Dance of Shiva Cards

First, I’m excited to see a project that took me a long time and a lot of painstaking work finally get off the ground. Frank Mitchell made a set of Dance of Shiva reference cards, and he hired me to illustrate the 8 arm positions in 64 combinations. I also made the results press-ready for him, so all he had to do was approve the images and then sit back while I sent it all to press (and pay the bills, heh). There was a card back and box art, and while I haven’t seen them in person yet, I’m crazy excited.

Cartoons

It’s been a week of getting back to cartooning, and I finally finished up most of the pending projects I had.

Elizabeth Halt asked me to draw her and her gorgeous puppy, Atlas:

And then my friend Rey wanted to be immortalized as a Weeble:

And finally, I drew up one of my Monsters (a la Havi Brooks), to show that he’s really a friendly, wee chap that’s worried for me:

Beach Cottage

Finally, I’ve got a sneak peek for you at the header for Cottage Copy‘s new look, an original watercolor including the Cottage Copy Spaniel and Holly’s dream beach cottage:

(Click to see it in all its full-size glory)

At least, in an ideal world I’d certainly be able to post cartoons every week and be forced to find other days for actual content. 😉

I’ve finally gotten a chance to draw a chibi cartoon of a client, so now there’s examples of someone other than me in all 3 styles. This is Camille Reigle, who’s still putting her Etsy shop together, but I’ll be sure to send you over there when she’s got it ready. She knits awesome stuff (and is kind enough to make special non-wool things for me!)

And then we have the sort of thing I draw when I’m idle, and then make into a Valentine.

If you’d like to prevent more of this sort of thing in the future, feel free to volunteer to Be a Cartoon yourself! The price is going up March 1, so get it while it’s still cheap.

First off, congrats to CaZ (@candysbytes) for winning the Tiny Painting (and answering her email)! These take a bit longer than the cartoons, but I’ll be sure to post here when it’s done.

Second, we have a pair of cartoons. First up is Avonelle Lovhaug (@AvonelleL), who wanted to see herself with a sassy Code Poet t-shirt and her tablet PC:

And then Holly Jackson (@copygeniusgirl) let me draw her up “weeble style” with her beloved puppy, Didy:

I’ve had a ton of fun doing these, though they do seem to take longer than I originally thought, so if you want one, get yours soon! I’ll be upping the price on March 1 (once the awesome art sale is over).

Not Dead Yet Studios wants to help out.

I went freelance in January of 1998, so in a way my ittybiz is firmly in its tweens. Antemortem Arts, however, is only a few months old and just starting to learn to walk. So, to give the art site a boost, I’m doing two things:

• Buy any art piece off of AntemortemArts.com or my Etsy shop for at least $100, and I’ll make you into a cartoon for free (including the original, that’s a $45 value). Multiple pieces that add up to $100 will also get the cartoon — just make sure you let me know that’s your intention.
• For every sale I make, I’ll donate $10 to Doctors Without Borders (or a charity of your choice) to help with the crisis in Haiti. If I make $1000 or more in sales, that’ll go up to $20 a sale or $100 total, whichever is bigger.

The cool thing about this sale is that it includes pretty much everything the Antemortem site. Painting, prints, sculptures, you name it. The world is your oyster. And if you don’t find anything that really speaks to you, this offer is also good on commissions! You can commission paintings in several sizes and price ranges, all custom made to reflect your personal passions — and as long as you make the deposit before the deadline, it counts.

Sometimes you really need the perfect gift, but you can’t seem to find it. Well, I’m good at gift giving! I can help you take the stress off your plate and find a great gift for someone important in your life. (I won’t mention That Holiday, as it is scary and can cause panic, but this can help you with that, too).

Now, like anything in this world, there is always fine print. Orders made after February 5th may not arrive by the Big Holiday, as I am human and drawing a cartoon of your lovely self (or the person you love) takes time. I’m going away that weekend so I won’t be available to ship anything ordered after Wednesday the 10th, but the sale will run all the way through the holiday — President’s Day on Monday, February 15th, of course. (What, you thought I meant a different holiday?)

