Merry Christmas!

I hope you get lots and lots of drawing done for Christmas.

Fight!

Remember the old Mighty Men and Monster Maker toy from when you were a kid?  Yeah, me neither.  But Andrew from Notchordamnatchoz remembers it, he HAS one and he's started a fighting competition using it!  I've made my first attempt at recreating the first Mighty Monster.  Check it out at the Championship League of Champions blog.

Every two weeks there'll be a new monster created and anyone who wants to can create their own version of that monster.  It's just starting out so the more monsters, the better!  

Anyone want a cowgirl?

The person who commissioned me to create her has had their plans delayed and now they don't want her anymore.  The day came where they said they would have things "taken care of" (which I took to mean "paid off") but, nope.  Luckily I got paid for the sketch.  They seemed very excited once they saw the coloured versions, even gave some input to change some things which I did but now it looks like I'm out the final payment and the cowgirl is now mine.

So I'm going to offer her as a 8"x14" print (just the full body version, see it below) for $20, including shipping.  Just email me (via the Commissions page) or comment here and we'll trade info.

Another Slots Game

I thought I'd post another one of the slots games I've done this past year.  It's called Piggy Wiggy Riches so I'll give you 2 guesses as to what the theme is.  I have distinct memories of coming up with the look of this game, because I got the theme a few days before my braces went on last year.  So while I was laying back getting these suckers glued on my teeth I busied my mind by mentally sketching out what things would look like.

And a few animated symbols:

I was really happy with that fox being petted.

Illustration Friday: Vanity

I...dunno...Just a quicky with a shred of an idea I was afraid of getting bored of before it was done.

Livestock

This past Saturday I went to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair armed with a small sketchbook, a grey marker and a black pen.  It's been about a year since I tried drawing anything from life like this.  You always see art students there with their sketchbooks and I'm a little envious of them since they're drawing all day, every day while they're in school so they're already in the zone.  It took me a while to warm up but I'm happy with what I did.  I wanted to just relax and draw gesturally.


It's quite a spectacle being around so many large animals!  I was little freaked out being so close to such HUGE cows, like they're right THERE, no fencing.  Not like I was worried about being attacked by one but they're so BIG and HEAVY it's quite a sight when they suddenly decide to lay down or stand up.  Besides the cows there were the usual mix of sheep, goats, pigs and horses.  We missed the horses, again, this year since they're kept in a separate building and we always forget about them until we've already left.

It's also pretty neat seeing a whole industry that I know nothing about.  In the Exhibitors area there are a few hundred stalls selling horse and farm paraphernalia.  Saddles, crops, machinery, jumping posts.  I don't even know what half the stuff is called or what it's for.  There's also people selling local food and merchandise.  It's like a comic con for horsey people.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra

This is contribution to The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra's tribute, the scheming Dr. Roger Fleming with his hatred of skeletons.

This is such a lovely movie and endlessly quotable.  I seriously and whole heartedly recommend seeing it.

Science!

Notchordamnatchoz: SHIRTPUNCH!

Go on, it's his birthday today. Make him happy by buying one of this shirts!  The real teen-wolf himself, Michael J. Fox tweeted about it! 

Notchordamnatchoz: SHIRTPUNCH!: Starting at 12 AM NOVEMBER 10, 2001 until 11:59 PM NOVEMBER 10, 2011 you will be able to buy t-shirts with that above image on 'em. Where, ...

Time for a little self promotion

My 1950's ladies and gentlemen are now available at My Tubed Art.  This is the ONLY place that sells them and that means if you didn't get them there then you're using them without permission, you naughty people.

My disguise pinup and my sugar skull are up at our CafePress store on a bunch of different items.  But it's the t-shirts that only really sell...

I helped Andrew with a short comic for Strange Kids Club a little while ago and now it's in print.

I've done a piece for Doo Wacka Doodle's tribute to The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra which I'll post when she does!

