A boy and his dog

I did this illustration for Dreamstime's latest contest:

Dreamstime is a microstock site - where they license photographs and illustrations.  And while i have every intention of winning this contest...it's usually the photographs that dominate.  There are a select group of artists that submit illustrations to the contest, but it's few and far between that any of us have won.

The payoff for just entering is still worth it - if this file is ever licensed (and my past entries have been a few times), they sell for more - on the low end the price can go from 36 cents to $1.26.  So it's a good incentive to participate.

The contest this month is "children with pets."  It's important to be one of the first entries (the contest started on friday) so you get more eyeballs on your piece.  I submitted it Friday night and as of Sunday, I'm still waiting to have the illustration approved...

This illustration was drawn in photoshop, but cleaned up and colored in adobe illustrator.  Microstocks like Shutterstock, Istockphoto, and Dreamstime sell more vector files than any other form of illustration.  So it pays to work in that media.

more t-shirt designs!

My wife and I collaborated on these designs.  What that means are these were her ideas, her drawings, and I helped out a tiny bit (and she made me upload them to the site).

For the final t-shirt design we decided to lose the balloon as we wanted to make a clean and simple design that appealed to both men and women and felt the balloon 'babied' it up:

Please vote for this design by clicking this link to Deviant Art and then clicking "I'd wear this"

And then she drew this:

Which we turned into this design:

And this is what it looks like on the t-shirt:

And vote for this one too!  There's no limit to the amount of different t-shirts you can vote for...but I'd appreciate the votes for ours!  Make sure you use this link to Deviant Art and click "I'd wear this"

Thanks!

Deviant Art: Cute Monster T-shirt Contest

Click here to vote for my t-shirt design!  Click on "I'd Wear This" to vote.  My design will only be capable of winning if you vote!  You have to be a member of Deviant Art to vote - but it's well worth it!  So come on...what do you say?

A friend of mine told me about this contest that Deviant Art was holding (the deadline to enter ends tonight at midnight).  I did a bunch of quick roughs:

But I didn't like how any of them turned out so I kept trying and did a series of really terrible drawings that I won't post here...but then I drew this one...and while it's still kind of wonky...it demanded that I finish it:

and that led to finishing it in Adobe Illustrator.  I did the drawing as I wanted to finish it (the one on the left) and then because the rules of the contest strongly suggested that the illustrations be confined to 7 colors (which is easier for them to print) I changed my color palette to comply.

The color swatches at the top are all the colors in the drawing...my original finished piece had 13 colors, so I had to really pare it back to get it to seven.

And this is how it looks if it was on a t-shirt:

My friend, Leonard Dill,  also entered the contest - His illustration is almost as good as mine (and some would say it's better) - Click on his name and also vote for him!  Do your good deed for the day...or two good deeds...don't be lazy, it's totally worth it!  Here's his t-shirt design: