Here’s a recent illustration I did just for fun. Lately I’ve been playing around with scanning in my traditionally inked drawings and then using Adobe Illustrator to color them. After that I play around with different texture effects in Photoshop. Fun all around!

This illustration is available through iStock (the non-textured version below is anyways). Enjoy!

Scan of original inked drawing.

iStock version

Update 8/20/10: I’ve decided to enter this illustration to this week’s Illustration Friday challenge: Atmosphere. I think it’s fitting, don’t you?

There’s been a lot of talk and speculation over Apple’s upcoming device, the iPad. However, in all this talk about Flash, multitasking, and such, I haven’t heard anyone ask the most important of them all, will it support Nike+? If any of you have any info on this please let me know. I’m not buying one unless I can strap it on my arm while out for a brisk run!

Long before your Kindles or iPads books were printed on real paper and bound together. I know, sounds like a waste of paper, but it’s true! Here is an image of a girl from such time reading one of these old-fashioned books. She looks real focused, doesn’t she? This week’s Illustration Friday theme is “focused” so here’s my submission. It’s also available for stock use here.

I was going to wait to post this illustration, but with this week’s Illustration Friday topic being “unbalanced” I just couldn’t resist. This illustration is part of a series of illustrations I’m doing for a card company. I’ll be giving details later, so be sure to subscribe to the blog. Or subscribe to my newsletter. But for now, enjoy!

I’ve been hard at work on a new promotional mailer postcard. Voila! Here it is! If you would like one let me know. I thought this would be a good time to share with you a little of the development of this illustration. How fun! This isn’t meant to be a tutorial, but rather an insight on how I work, and the time involved in putting together an illustration like this. So, let us begin.

Update 10/9/09: I have decided to include this illustration in this week’s “Illustration Friday”. Topic: “Flying”.

Some initial sketches

Final sketch

For the character lines I used the new Blob Brush in Illustrator CS4. Very handy! In prior versions of Illustrator I would use a brush and expand the shapes. It took forever!!

Using Live Paint

Once I'm satisfied I expand my live paint groups.

Wrap-Up

So there you have it. This general process took me about a couple weeks. If I think of it I’ll post screenshots of the postcards when I get them back from the printer. I hope you enjoyed this post. Feel free to leave your comments below. I feel like watching Tale Spin now.

The mud was really fun to do. Almost as fun as playing in it.

Update 2/6/2010: This week’s Illustration Friday theme is “muddy”. How perfect! Plus, it’s Superbowl Weekend!