Ok, that's all.  See?  That was a little self promotion.

Paint your nails, ladies!

Some commission work I did a little while ago is now LIVE!  So I'm happy to point you towards Pretty Serious Cosmetics where two of my ladies are being used for a new line of nail polish. 

This one is an unchosen sketch that I really liked so I coloured it up for myself.

Yes, I'm watching wrestling again

And yes, I'm a fan of CM Punk.  And YES, I drew him.

I still need to work on my men, uh, meaning I have to practice drawing men so two interests collided and here's the result.

Just random photo reference used so I think I got a vague likeness bodged together.  The tattoos are IN NO WAY ACCURATE.  I really need to figure out a good way to blag tattoos.

It was Punk's speech from RAW that I saw online which got me curious to start watching WWE again.

In college my roommates and I would ALWAYS watch wrestling on Monday night.  And way before that I remember watching it saturday mornings with my Dad when it used to be WWF.  I think we stopped watching a few years ago because the story lines became kind of boring and repetitive and there was a while where every single match seemed to end in a disqualification because someone would run in and disrupt things.  That's fun once in a while but when it happens during every match in one show, it's a bit much.  Then all the wrestlers started to look the same, bald with black trunks and knee pads.  Then the fun stuff went away like monsters, voodoo guys, clowns and crazy people.  So we slowly started not watching it until we didn't anymore. Then this Punk video showed up on thedailywh.at and Andrew and I decided to try wrestling again.  Boy, the stuff we've missed over the past few years!  We spent about a month just throwing out names we remembered and trying the "where are they now?" game.

Then just by coincidence I saw that Scott Hall was trending on Twitter a while ago so I clicked to see why and saw this short documentary on him: The Wrestler: The Scott Hall Story and now I'm all weirded out and sad thinking how I used to watch him on WWE and WCW and I hope he ends up ok.  I guess that's also what inspired the CM Punk image since he's "straight edge"so I hope he ends up ok too.

And Happy Halloween!

Finally, right?  Here's wishing you a spooky day!

It took my two tries to draw this one.  When the first attempt was done I was all "Did I do this?" because he face looked so different to me than my previous girls.  But in a good way since I've been worried my girls are all starting to look the same, or at least like they're all from the same family.  When I was done the second attempt I was all "Yup, I did this" so this is how she stayed.   This one also includes all of spooky-ish type fonts.

Here he is again!

Almost there...

Here, have a skull

Did you say the words right?

We watched Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness all in a row this past Saturday night.  We haven't done that since college when you'd have enough time to grab a drink or a bathroom break while the video tape rewound.

Bless the person who came up with that blob brush in Photoshop.  I didn't know how I was going to make that on my own.

One Week to Halloween!

Look out! Radioactive Monster!

Meh, he's probably harmless.  I'm really digging this little guy.  I've been wanting to play with glowing shapes for a while so he looked like a good chance to test some things.  I love it when people use opposite colours to highlight and shade things, like orange on blue, but for some reason I have such a hard time getting my head around colouring that way.  This may look simple but I broke a sweat trying to get those green highlights working.

Halloween's A-Comin'!

Jason's Bad Week

This is my Casual Jason art card idea expanded.

More Zombies

These were also made during my zombie phase.  I found some black bordered blank watercolour cards at the art store and though it would be fun to make some zombie greeting cards.  I toted them to the comic convention for 3 years and guess how many I sold?  One.  But I can still look back upon them with fondness and only a little bitterness.

Halloween Music

Thanks to Devil's Night Radio I learned about the Nekromantix.  I love this song now.

Zombies

I just found these recently in my old work folder!  They were for a Christmas art trade with some friends.  We really should get back into that.  Again, these were hand inked and coloured with inks.  GRR!  I have GOT to get back into doing this sort of thing more!

The Thing, The Musical

Some people are just geniuses.

Thanks to Andrew I've seen The Thing, like, 6 times and I still can't watch the dog scene with fully open eyes and I still jump at the blood test.

