Thursday, February 25, 2010

02/25 Simply Irresistible

This week's derby is vintage.  It took me a while to get a good sketch I could vintage. Here's what I came up with- an ode to '80s fashion and Nagel without pandering to Nagel. I still need to slightly distress the design, but I'm thinking just some cracks in the white ink should do it rather than lots of splots of wear.  It's based on the sketch I just posted... EDIT 2/26- tweaked the graphics a bit to lower the ears. Also color the hair more.

02/23 Basis of Simply Irresistible

Okay, I'm gonna stop lying to myself. I may not get caught up. But I'm trying.  Here's an ink sketch I did a while ago. I cleaned it up a ton and I am using it as a basis for my shirt.woot design for this week's derby, and I figured this way I fill out a day and get closer to being caught up!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

02/22 Revision of parking lot

I got tired of almost getting clobbered every time I went into work. Problem was the lot was designed so that everyone was ducking in and out of side lanes. So I redesigned it to turn all the aisles 90 degrees and angle the spots.  Voila. More parking spots, better flow, and if they do it, less accidents!

It's not a shirt design or a cartoon or something else for a shirt, but it is cool that the University's taking me seriously with this...

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

02/21 Pig in a Pickle

Yes. A pig in a pickle. Did you expect something else?

02/20 Robot

I have to admit- this isn't even close to being decent. It's actually not very good. But I needed to at least attempt to do something this week, so here it is. While I generally like the concept, I'm not happy with the treads or the details. But perhaps sometime soon I can fix the quick pass with the tablet with something looking better.

Friday, February 19, 2010

02/19 Running for MS research

Just subbed this as a weekly contest entry at Good Joe. I hope it is well received!

Thursday, February 18, 2010

02/18 How the cow really jumped over the moon

This is my shirt.woot design. Although I'm not terribly happy with the moon, I love the cow's expression, which just kind of happened during the tablet time.  Feel free to comment on what it looks liks and whether I should modify it before derby time...

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

02/16 YMCA Hope

This is my submission for the GoodJoe YMCA contest.  I tried to make it sweet, and although I'm not good at people, I thought it came out really well. The skyline I think was a good touch to make it more than just a heart on a shirt. I hope at the very least I get some comments about how I could improve it. Four colors on cream shirt.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

02/15 Insane Clown Posturing

Was watching 24, and I started doodling on a pad of paper. Just started with circles, and this evolved. I think it's a weird cross between a drugged-out clown and Bill Clinton.  Wonder if I can make it into anything other than a funky drawing...

Sunday, February 14, 2010

02/14 Pencil sketch of woman who doesn't exist

Was working on eyes the other day for a tiger zodiac shirt.woot entry that never got finished. Started drawing human eyes on a slip of paper, and I liked it so much i kept going. Wonder if there's someone out there that looks like this... Hopefully if so, she's got a better developed nose :)

Okay, almost caught up!

02/13 Black and White study of pile of crap.


Was hoping for inspiration by dumping a keyring, clock, slinkie jr and a pen on the table and attempting to see if something organically would come out of randomness. Nope. Looks like the objects.  Maybe I can tweak in Illustrator...

02/12 Funky apple


First painting done in quite a while. I just can't stand curves or fruit that looks like it's supposed to. So this is a funky attempt at using acrylics. One note, don't bend the paper after it dries. I lost a little of the grays as it flaked off between coats. Oops.

02/11 Robotic raptor

ORiginally this was called "rode runner" and the basis for a poem about the futility of the Coyote versus the Road Runner. IE- the reason the road runner always won was that he didn't obey the traditional biological or physical laws because he was in actuality a robot.  The turbines in his neck helped him run so fast, and his bionic eyes and loevred plates helped him stop on a dime. I have been tinkering on this for over two decades, soon it will get a proper tablet-ing...

Just so you don't think I'm fibbing about the two decades, here's the ORIGINAL sketch, dated 1989.

02/10 Heartflower

Okay, I cheated. This is for Valentines day but since I'm very behind, this will have to suffice as my entry for the 10th. P'raps I'll try to get caught up with my MSCE today, after I go get my DW something for today's day.  And despite the derby theme of a few weeks ago, this is totally new as of today.

