Fast - Pony Express Cartoon Character

This is another older piece I did for the Ann Arbor Ad Club. There were a series of little characters using different forms of communication - alpine horn, conch shell, smoke signals, etc. - used in a "call for entries" mailer for the Addy awards. They were the first pieces where I converted scanned inked art into vector format. It took me a while to figure out the best way to do it. It's one of my favorites. I have free wallpapers available with him at my website.

Frozen or The Chilly Penguin

This was a spot illustration I did years ago for the Ann Arbor Ad Club , which I used to be a member of. It was part of a series of little spots that went into a mailer, encouraging people to brave the Michigan winter and see the club's gallery show. I was quite proud to receive an Addy award for them.

You can see some more of them at my newly updated website, www.bigtallken.com. I'm still in the process of sorting thumbnails but felt ready to cut it loose.

Bobtoberfest

Following up on my previous post I just completed another job for Biker Bob's Motown. This was for their first annual Bobtoberfest event coming up in October. The first version with the barrel and steins, which is shown on their homepage, ran into problems with one of the sponsors. So I had to do a last minute change to remove the offending items and salvage the design. So, which design do you prefer?

Version 1 showing drunken debauchery?


or version 2: up close and personal with Biker Bob and "friend"?

Pattern - Biker Boxers

I found this old pair of boxers with a motorcycle pattern I made a couple years ago for the re-grand opening of Biker Bob's Motown Harley-Davidson in Taylor, Michigan.

The illustration pieces were assembled into a giant mobile in their showroom. You can see more of my Biker Bob work on my please-update-me website here.

Sketches - Saugatuck and Queretaro

I had to travel to Queretaro, Mexico back at the end of June, and it sort of threw me off the blogging kick until now. I also decided to take a break from Illustration Friday. I enjoyed the feedback from people and checking out the work of others, but it really takes time.

Prior to Mexico we took a long weekend in Saugatuck, Michigan, a favorite town of ours - not too far away, a lovely beach on Lake Michigan with dunes, some good restaurants, art galleries and antiques. I'm ready to go back already! I made this water color sketch from a photograph I took of the sunset. Not one of my best, but it was fun to get the little watercolor set out.

While in Queretaro I actually had some weekend free time and used it to do these two sketches. I don't normally take the time to do outdoor sketching - or indoor for that matter! I have a difficult time with architecture and landscapes because of shrinking things down to a small piece of paper. I spent about 20 minutes on the pencil sketch and still managed to get the bell tower out of proportion, but that's how to learn.

The color sketch took about an hour and a half. It was supposed to be a loose sketch but became a more detailed study than I thought. I still have work to do on perspective as well.

Unfold, Sprout, Grow!

"Seed, seed, grow!"

~ from the song, "Spark", by the Church from their album, "Starfish".

One of the unique abilities we all have is to grow and transform ourselves at any time, consciously or unconciously. That was the theme behind this little guy for the recipient of the T-shirt with him on it.

Here is the original sketch. I first tried to make the face part of the leaf shape, but it was looking too alien. So I took the more direct approach with the mouth and eyes. Looking at this with fresh eyes again I wish I had added more form to the seed pod with the shading. It looks a little flat.

As with the drawing of the Owl and Pussycat this was a pencil sketch converted into vector format via Inkscape. It was printed on a white T-shirt with no blue gradient.

Here's a desktop image (1200 px x 1024 px) for you to brighten your day with.

The Owl and the Pussy Cat

How many times have this classic odd couple been illustrated? Thousands at least based on a quick Google search.

I rediscovered this blissful pair through a modern master of enigmatic written and illustrated works. I found Edward Gorey's, "Amphigorey", a few years ago in a used bookstore and became enamored. I read some biographies about Gorey where he listed Edward Lear as an influence and had illustrated Lear's, "The Jumblies" and "The Dong with the Luminous Nose." I managed to find both of these at a local library. Gorey's illustrations for "The Dong" are hauntingly beautiful with sweeping cross-hatched land and skyscapes, and I feel was his best illustrated work.

After reading some Lear at the library I bought his complete works edited by Vivien Noakes. He is a very interesting character himself traveling the world painting landscapes and wildlife. If I were basing his artistic ability solely by his illustrations for his nonsense writing I would say he was the Scott Adams of his day, where his writing was his strength. However you can't always judge a book by its cover. See his detailed painting of an eagle owl to see the difference.

About my color illustration:

The final art is actually in vector format and was used as another Christmas gift T-shirt. To create the pencil texture I scanned my pencil drawing, loose guidelines and all, and converted it into vector format using Inkscape. Here is a detail to see the texture.

This works best when you increase the contrast of your pencil scan to the point where the lines are nice and black. As I mentioned in other posts I still found it easier to color it in Illustrator.

A few years ago I took a stab at trying to make a few illustrations for "The Owl and the Pussycat" blending concepts from my engineering books with the animals into a nonsense world, but I couldn't quite get down on paper what was in my head. I think I was trying too hard to force a style on myself.

Let your curiosity take you places to find new sources of inspiration. And take advantage of your local library not just the Internet!