A New Art Group Means New Drawings

Taking a break from writing for a day or so means drawing.  Here are two of today's offerings, both based on photographs taken in the forties by legendary photographer Wee Gee. 

Website Clippings

 

Above is a little sampling of some of the sites and blogs around the world that have reviewed the Fresh Paint app, and have used my artwork to illustrate their features.  So far the response has been very positive.

Holiday Content Created for Windows 8 Fresh Paint

In the middle of December I took it upon myself to try to get some holiday content out to the customers who had downloaded and installed Fresh Paint.  The idea was that we could offer them free, seasonal projects that they could use to make physical decorations for their homes, and it would help to lend a bit of personality to Fresh Paint in general, since we had no website or active social media presence.  Above is a completed paint project,one of two I designed.  Unfortunately, we were never able to deliver this to the users, as the app would not allow for offering material on anything but a permanent basis, and no one wanted to have seasonal decorations available year round.  A near miss, I'd say.

Two Different Logo Treatments

These are two completely different paintings, done in the Win 8 Fresh Paint app as part of a marketing notion involving the live tile displays on the Win 8 start screen.  They might not be exciting, but each one took hours to finish.  Believe it or not, they were fun to do. 

Freshly Painted

I've been working for Microsoft, creating art based activities and promotional artwork for the just-released Fresh Paint app, available for free for Windows 8.    The work I've been asked to do requires me to work in a wide variety of styles, but all of the color in these images was painted using the Fresh Paint app.  It's been a lot of fun, and promises to be more fun in the future with the very cool surprises we've got in store for the holidays and beyond.

Coffee Shop Photoshop Doodling

Over the weekend I was in a coffee place without my Wacom tablet, so I made this doodle with the touchpad of the laptop.

Two Older Ideas Getting New Life

Old, but gently reworked.

In Progress

Decided to do that painting of the baby digitally, after originally planning it as an IRL acrylic project.  I found myself away from the easel for a bit with a yen to paint some, and I just jumped into this.  I'll update as this comes together.

Update: Coming in for a landing with that lower image.  I ought to wrap this up this evening, if I don't get distracted by other projects.

Update 2: Not finished yet.  I was called away by some other projects.  Almost there... more work on the arms and hands, and another pass on the center of the face and we ought to be finished.

New Project Coming

This observatory design probably won't make it into the new version, but friends of mine are joining me in a new design project, which we hope to publish as a book sometime next year or so.  I'll post details as they develop, but I will say that it involves the moon and a bunch of scientists.  And two kids.  And a dog.  Okay, no more details.

Hot Rod Fellows

Character concepts for a racing game.  Ink and Copic markers.

Creepy But Friendly

A digital background painting done in Corel Painter as an acrylic painting.  This is a portfolio piece and was not used in production of any game.

A collection of me.

For one reason or another, I've been asked to make self portraits over the years for inclusion in mastheads, or on employee identification files, or for year end business or other similar things. 

  

Over the years, they've piled up.  I think that, sadly, the one with the green shirt is closest to the cruel hand fate dealt me, but the other weirdo ones are at least funny.

 
 That blue head was drawn by my brother many, many years ago.  You can tell how old it is since I've had silver hair coming in since I was in my twenties. I cherish the one copy I have of that drawing.  I don't even have the original anymore, but I cherish the washed out xerox in my file cabinet.

 The beardo one is ancient as well.  I fully remember the ponytail I wore when I drew that one. The one on the right there was drawn a full seventeen years later. 

This is just Facebook silliness.  Nothing to see here.

Drawings from the news

This is my new thing.  I love to warm up by doodling people from news stories; usually, miscreants and bullies, so I feel that I have free reign to make them awful.  I have a Rick Santorum around here somewhere too.  I'll post it when it turns up.

A doodle I thought would make a neat wooden figurine someday.

More produce drawings for the Seattle Weekly

Soon to be a painting!  Here's the work up for a three foot wide piece I'm starting up shortly.

I should post more often

I always mean to post here, but I rarely do these days.  With Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and every other non-web pursuit fighting for bandwidth, it's easy for something like a humble blog to get lost in the shuffle. 

These drawings might not be new, but I've been thinking about getting more life drawing in, and revisiting these sketches really helped me with that decision.

There Are No Small Jobs

I'll be illustrating a series of poems about different fruits and vegetables throughout the summer for the Seattle Weekly.  This week, fan favorite rhubarb!

Seattle Weekly Care Bears Cover

This is a recent Seattle Weekly cover I did with art director Jane Sherman.  The inspired treatment of the logo was all her idea.  Come to think of it, the whole concept was hers.  Go, Jane!

Halloween Show Painting

A piece from an upcoming Bureau of Drawers show, and two of the sketches that I made getting there.

Cover image for an Activity Book

The very kind people at Best Friends Animal Society are putting out an activity book, and I'm lucky enough to be doing the illustrations for it. This is the cover illustration. I'll post the cover once I have the file in hand.

EDIT: This illustration has been bumped in favor of a different illustration with a menagerie of animals, including that most common of household pets, the horse.

Older Than Dirt's Grandmother

The oldest thing you'll see on this blog. I found this illustration I did for the San Francisco Weekly (go SFW!) at least a decade ago. It's so old that I dialed down the color on this thing so it wouldn't be completely yellowed over.

It's fun to see old drawings. Sometimes it shows you how far you've come, sometimes it shows you something that has been missing in your more recent work. That gray tone thing on portraits- I've got to bring that back.

More Comic and Game Concept Designs

Character concepts for various game and comic projects.