Casual Jason

I can't remember how this one came about exactly.  I think I was watching the first movie on tv again and something struck me funny about a casual Jason just strolling on the grass.

Pumpkin!

This one is for all us Canadians enjoying Thanksgiving this weekend with pumpkin pie for dessert!

It's a watercolour trading card.  Very rough paper and I totally forgot how to paint with real paints.  But some of my schooling came back to me and I tried applying some things I've learned colouring with vectors.

Side note:  One of my top 5 pet peeves is people who say "Punkin".

Halloween Art Trading Cards

After trying out these art trading cards at the FanExpo in August I found I really liked them so I bought a bunch more.  I like them because they're small so it's just sketch-sketch-ink-BOOM-you're done.  Nice.  I have some that are bristol board and some that are watercolour paper.  This one is bristol and I pulled out some old ink bottles to try out some ink washes.  I used to do those ALL the time!  What happened!?  Oh yeah, Adobe Illustrator came into my life.

More Monsters

Another batch of monsters.  I'm thinking purple fur?  Maybe green wings and orange horns?  Hm, we'll see...

Songs for the day

Thanks to halloweenhitswebsite.com I've found some amazing new songs to help set the mood.

Monsters!

Trying out a monster character for no other reason than it's a monster and halloween is coming.

Ok, so I'm one day early for the Countdown

I don't think I'll be able to get the place fixed up tomorrow, Oct 1, for the Countdown to Halloween so I thought I better get things decorated today.  I have new halloween pinup to post, you can see some of her in the header here, but I'm saving her for a bit.

I have some new art saved up to share for Halloween and I hope to keep creating new things as the month goes on so.  So Happy (early) Haunting!

A Classical Experiment

This weekend Andrew mentioned how Walter from the show Fringe would put on classical music to help him think.  That sounded interesting so to see how it worked I listened to a classical music radio station all day.  And, daggnabbit, I think it worked!  I've had such a short attention span lately for working in front of the computer that I needed something to keep my bum in the chair.  I managed to work 6.5 hours today without fidgeting or checking Twitter, my email or my usual time-wasting websites.  I'm really impressed with myself!  I now have another trick in my bag to use when I need the bump up my concentration.  I think it has something to do with the fact there are no lyrics to listen to, no words your brain wants to understand whether you care about them or not.  And the music goes on for longer than 3-4 minutes which about the average length of a song.  Pretty neat.

In other news, I'm signed up for the Countdown to Halloween!  So starting October 1st I'm going to try and post as many Halloween related things as I can.  I can't promise I'll post every day but I'm hoping to at least draw everyday and then post a few things at a time.

1950s Men really like their drinks

Not quite as fun as grey toning the ladies but I felt I could go goofier with the guys.

Drawing from those old photos has already changed the way I draw noses.  I had forgotten that practicing drawing makes you better!  I know, right?  Did you know?  Yeah, crazy huh!?

1950s Guys

Holy crap!  I really have to practice drawing men!  First I went through the photos from Tackorama and super roughly sketched some of my favourites.  Then I picked the ones I liked from those and drew them larger and with more detail.  Then I drew them again.  And again.  AND AGAIN!  Ooof.  Boy, they took a long time to get right.  And even then I wasn't totally satisfied so this morning I pulled out another sketchbook and redrew them from my drawings, not from looking at the photo.   So it's these drawings:

From these photos:

I flipped the one drinking milk because everyone I drew was facing to the left.  I get strangely paranoid when everything I draw faces one direction over and over so I vary it the best I can.

Hopefully will be vectored soon.

Illustration Friday: Boundaries

As much as I love the results I can get with Illustrator, it can sometimes feel like I'm doing everything with vectors.  I get a little trapped in the thinking I could/should finish everything in colour.  Sometimes a pencil drawing is good enough!  I've been missing the way you can just imply something with pencil or ink, like the roll of a shirt sleeve or the shape of a hairstyle.  In vector, pretty much everything has to be planned out and defined.  At least that's the way I have to produce things for work.  I'm slowly figuring out how to imply, convincingly, the same thing with vectors.

