Hidden Picture Image

February 7, 2014February 10, 2014Leave a comment

Here’s a commission I just sent in to Hart McLeod.

Hidden in the image are 12 pictures. They weren’t supposed to be TOO hard to find, so you should be able to spot them. A woman, a man, two girls, one boy, one owl, two rabbits, three turtles, and a frog.

Interesting thing about this project. They told me which hidden elements they wanted to see, but said that the scene was the artist’s choice. I hate that. That means I had to figure out an interesting scene and compose it with no guidance or limits. I love limits. Contrary to what you’d think, I can be so much more creative if I have defined framework to work in. Oh well.

Hidden Picture
Luckily, I pulled out this reference photo from my photo collection and used it as my framework. I took this at the Overland Park Arboretum this fall. There actually is a pond off the frame to the left, but it isn’t to the horizon like in the drawing.
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Annoyed Grown-Ups and Guilty Kids

February 5, 2014February 10, 2014Leave a comment

Here’s some images I just finished for Hart McLeod.

521 Promo Pet Cartoons

February 4, 2014Leave a comment

I created the following cartoons for Kellene Addison with 521 Promo. I understand they’re intended to be printed on T-shirts. They were created in Adobe Photoshop. I’m posting them as art samples only and all copyrights are owned by Kellene Addison.

Cat Bites Man

Dog Destroyed Living Room

Vacuuming Pawprints
While developing the dog character in the second cartoon, I drew out this guy as well. He ultimately wasn’t used. So, he’s still mine. He’s a little unfinished, but I like him.

Playful Dog

Chicken or Egg

January 28, 2014January 28, 2014Leave a comment

Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

Please note that this is a bit simplified, since it’s doubtful that the distinction between a red jungle fowl and a chicken came about in just one generation. More likely, there were quite a few generations of a long grey area between sorta-a-red-jungle-fowl-sorta-a-chicken before it became obviously the distinct species we now call a chicken. Plus, they think they might have bred them with the grey jungle fowl as well.

Dammit, Jim, I’m an illustrator, not a biologist.

Either way, the egg still came first.

Fruit

January 16, 2014February 10, 20141 Comment

Here’s some vector fruit I just created in Adobe Illustrator for Hart McLeod. They’re for a textbook.

Five Vector Fruits

iStock

January 15, 2014January 15, 201414 Comments

I decided to take some of my images just sitting around in my portfolio and put them to work. To that end I created an iStock account to sell some of them for stock.

I’m pleasantly surprised that, so far, they’ve only rejected one image, and that one because it was a photograph where a brand name was visible (I should have know better). I was surprised that they didn’t reject more of the photos because they were all taken with a point-and-shoot camera and had compression errors at full size. I reduced them to fix that, but I still wasn’t 100% sure they were sharp enough. I uploaded just a few of them mostly to get an idea of if that quality of image was good enough. I guess they are.

I’ve got quite a few in-queue still and some of the accepted ones aren’t up yet, but if you’d like to see what’s up so far, here’s the link to my iStock portfolio: http://www.istockphoto.com/search/portfolio/11221904#1232097

Also, I’m curious if any of you have tried iStock as contributors and what your thoughts are on the experience.

The Scorpion and The Frog – Final

January 2, 2014November 13, 20241 Comment

The Scorpion and The Frog

This image is available at shutterstock here.

Third Grade Textbook Illustrations

December 20, 2013May 17, 20166 Comments

I’ve been busy the last couple weeks. Here’s some of what I was working on. These images were commissioned by Hart Mcleod Ltd. for a textbook project for third grade. Click on the images for (slightly) larger versions.

Plain Cupcake

December 10, 2013December 10, 2013Leave a comment

Just a plain cupcake. I’ll decorate it later…

cupcake

Jump Rope Animation

December 2, 2013December 2, 20133 Comments

It’s just a simple little stick figure jumping rope, but it’s my first ever animation. I made the frames in Illustrator and animated them in Photoshop. It consists of ten frames at .05 seconds each, so a rate of 20 frames a second. I figured out the timing by singing “Miss Mary Mac” at the tempo that goes with jumping rope and set the speed to match that. (Though it still might be just a bit too fast, I’m not sure.) It’s not very fancy, but I’m proud of it.