Just remember, commissions require a collaborative process, and while they count toward the offer they definitely will not be ready by the Big Day. So take advantage of the sale, but make sure you plan ahead.

Got questions, comments, or want me to help you pick out the perfect gift? Drop me a line and I’ll get back to you!

PS – if you’re one of my recent Be a Cartoon clients, never fear! I’ll refund $45 of any purchase you make that qualifies. Or draw your dog. Whichever.

I haven’t yet heard back from my Tiny Painting winner (check your spam folders!), so I’m going to delay that announcement for a few more.

Until then, we have — Cartoons!

First, there’s the official Contest Winner, Diane Stokes! She’s @DSinAZ on Twitter, and she’s already splashed her new face all over the place, awesome!

And then, the wonderful Bridget Pilloud (@intuitivebridge on Twitter) decided to buy a cartoon of herself, which was awesome. I had great fun designing her Chakralicious fireball, not to mention giving her designer knockoff boots.

I’m working on a third one for another paying customer (yay!), plus I got to do a great custom Moleskine of Anais Nin for Holly (@copygeniusgirl), as well as an elephantalicious custom journal for her. Sharpie Marker ftw.

Actually, it’s two contests in one. I’m promoting both Not Dead Yet Studios and its sister site, Antemortem Arts, so I’m giving away a prize from each site.

The Prizes:

• Be a Cartoon! Get yourself made into a nifty cartoon character, for use in web or print, however you want to do it. Since it’s a giveaway, I’ll even send you the original free! A $45 value.
• Tiny Painting! Brighten up a corner of your world with a teeny little painting on its very own wooden easel, of nearly anything your heart desires. A $60 value.

The Rules:

• Comment here to enter, and include a valid email address so I can contact you if you win!
• Let me know in your comment whether you want the Cartoon, the Painting, or Either. It will be two separate drawings, with two different winners.
• Random numbers will decide, probably using polyhedral dice for maximum geekiness.
• Drawing will take place at the end of the day on Friday 1/8/2010. Unless I forget, and then it’ll be Saturday.
• Winners will be notified and, once they’ve accepted, posted here so you all know who got lucky.
• Prizes are good for 6 months, though of course I’m hoping you’ll be so excited you’ll want to get started right away!

Got any questions? The comments are good for that, too, or you can email me privately.

Good luck!

Entries are now CLOSED! Winners announced soon.

This year two of my very good friends commissioned me to design their Christmas cards, and I had great fun with the illustration. They’ve got 3 cats, who we decided needed to be the stars of the show, as it were, all up to their usual mischief.

That’s Eddie down at the bottom playing Godzilla with the Nativity, Lucy at the top making contact with the Cthulhu tree topper, and Jessica can be seen playing impostor ornament in the middle of the tree. It’s done with ink & Copic markers, and was a lot of fun (except inking the tree, which was insanely tedious, but I love the effect so I will pretend to myself it was fun).

A Merry, Mischievous Christmas to everyone, whether or not you celebrate — it’s still an awesome excuse for a day off!

Title: Till the Walls Shall Crumble to Ruin
Media: Oil on canvas, digital photos thereof, InDesign layout & color laser prints on parchment paper
Commissioner: Natalie
Sources: “The Children’s Hour” by Longfellow, and the Cezanne font
Notes: I am a terrible art photographer, so please excuse the uneven colours and strange shadows and glare. This project took ages (finding a box to ship it in was an unexpected challenge!) but I feel like the time spent was worth it, given the end result.

I wasn’t sure how it would all work out when Natalie came to me wanting a painting. We talked for a long while on gmail, bandying ideas back and forth, drawing out the images she was really interested in, and over the course of days the idea of the triptych was born. The canvas itself is smallish, 10x20in, and I really enjoyed working in the odd dimensions with what felt like infinite sky stretching up above the tower slowly crumbling away on the cold winter ground.

There was a story to Natalie’s choices, but it’s not really mine to tell. Suffice it to say she is happy with the results, and hopes to have it hung in her new home soon.

