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.