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?

For the past year or so I’ve been working with a great client of mine, Gary Michaels, to create the artwork for a collaborative jazz CD by Saxophonist “Blue Lou” Marini (The Blues Brothers, Saturday Night Live), and pianist/composer, Misha Segal. The CD is called, The Blue Lou and Misha Project: Highly Classified. Below is an excerpt from the one-sheet:

Legendary Saturday Night Live and Blues Brothers Saxophonist, “Blue Lou” Marini and Emmy winning, LA film composer/pianist, Misha Segal have combined forces to create a very original and entertaining contemporary jazz album entitled, Highly Classified.

Wow, this was a fun project to work on! Not only did I get to create a custom marketing brand, but I got the privilege to create cartoon artwork as well! Hopefully I’ll be getting actual samples of the CD. When I do I’ll post pics.

There will be a CD release party in LA (if you’re in the neighborhood. I won’t be unfortunately.). The info is below:

Live at Spazio’s “LA’s Jazz Supper Club”
Wednesday May 26th One Night Only!
Shows @ 8:00 PM & 10:30 PM

Featuring:

Blue Lou Marini Sax, Misha Segal Piano,
Jeff Babko Keyboards, Dean Parks Guitar,
Abraham Laboriel Bass, John “JR” Robinson Drums,
Luis Conte Percussion, Gary Grant Trumpet,
Walt Fowler Trumpet, Bruce Fowler Trombone,
Dan Higgins Sax, Lon Price Sax

Promotional cartoon

You can get more info by visiting the CD promotional page here.

Also, now you can “Like” this post on Facebook. Not sure yet what that means.

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!

Hello, everyone. I just wanted to throw up a quick sketch and wish everyone a Happy New Year, and New Decade! God bless you all.

Just playing around with coloring techniques in Photoshop. The coloring style is inspired by a great illustrator, Dennis Jones. He’s the guy that illustrated the ZonderKids Read With Me Bible that my church passes out to all the kids moving into first grade. I always get jealous of them. They get shiny new copies and my copy is nearly nine years old and worn.

I just realized that my last post was titled “Happy Chef”. What will be my next “happy” post? Who knows. Maybe I need more creativity when it comes to my post headers?

It’s Monday, and we’re well into the NFL/NCAA/high school football season. Some of you are waking up this week with feelings of excitement and enthusiasm. Your team crushed their opponent this weekend, or squeaked out a thrilling victory at the last second. But for others, like myself, your team lost. You will be looking back on this weekend questioning play calls, officiating, defense, and more. This one’s for you and me. We’re all in this together. We stand united as we root for the losers (or as we like to call them, the “underdogs”). Character is built in times like these. Plus, there’s always next week. And the stage is set for thrilling seasonal comebacks. So, remember this: it’s not YOU that lost, it’s your team. Your happiness doesn’t rest on whether or not one team scores more points than another team. So cheer on your humble players. Cheer them on to victory. Or be with them in defeat. We love football (sometimes).

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.