Robot at Night Book Illustration

Backpack and Messenger Bag Cats

Everyone has a book bag preference...

Here's some of my work in progress:

Below is the (quick) sketch I started out with.

I redrew my sketched cat and made some improvements.

I knew the cat needed a friend, so I added in another one.

I began to add color...

And more color along with fur and some gradations...

Then I did the same for the other cat. After that I brought in a background to complete the piece!

A Girl and Her Horse

I never get to draw horses so for this illustration I put in three. Yay!

This is an interior black and white illustration for a chapter book.

This was loads of fun- I hope you enjoy it as well.

Groundhog Day 2016

Happy Groundhog Day 2016!
Welcome to another episode of the groundhog and the shadow!

This year I cut out the shadows from the illustrations so that we would get a shorter winter and it seems that it worked! Early this morning, Punxsutawney Phil did NOT see his shadow which means an early spring!

There are MANY more Groundhog Day illustrations on this blog.

I have a collection of my favorite Groundhog Day illustrations on Behance.

Snowy Penguin Illustration

To Snow or Not to Snow… that is the penguin. 

A client asked for a winter image to tell her audience about her upcoming music classes. Utilizing the colors from the company's logo (which I also designed) I created the following penguin.

Here's the version I created for GroovyBabyMusic with text in place. She posted this image on Facebook and in an email to her audience.

And here's the logo for the company. Pretty much all of the colors in the illustration are taken from here.

Red Haired Spellbinder

See more of my book illustrations on my website.

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Below are some screen shots of this work in progress:

Pandarantula

The author of Dogopotamus and Hamstigator wrote a new Halloween short story about the main character of his book series and asked me to create an illustration for it. I'm in the middle of illustrating his next book, Elephitten but when I heard the title of the story I couldn't say no.

So here's Pandarantula.
(And check out the story HERE on the Petimals website.)

You can pick up Dogopotamus and Hamstigator on Amazon.

Below is my original sketch. While I was doing it, my 9 year old drew his own version of Pandarantula (with a sword) and it came out great! I'm going to have some competition soon!

Frozen Groundhogsicle

There's so much talk on the news (and inevitably Facebook) about just how cold it is in the U.S. this week. -20 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the midwest. Forecasts of 60 inches of snow in another area. Cars won't start, schools are closed and our heating bill is eye-popping.

And I thought to myself: Just how cold IS it?

This:

You can check out a bunch more Groundhog Day illustrations on this blog by clicking HERE.

Hulk Smash (1 Liner)

I thought I'd finish up a Hulk illustration I had started a short time ago just to keep going with the superhero kick I seem to be on. My previous post, How Superheroes Use Social Media, seemed to have gotten a lot of shares online (thanks so much!), so why not keep going a little?

This one's a mixture of a single continuous line drawing (Start at the ear and end at his hair) and a lot of angry texture. And some hand lettering.

I'll have it up in my Etsy shop soon as an option for a print.

Automatic Frog

Character illustrations for a chapter book I'm starting on where one of the main characters is an automatic frog who loves v-neck sweaters. The illustrations in the book will likely be in black & white but I couldn't resist doing some promo images.

I've been working on bringing textures into my illustrations and this time I'm keeping them solely to the background.

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Garage Sale Signs

Instead of, I mean, ALONG WITH helping my wife clean out the house, I worked on creating signage for our upcoming Garage Sale.

Because we're currently having a tropical storm (Andrea) and our sale date may be quite wet, I created a 1-color version to half-heartedly try to tape up on poles in the neighborhood and another few to show online.

Click to enlarge.

These designs gave me a chance to poke a little fun at my wife while enjoying a little bit of self-therapy. After all, I'll really miss my beloved Foosball table.

 Why should yard sale/garage sale signs be boring anyway?

Many thanks go out to the wonderful online creative community for offering backgrounds and textures for other creatives to play around with. Lost&Taken. Fudgegraphics. ThinkDesignBlog. Creative Market. Just to name a few.

Characters: Monster with Top Hat

Here's a charming fellow I sketched up the other day. I was interested in creating a bit of texture on his skin which I continued when I added color.

I picture him saying: "Thank you for inviting me over. Your cat was delicious..."

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.