Character: 3-eyed Purple Jumping Monster

Adobe Illustrator CS5 has some great new tools and I thought I'd try them out with this monster dude. While this guy's body looks painted, all of the color is actually vector! If you know the difference between vector and raster art, you'll realize just how cool this really is. To watch a tutorial on 5 of the new features, click here.

........................................................................

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.

Step Carefully

When walking behind a slimy monster, be sure to carefully step over the tail. Don't do what Han Solo did to Jabba (54 second mark).

Groundhog Day 2011

It's that time of the year again when the Groundhog comes out of his den and looks for his shadow. That is, unless he can't get out of his home because the exit is plugged with icicles and covered with 4 feet of snow...

I live in Boston and we've been inundated with snow to the point where I'm running out of places to put the white (and sometimes yellow) stuff. And that's why I created this particular Groundhog Day cartoon this year. Enjoy!

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

By the way, you can check out the official website of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club here.

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..."

........................................................................

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.

Dr. Brown's Cream Soda

Mmmmm...

Monster Coffee

Pieces of my new promo postcard highlighting 

the character development and kid's book sections of my website. 

You have to look closely, but there's a tiny little monster 

licking up the spilled sugar in the last drawing.

And here's the final postcard.

Not Fake Poop

Just having some cartoon fun...

Characters postcard

I created some creature characters recently for Big Blue Dot (they do branding for kids) and it really lit a fire under me to create more characters/monsters/creatures. So I have a series of postcards in queue for printing and I just got this first one back:

This postcard is meant to reflect the "ED" section on my website's homepage and to also let clients know that I love (love love!) to create characters- be they humans, monsters, aliens or something new altogether (I'm picturing Scooby Doo saying "Ru-ro!" at that last part).

If you're not on my mailing list and you want one of these cards when I start sending them out, please message me and I'll add you on.

Snow Walking

It's getting cold outside here in the Northeast and I'm starting to look forward to the snow... stay tuned for beach scenes after the first time I have to shovel out the driveway.

Illustration from my sketchbook, colored in Adobe Illustrator.

Detail from holiday card

At the printer! 
I just finished up a holiday card for a client and although it wouldn't be fair to show it before my client's friends and family get to see it, I thought it would be ok to show some details.

Here is some script hand-lettering I did for the panels of the tri-fold which incorporated some little playful icons describing the text. All the colors match the envelope liners I will be creating out of a beautiful hand-printed paper.

I have to say, I really got hung up on the script 'p'. I couldn't remember how to write it so I had to look it up online. The letter 'h' was my fave though. I could do that letter forever with all its wavy, intersecting lines! I'm looking for a client named harry h. hohner...

I'll post the actual card (and custom liners and envelopes and Zazzle stamps) sometime in December when my client (who is wonderful to work with!) says it's ok.

Dr. Sketchy

I went to the Boston Dr. Sketchy's on Sunday to do some figure drawing and I brought my dad who has been getting into drawing again. Dr. Sketchy in Boston (Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School was started by Molly Crabapple and is now in 16 countries and 100 cities) gets its models from local drag, burlesque and performance art and it really makes all the difference!

The model, who goes by the name Madame Lapin (french for rabbit- get it?), posed in a variety of costumes: a pirate, a secretary, a bunny, and a couple other costumes that made me glance over at my dad a few times to make sure he was ok (he was).

The drawing above was done in brush pen and then when I decided it was too boring, I added charcoal which I think really adds an interesting texture. I did a lot more but this was the only drawing small enough to scan. Once I've photographed 1 or 2 I like I'll post those as well.

Dr. Sketchy’s Boston is every Second Sunday of the month from 2:30 to 5:30 at Great Scott: 1222 Commonwealth Ave. Allston, MA at the corner of Harvard St.

Sketchbook 11-4-10

Gaffe

My take on the GAP logo debacle.

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.

Volunteer image

This is an image I illustrated and designed as a header for a piece about volunteering. The background incorporates a close-up photo I took of a section of a very old painting. I wanted the brush strokes to add a texture to the piece to give it a more hands-on feel (which is just what volunteering is!).

Tweet

What I've been working on

It's been a while since my last update because I've been working on finishing a vocabulary book for Flash Kids/Sterling. I thought I'd show off pieces of some of the illustrations for this very interesting book.

There's a dragon, Dubai's tallest building in the world (the Burj Khalifa), shoes, a sunset, the U.S. Capitol Building, Minnesota, a BLT sandwich, Albert Einstein and 134 other illustrations!

Tweet

Elephant print

My goal here was to draw an elephant that was different from my usual kid's book elephants. To give it a very different look, I ran the illustration  through some filters to get an imperfect press-printed quality. Click on the image to get a larger view- you'll see that the inks spread and the spot colors were printed a little bit off-registration. Fun effect!

Tweet

My Sketchbook

A page of fun little sketches in my sketchbook. I did some of these while watching TV (I get hairstyle inspiration) and others while watching my son play (and between putting together puzzles and playing with him).

The Amazing L Boy!

My 4 1/2 year old son has been drawing superheroes non-stop for the last month. It's pretty amazing considering up until 5 weeks ago he never tried to draw a person and the strides he's made have been wonderful to watch.

