Coming Soon: Groundhog Day

Anybody who knows me is well aware of my interest (Or obsession, really) in Groundhog Day. 

In the very early days of my career as an illustrator, I wanted to celebrate a lesser-appreciated holiday to promote my business, so every year, I drew a groundhog illustration, and sent it out into the world. 

In the early days, I simply printed the illustration or cartoon on a postcard and snail-mailed it. These days it gets posted on every social media platform known to man.

Every now and then I find a little extra time to do some one-off sketches leading up to the holiday, and below you'll find one of them. 

For this year's illustration- keep an eye out on February 2!

Thanks for reading and looking! If you want to see my Groundhog Day illustrations from years gone by, click HERE.

Drawing with my son

My son is smart- if he wants to stay up later than usual, all he has to do is start drawing. I never want to make him stop, plus it encourages me to draw more!

Here's the grandpa rabbit I drew:

Frizzy Girl Who Might be Hayden Panettiere

Sketch of a girl who looks a lot like a young Hayden Panettiere circa Malcolm in the Middle. Totally by chance, btw.

Here's a screenshot from Season 7, Episode 5 for comparison:

Winter Bunny

This illustration started out as a sketch in my sketchbook and ended up as a fun color and texture exercise.

Groundhog Day Teaser

With Groundhog Day fast approaching, I've been preparing my annual GH card and it's already been sent to the printer (somehow I'm ahead of schedule this year!). I did some extra sketches this year and I thought I'd post them as a teaser for the theme of this year's illustration.

Please drop me a line if you'd like me to mail you a postcard.

You can check out the last few years on this blog by clicking HERE.

Karate Kids

My son's Saturday morning karate class gives me a chance to get some sketching done. 

Leo Monster

My son started Kindergarten last week and a few nights ago we had curriculum night. The teacher left out paper and crayons for parents to leave their child a note and this is what I left Leo in his cubby.

Float Around

From the sketchbook.

Dr. Brown's Cream Soda

Mmmmm...

Flying Cars are Here

I attended an event tonight presented by Social Media Club Boston at Hill Holliday called Flying Cars are Here: The Futuristic Present of Marketing which was a part of FutureM in Boston. There were 4 terrific speakers/panelists and the presentations centered around social networking (of course) and the Recommendation model.
I brought my sketchbook/notebook and as usual did a few drawings/cartoons.

The first is self-explanatory. People make themselves crazy over whether they have enough followers (I was going to say "whether they're being followed" but that's a different topic) and the goal of getting comments.

 

The next was about Smart Objects technology and a case study in Israel where marketing agencies created a Coca Cola Village to bring 'Likes' into the real world by using an RFID-enabled wristband which held attendees' Facebook logins and passwords (you can read a little more about it and watch a video here) and allowed them to 'swipe' what they were doing. I thought this was very cool (and so did the teenagers who took part).

I also drew a couple of the presenters while I scrawled notes. The one on the bottom talks about the fact that although a lot of companies are gathering data they receive/find about their brand, only 1% of those companies actually do anything with that info. That's really going to start to change! Another thing mentioned was that there's an enormous amount of info being put out there by us all and going through it can be like going through trash in a dump.

It was a very interesting event, topped off by amazing infographics pooled during the event detailing stats on all the social stuff in the room, including, for example, the number of posts generated at the event (over 1300!). Nice job @djcap!

And finally, here's a photo I took during the panel discussion with my iphone.

Colored sketches

Just for a change I thought I would color this page of sketches from my sketchbook. I'm particularly fond of the guy on the bottom (he looks so hopeful on this, my son's first day back to school), and the robot who seems to be discovering something.

What I'm working on

I thought I'd show some snippets of what I'm working on right now. Today it's mostly illustrations:

Above are a couple of illustrations from a book I'm working on for Sterling Publishing, and then a couple of illustrations I'm working on for fun (like the Hulk, drawn with just one line).

Here's another illustration for that book I'm working on. I started with a scanned sketch over which I drew my black line in Illustrator and then added the tones.

And that's been my day so far- how are you?

3 Scarves, a Neck Tie and a Drawstring walk into a train...

The T (trolley) is a great place to sketch. New people are always coming on and best of all, a lot of riders tend to stand or sit relatively still so I can get a decent chance at doing a drawing I'm happy with.

Looking over these sketches right now, I just realized each person is wearing something around their neck... I guess it's not so unusual for a Boston winter.

On the Train

Last night I went to see the Boston premiere of the movie: American Artifact The Rise of American Rock Poster Art. It was a good, not great, movie but the visuals were entrancing and the history of the posters was very interesting. If the topic interests you even slightly then it's worth seeing this movie.

I took the train to the screening at Emerson College in Boston and got to sketch people getting on and off the T. I love this time of year- there are always great hats and scarves that really accentuate angles and add flair to a drawing.

After the movie, the director, Merle Becker, did a question and answer session (and with the lights finally up I was able to do some sketching. See my sketches of the director, above).

Then it was time to get back on the train to sketch and go home where I'm now thinking about how and where to set up my own silk screening studio...

Faces5

Another page of faces from my sketchbook.

Jaws

I had a night of insomnia recently and found myself on the sofa watching old movies. One of those movies was JAWS and I couldn't help reaching for my sketchbook. This is a (quick) sketch of the shark hunter guy who became lunch at the end of the movie. Behind him is easily the worst shark drawing I've ever created but it certainly needed to be included.

So I got to thinking about an artist I was led to by an instructor at RISD. I was beginning to experiment with a cross hatching style (you can see my more recent cross hatch illustrations in the FRED portfolio on my website) and my teacher sent me to the library to check out Murray Tinkelman. It seems he was plagued with insomnia (if memory serves) and did much of his work late at night while watching TV.

Check out Murray's stuff. It's so much better than my (quick) sketch above and he certainly would have drawn a better shark. http://tinkelmanstudio.com/portfolio.html

(I'll draw a new shark soon for a future post)

New York sketches

Illustrations from a recent NY Starbucks visit. The guy at the top kept nonchalantly touching his nose- the things you have to put up with when secretly drawing people at a coffee shop!

A series of quick sketches of people around me.

A couple of women- one seemed to think it was a good time to take a nap despite the lack of open tables and the number of people circling. BUt it was nice that she kept so still so I could draw her.

From my sketchbook

From My Sketchbook

I was at a condo association meeting the other night and there were so many unnecessary tangents that it gave me LOTS of time to sketch! Some of the conversations were about as important as what C.B. is pointing out here.

Skateboarder

A cross-hatch sketch from my sketchbook. Note that he's wearing a helmet- could you have guessed I have a kid?