Guy using laptop

Here's a quick sketch of a guy on a stool using a laptop.

Real world bad UI

In the last few weeks, I happened to notice some confusing signage in places I'm at on a regular basis and thought it might make for an amusing blog post. Just like bad UI in a software application, these bits of signage/labels made me stop for a second and scratch my head:


I have a spot on the top floor of a parking garage in downtown Columbus, and all ramps are one-way. Here's the sign showing my way out. I guess they thought an arrow pointing the way out wouldn't give me enough information, so this not-arrow gives me the much more informative message that this is the way to not go for people going the direction I'm not.

Sometimes after a long day, I still have to pause for a millisecond when I see this sign. And this sign is not meant for the other guy, as he would have to have already come up the ramp to see that he shouldn't have.

Here are the elevator buttons I was using daily at the office:

Naturally, to go down, you can see that I pushed the top button.

In their defense, we are on the top floor, so the only way is down. So it looks like they just tried to reuse the same button panel as was on the other floors, only they decided to only mark the exceptional up button as down without marking the down button appropriately. Hope noone forgets they're on the top floor.

Andy

I have always been a big fan of Andy Warhol. Even though he was best known for his pop culture work and observations, deep down he was a great illustrator. He has so many memorable quotes, but here's one I particularly remember:

What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

Moon

Here's an illustration of the moon for a Google Theme I'm working on... I'll post the full theme when I submit it.

Update 8/22:
Here's a link to a preview of the completed theme that has been submitted to Google. It should be available in a week or two as a selectable theme from your Google homepage.

One disappointing thing about the Google Themes API is that many areas of the page are not configurable - like the main content area, and the gadget content area, except for the gadget headers. Since you're stuck with white for those areas, I think my next theme might go with the white look.

Illustration from ad

Via Colori Sponsorship Drive

Here's the finished sidewalk art from the Via Colori sponsorship drive at Creekside in Gahanna Saturday night. I went for some semi-realism and it worked pretty well for the camera. In fact, it was pretty interesting... I thought the drawing was coming off OK, but as soon as I saw it in the photographer's preview window, it really took on another dimension.


The finished artwork.


Working on the snake. I like to get one main small part of the illustration completely finished - in this case the snake's head - so the viewers get to see one 'cool' thing right off the bat. Here on the blog, it's all about seeing the final artwork, but during the events it's all about watching the process. In fact 99% of the viewers probably don't even see the finished product.


Kids always have suggestions.


Finishing touches, and adding Charlie Brown grass.


Johnny and Jake by drawing.

Pascal LeClaire IF

The Jackets season schedule came out yesterday. Here's a take on goalie Pascal LeClaire who had Enough shutouts last season to lead the league. I included the original pencil sketch before colorizing it.

Zherdev Color added

Here's the previous post colored & background added.

Nikolai Zherdev

The Jackets just traded Zherdev to the Rangers. Here's a quick sketch that I'm colorizing at this moment. I was originally a huge non-fan of Zherdev's, like many other Jackets fans, but I was impressed with a lot of things he did last year. All of a sudden he actually started backchecking, as well as seeming to be more of a team guy. I'm not sure how much of a turnaround he made, but I'd like to see him do well, even as a Ranger.

Chinese food rough sketch

I find it interesting when other artists show the progress of their work, so I thought I'd scan in an illustration at different stages. Here's the original loose sketch. As soon as I get to the point where I think it's obvious to see what the subjects are doing, I stop. Sometimes I just do this as an exercise and don't take it any further.



7/9 - DS - In fact, after looking back on this, I will leave it at the rough sketch phase - I've removed the unsuccessful cleaned up drawings.

Via Colori Sponsorship Drive

I got a call last Monday from Hani at Via Colori Columbus asking for help for the sponsor drive for this September's Via Colori event in the Short North. They needed a sidewalk artist to showcase some Via Colori-style artwork during the Short North gallery hop this month. It served as good sample art for the sponsorship drive, plus made for a cool mini-event at the hop.



A special thanks to Jennifer and Karac at CD101 for the great photos of the progress. Here's the final result, and the progress step-by-step. It took way longer than I thought, so the later dark shots don't catch some of the detail.


Happy with the way the pastel markers are working.


Getting the small peppers out of the way


I was worried I wouldn't have enough crimson pastel markers to finish the big cayenne.


Racing with sundown.


Finished product.



Leinenkugel time.

Princess Leia

I used a very different PhotoShop technique with this illustration, and I'm pretty excited at how much time I saved, not to mention that it really makes the linework pop.

I learned about the technique here, and I'm really excited about spending fewer hours in PhotoShop, and more on the drawing board and coding. Plus, hopefully there will be some great results! - this wasn't even a particularly great drawing to begin with.