These were my thoughts for the topic of "boundaries".  Get it?  Because he's swinging on the bounding box in Illustrator?

1950s Phone Call

As I was colouring this all I could think of was the speech from the MST3k version of Manos: The Hands of Fate. where Tom goes on and on and on about his 20 year plan.  That cracked me up so hard the first time we watched it years ago and I still think of when someone's on the phone for a long, long time and I'm like "Just shuuuuuuut uuuuuuuuup already".  I didn't really want to transcribe the whole thing myself but unbelievably, searching for "manos, mst, year, plan" resulted in the very first link being a page where someone else already did it!

Here's the photo reference I used:

I made her a lot more psycho looking but that's just how my drawing evolved.  Once again, the photo is from Tackorama.  I think the women are out of my system now and I'd like to sit and try my hand at some of the men's photos.  They're just as wacky as the women's.

Viking

I was thinking of doing a viking pinup but drew this guy instead:

I'm still working out how to use my grey markers best.  I'm so used to using vectors to colour things where it doesn't matter if you put light over dark or dark over light.  I have to switch my brain around and remember that dark is dark, I can't make it lighter!

1950s Secrets....

Yes, another one.  Here's the reference photo I use from Tackorama:

There were quite a few of ladies sharing secrets but this one seemed the most typical.  "I got my hair done at...!"  "My husband always..."  "Mary down the street doesn't...."

I need to find a book of these kinds of photos.  Drawing off the computer can kind of suck at times.

Andrew Barr's Monstars

Andrew Barr has created a blog specifically for his Monstars! Right now he's reposting a lot of the earlier ones with a new one mixed in. You can also follow the blog on Twitter and see when he's posted something:

Andrew Barr's Monstars: Bad Ash: First appearance: Army of Darkness (1992)

Illustration Friday: Mysterious

I had this one sketched already and then saw the Illustration Friday word of the week was "mysterious" and I thought she would be appropriate.

Not really going for a 100% caricature, but using the photo as a jumping off point.

This is the photo I found at Tackorama.com

1950s lady

So while I was looking for new fonts I came across this great font site and also has stock photography:  Tackorama.  I downloaded about 500 photos from the 50's that are pretty hilarious.  Women smiling holding glasses, talking, crying, reading, you name it.  There's one of a happy woman holding a jar of what looks like pickled eggs.  I was totally inspired to draw them and thought I'd try greying them in. It was a nice change from concentrating on colours.   I wasn't going for a straight caricature but used the photo as a jumping off point.  I have a few more I want to finish so that'll be on my plate for a while.

I really liked her expression....

First I just did quick sketches of a bunch of my favourites to see what jumped out at me.  I saw potential in this one...

Then I spent some more time redrawing her pose.  Funny how sometimes you can draw something and then think "Did I do that?" (in a good way).  Feels like my style is on the verge of changing.  "On the edge of the bubble about to break through" is what we said in college.

It took about 2 hours to grey her in with Illustrator.  Again, did I do this?  I do love my vectors.  I'm hoping to get faster doing this and better at likenesses.  Plus a little practise just drawing like this never hurt.  I know I should probably draw more men and kids and objects but it's just so enjoyable doing a cute lady!

Disguise

I TOLD you I'd finish colouring it.

I changed her outfit again.  We were watching Cannonball Run after my sketch was done but all those 1970s clothes inspired me to put her in those shiny gym shorts and ringer t-shirt.

Illustration Friday: Disguise

This weeks word: disguise.  I drew this while sitting at our table at the convention this past weekend.  Funny how being surrounded by all those people dressed up in costumes and my only idea was a pair of groucho glasses.  Hm.

This WILL be coloured.

UPDATE: It's coloured.