Quick sketch again

Here's a quick sketch of a polo player on horseback. I'm specifically trying to stop once I get the proportions down.

Quick Sketch of two women holding children

This took about 5 mins, just trying to get the rough proportions down.

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.