IF Canned

I'm working on an image for my technical blog, which right now is pretty bare bones. The next step is to add in some technical, computer elements.

R2D2

Quick sketch of R2D2 while helping Johnny with his report on John Glenn/Mercury 6 mission.

Wide View of Bobs Palace of Fish and Propane

Here's the composite illustration for the last few cryptic posts. It's a header for a presentation for Alexei. I'm not sure of the topic other than an imaginary portal is used as part of the talk.

Study of Propane tank

Chirping bird

More about this later...

The Bride

Uma Thurman from Kill Bill vol 1. I thought this was an interesting pose. I am playing with some different background treatments.

Carrot

A quick sketch of a carrot, which I grew from seeds once.

Getting Away Article Area 3

Tooth study

Study of a tooth. We've racked up a bunch of dental bills recently, that's probably how it came to mind.

Johnny Knoxville

I don't know if I've ever watched an entire Jackass episode, but I've certainly seen it plenty of times. I managed to salvage an unsuccessful illustration in the background as the image on TV as well.

Environment

Not much time for the drawing board recently, so here's an environment from a while back for a Hubble telescope astronomy article... I have used it as a desktop background occasionally.

Old Elvis

OK, I know doing a caricature of Elvis is like shooting fish in a barrel. But most images of Elvis are either young Elvis or overweight-whiterhinestone-jumpsuit Elvis. I did a take on old-semi-pre-weight-problem Elvis. Right around the time after his corny movie contract expired, and his second wave of fame began.

David Cassidy 2008

He seems to defy the aging process... and still looks about 10 yrs younger than Danny Bonaduce.

I experimented a bit with Tom Richmond's law of constant mass on this.

Key Largo underwater shot

From a while back... I haven't been able to get much drawing time so here's an underwater shot from a few miles off Key Largo... there were lots of barracuda around, but the flashless camera I was using got only dark crappy shots of the 'cudas, as they were down deeper and it was overcast. In fact, we had a huge downpour just a few minutes after I got this shot.

The captain - I forget his name - was that guy on The Travel Channel that feeds barracuda by holding fish in his mouth.

That's my old bud McDade in the upper left.

Leap of Consciousness

From a few years back, this is the opposite of a planned out drawing... I just drew whatever came to mind for a few hours... It's a lot different than my usual content, so any feedback good or bad is most welcome.

Chelsea Lately

It seems like every time I channel surf, the show "Chelsea Lately" with Chelsea Handler is always on. My theory is that the show just repeats 24 hours a day. Or maybe it alternates every other hour with that show with the angry blonde lady that rails against pedophiles and abusers. I'm not sure why I always stop at "Chelsea Lately", as the show is a little smarmy, but she's got great mannerisms and gestures. Also I got some reuse out of a Dr. Phil illustration from a while back that didn't really work on it's own, but fit in nicely as the front page story.

Travel Article interface II

Not much time for drawing for a bit, so these Travel Articles will have to do for now. Back to sketching next week.

Travel Article interface

Here's an interface I created a while back for a travel article.

Quick sketch airplane

Alice Cooper

Here's a take on Alice Cooper. I drew it from a photo from a meet 'n greet after a concert a while back. My college bud, Twinks works for the Ohio State Fair managing the fair entertainment. Every year there's always at least one 'B' act that would be worth seeing for fun - this particular year it was Alice, and he was able to get us good seats and backstage to meet Alice and get a photo with him. Anyway, Alice was very cool and had some hilarious things to say about playing a State Fair. After that we then drank some beer with some carnies and wandered the fairgrounds after hours. I heard later there was a great practical joke played using horse manure, but I digress.

Wags, Alice, and me.

The Beav

My harshest critic, Mrs. Shultz hardly ever thinks any illustration is just right. So when she pointed to a post-it note I had quickly sketched a '50's era pic of Jerry Mathers (aka The Beaver) on and said I should scan that to the blog, of course I obliged. I thought It'd be a nice quick post, but after I scanned it, I had to spend 15+ mins PhotoShopping out the notes I had written on the other side of the post-it that bled through during the scan. Nothin' but quality for this blog.

IF: Heavy - Al Roker

We just started our weight-loss contest at work today, so in honor of that, here's my take on Al Roker. No stomach-stapling is allowed in our contest, though.

Notes, Trout flies

Here are some notes I took a while back during a presentation. I just happened across them in my laptop bag pocket and thought I'd post them. Sometimes, that's a good way to listen... just draw away and listen to the lecture.

Rachael Ray color added

Here's the colorized version of the sketch I posted a few days ago... I reworked Rachel's face extensively, as it was the weakest part of the sketch as it was scanned - I had overrendered it on paper, but I was happy with the linework and proportions, so I stripped out a lot of the crosshatching and replaced it with PhotoShop brushwork.