We were sitting on the sofa watching his one cartoon of the day and I just started drawing Leo as a hero. Leo decided he wanted to color it in. And then the show ended and he was hungry for breakfast so he didn't color much but I really liked what he did:

And here are a few of Leo's original drawings:

 Batman

 Hulk

Not bad!

Tweet

Toulouse Lautrec visit

As President of the Boston Chapter of the Graphic Artists Guild, I get to create some of the titles for our events and social gatherings. For this Trip to the MFA (Museum of Fine Arts) image, I literally had about 30 minutes before I needed to send out an email announcing the event.

I started with a block similar in color to the MFA Boston's logo:

Added some text:

Next, I wanted to get some background going. I love texture, as long as it doesn't take away from the message. The most appropriate thing to use would be a Toulouse Lautrec image but, last time I checked my art vault, I don't own any and I didn't want to steal anybody else's photo of one of T.L.'s paintings.

Toulouse Lautrec created so much of his work in MontMartre (an area of Paris). Fortunately, I visited France in 2002 and a quick peak through my photos later, I had two iconic images: Moulin Rouge and Sacre Coeur:

Play with the opacity of the photos a bit, put it all together and you get:

 

And the email went out right on time!

More about the Graphic Artists Guild

More about the Boston Chapter of the Graphic Artists Guild

More about the Toulouse Lautrec exhibit at the MFA Boston

Tweet

Hey- That's me!

*clicking the above image will take you to the Tech Therapy website to view the (short) video.

I was at the New England Business Expo last month and I met Jennifer Shaheen, The Technology Therapist from the Technology Therapy Group.

Because of all the concerns with Facebook's policies towards what you post on Facebook, I asked Jennifer: What is an Illustrator/Designer to do? How do we post our work and NOT give Facebook the rights to use it?

Her answer is very interesting:
http://techtherapy.tv/video/questions-how-to-protect-intellectual-properties-online/

Tweet

Children's book scenes

Below is a copy of the email newsletter I just sent out to my list of book editors and publishers showing off some of my illustrations of kids doing activities in various parts of Israel.

Climbing Mt. Masada; Visiting the Western Wall, Walking along the wall surrounding the Old City; Floating and getting muddy at the Dead Sea.

What I'm working on

A sketch from my sketchbook of Zach Galifianakis in "The Hangover", a logo I delivered this week and another sketch to finish for a book for Sterling Publishing.

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?

Cowboy Cactus packaging illustration

This was one of those really cool jobs that I love to do. It was sort of like illustrating a Flow Bee ad!

 

I recently illustrated the label for a cactus dressed as a cowboy that goes on your car's antenna. What a crazy product but apparently this thing sells like hotcakes and it was time to update the antiquated packaging (see below).

And, before you ask, no I didn't get a free Cowboy Cactus so don't expect to be able to spot my car in the mall parking lot.

This is how the old packaging looked. How hard is it to read the text printed over the cactus? And what's up with that guy's mustache? My version makes it easier to understand where the cactus goes and although I offered an option with a less silly guy the art director chose to go without him.

Tweet

Faces 6

More faces and a whole tiger. OK, so I didn't draw the tiger- my son put a sticker on my drawing and I thought it was cute...

Campaign logo in orange and blue

I recently designed the logo for candidate Jim Henderson for Secretary of the Commonwealth for Massachusetts.

Jim (an Independent) chose to keep away from the usual red white and blue and go for something a little less usual for a color scheme. Beyond that I was left alone to create a few different concepts from which Jim chose and requested revisions with the final version being the image at the top.
(BTW- in order to create this stylized version of the state of Massachusetts, I first drew an exact profile of the state, and let me tell you, it's a very wavy, inlet-y state! See all the way below)

 ................................................

Since there would be occasion to print the logo on orange shirts I was asked to create a (nearly) reversed version.

................................................

Jim's business card includes a number of bar codes (on the front and back) to allow people to scan the card to learn more, make a contribution, join the team or get a reminder to vote. Very cool.

................................................

And then the sticker design for his campaign:

................................................

Finally, the detailed version of the Mass. Map I mentioned above:

 

Let me know what you think!

(and if you're interested in learning more about Jim, here's his website: http://jimforsoc.com/)

Tweet

Eddie Spaghetti with the Meatball Eyes

My submission to theydrawandcook.com was accepted! You can find mine here or go to the main page to check out all the other recipes.

If you haven't see this site yet, it's a blog where artists submit a recipe they illustrated and already they've had submissions from all around the world. My friend, Lisa, turned me on to it and now I check in a few times a week to see what's new! BTW- Check out Lisa's Girls Rule prints. They're really beautifully designed.

The style of my illustration is a little different from my usual stuff- I was paying homage to a wonderful illustrator, Bob Staake, who uses very bold shapes to form his characters. So the chef is either made up of or cut out of a lot of different ovals. then everything was layered and shadows were added sparingly. Check out Bob's illustrations- I think you'll realize that you've seen him around (most notably on covers of the New Yorker).

Oh, and yeah- those are real meatballs. I defrosted a bunch that I had made, photographed them and then ate the evidence.

Tweet

Ella's Thank You Card

My niece's thank-you (folding) card.