Since my own walls are yellow, rather than white, I took a photo on a sheet to give one an idea of how it looks all assembled.

Here’s a better shot of just the painting itself, cold winter sky and stretched above and the snow melting into the dark, frozen earth, and the hydrangeas bravely blooming on anyway.

You can see that I found “float” frames in a dimension that’s similar to the canvas, tall and thin, and we split up the poem’s stanzas into two groups. On page 1 we have a photograph of the little stray hydrangea bush that was blooming valiantly outside the tower’s shelter, huddled up to our leading B. On page 2 I used a photo of the tower from the middle of the painting process, before the bushes were painted in, to allow the T to grow up out of it unencumbered.

And now, a bit of the process! I’m doing it backwards this time so that those who just want to see the final don’t have to scroll. 😉

The very first step was to create that cold winter sky and the hard, dark ground below. I actually was really tempted just to keep the canvas once it was done, there was something really appealing for me about the juxtaposition of colour and shade here, but I was good and kept going.

Then, once the background was nice and dry, I put in the sun and the trees, and blocked in the shape and shade of the tower.

Next the tower got shade and details put in, the shape of the bricks coming out. This is the stage that I photographed for the illuminated letter T.

Leaves! There were bushy plants painted in, just waiting for their blossoms.

I’ve skipped a few stages in here, but the blossoms went in and, some snow was added to the ground as well as shadows and some extra dimensionality for the scattered bricks on the ground. At this point I hung it in the living room to dry so I could look at it in low light, and the only real difference from this to the final is some extra highlighting and shading, and another layer of soft glow around the sun.

And of course, there’s the finished product, which you can scroll up to see again!

This is one of the commissions I finished right before I ran off for vacation, a book cover for Annette Gisby’s novel Drowning Rapunzel. She originally asked for print-resolution digital art (6″x9″ with a 0.25″ bleed, a fairly standard “oversize paperback” sort of size), which I did using Corel Painter IX. During the process of having the cover made, the ebook version got picked up by an epub, who allowed her to supply her own cover.

A tiny plug, if you want to commission me for art, just drop me a line and we can discuss pricing and deadlines. Don’t be afraid that I’ll hard sell you — I only have 3 spots left in my art queue at the moment anyway.

As always, you can skip to the bottom to see the finished piece, or scroll through the “progress” to get an idea of how it all came together.

After some discussion and many photos of towers, i came up with this Incredibly Lame “sketch” just to get an idea of positioning and whatnot:

There were a few steps between that and this, but I figured I’d skip to the first real significant progress. I feel the need to point out that the tower took as long as the entire rest of the image combined, and if I never shade another tiny brick again it might be too soon. @_@ The black lines show the “bleed” area, which is what would be cut off in a print book — I personally like the full version better, so I’m glad she got to use it.

Here I properly drew in the figure of the girl, and shaded the lake:

And now, grass! Annette wanted to be sure I wasn’t going to leave our poor Rapunzel on a muddy bank, and it worked out better to have the grass layer put in before shading the trees and whatnot.

Here’s the final version, complete with titles added in Photoshop.

Click the image for a larger version

This fall, my friend Jeff commissioned me to paint a gift for his wife, for a combination 5th anniversary and Christmas present. It was an interesting challenge keeping it a secret for two months, but the moment of presentation was a smashing success!

Here’s a bit of the process, for the curious…

The worst thing in the world: a blank canvas.

Look, color!

And here’s a little more, getting in the shadows and a vague hint of what will someday be the background.

You can see my references taped to the easel now, or some of them, anyway, and the blocked-in color for the ghost ship.

Some detail going in on the ship:

More ship, and some foliage!

Rawr! He’s a little toothless, but he’ll get his later.

And now we block in our mermaid! The real star of the painting.

Our shark has teeth, and the mermaid has some color now.

Texture on her tail, and a whole lot of kelp.

All done except for the lighting. Little fishies!

And here’s the final! Click the image for a bigger version: