the background, started to try to fix the bike, but decided it wasn't worth it. Wrote a couple of balloons and dropped them in there to make it look there's more going on than there is. So, here you go.

Drawn in Photoshop.

The font is called Joe Kubert, based on the hand-lettering of the great cartoonist. He's definitely one of my top-five all-time favorites and if I can't draw as well as he can then I'm at least going to steal his wonderful lettering.

I bought the font from Comicraft. Highly recommended.

Managing Social Media

I like how this one came out. It was fun!

I had a struggle at the beginning when trying to create a funnel in Illustrator using the 3D tools. That didn't go well. I never came close to making an image that looked like a funnel. I've got deformed bowling pins, but no funnel. So, I abandoned the vector approach for the comfort of simple photoshop cartooning.

And the lady originally looked like this. Not a very appealing character.

And here is how it looked in the paper. The color printed nicely!

That's it for today!

The End.