Friday, February 12, 2010

02/09 Iiwi

This is an improvement on a derby I entered a while ago. I love this Hawaiian honeycreeper, the iiwi. It's got a very metallic song, and is very pretty. Also, it's one of the few native birds that have shown some resistance to the avian pox and malaria that has decimated the island group of birds. Why? The Hawaiian island chain is the most isolated land mass on the planet- 2500 miles from the nearest continent. Which means the birds have developed in isolation from any disease-carrying mosquitoes for eons, and therefore do not have antibodies against them. So most are extinct now.  But this bird is plentiful enough that it probably will survive.

Maybe I'll sub this as a good joe, since improving bird conservation on Hawaii is one of my big career goals.

02/08 Doggone Gator



Now I'm a week behind, and I don't know if I can catch up. So I sketched something real quick in the hopes I can trickle back into creative mode. Just had a very depressing meeting where I learned that our new Governor has thrown out all the contracts and is about to place the onus on balancing the budget on those people least able to deal with it- the working men and women of the state. Nevermind corporate managers are getting huge bonuses, it's the state teachers that are the root of all that is evil in our state.

Sigh.

Have a hot dog, gator.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Double-take derby #8 is tomorrow.

I am happy to report that a shirt I made is up for re-votes in the next double-take derby.  I am linking the image now, but will replace it with a voting link tomorrow when the new derby goes live.

I'm so excited to get my butt kicked by draxxx and tgentry! :)

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

02/07 Cafe Verve

Again playing with the Intuos3 Tablet. This time making a fake cafe shirt for perhaps a startup coffee joint.  I like fancy type, so this is fun stuff. Plus I liked the idea of having the coffee smiling happily, with steam coming up.  The pale orange words are drop-shadowed, as is the saucer. This ended up being 5 colors, but if I eliminated the dark blue saucer for something more neutral like black, it'd be down to 4.  Don't know if I'd ever get a job as a graphic artist, but it's fun acting like I could :)

02/06 Pet Blame Game

This is a sketch that I was never happy with, but decided to give it a try with the tablet.  It's two pets, who are blaming each other for breaking a bottle (or other breakable object).  Obviously, the hamster is blaming the bird. Not sure if I should have colored the liquid, and I wasn't really counting woot-allowed 6 colored inks, but I was having fun. Despite being on a shirt woot template for color, it's never been submitted anywhere. Maybe someday.

Monday, February 8, 2010

02/05 Mile High Stadium

This was my attempt to do a sports-related daily.  Maybe someday if the Bronco's don't stink, I may finish it and sub it. Buu I thought it was worth sharing as I finally got around to shading and coloring this sketch from a few days ago.

02/04 Skull

Okay, I'm seriously behind on MSCE. Work is tough, so I don't know if I'm even entering this week's derby. All my entry ideas have either been done better by others (the oroborous idea) or just don't look right (several I ain't sharing).  But I quick drew a skull yesterday, so I'm sharing. Just to get caught up one day.

Friday, February 5, 2010

02/03 Zodiac study

I'm behind on the derby, and my msce work, so I quick sketched some of my animals for the upcoming derby just to see what I could do without looking at reference art. I plan on trying something abstract, embedding the cartoon animals for the signs in otherwise diverse distractors (swervy lines, etc. So the animals will be subtle, not obvious. That way, I avoid the cartoony look of just having the animals in there).  But at this point, I'm not sure since the last thing I want to do is slap cartoon signs on a shirt in a grid pattern, since that's what a lot of people will do and it's not terribly creative. So I am still trying to come up with a unique idea. One is to use an oroborous circle, where each animal is eating the tail of the previous year's animal, but I'm not good at entire animals, and that'll be a lot of work for unknown benefit.  We'll see...

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

02/02 Cats find true love

I expect to get $%@#* from Adder for this... :wink:  Please vote by clicking here

Monday, February 1, 2010

02/01 Spaceship

Okay, normally I don't use Photoshop for my designs because I'm used to Illustrator. This is my first real colored design in Photoshop using the tablet.  It came out purple/blue because that's the colors I started with randomly. The ship also was a creation of shapes that kinda developed.  I think it came out rather well considering this isn't based on a sketch and is merely me doodling.  Hope y'all like it.

01/31 Surfer Bunny

I admit, I got lazy with this one. I should have done a better job of making the shapes of the wave, but I wanted to get something up before I get really behind on the msce stuff.  I liked the overall concept, but the design is a bit too linear and not enough brushstrokes.  But it's an attempt.