Father and Son

I did a version of this with a mother helping her son learn to walk...but I wanted to redo it with a father and son.  Mostly because I did both illustrations for Dreamstime (a microstock illustration/photography site) and their monthly contest.  This month the topic is help:

The original illustration had a crib, so I moved the father and son into the living room.

I'm also uploading this to the Illustration Friday site because the topic this week is Surrender...and instead of walking, the father could be teaching his kid how to surrender...in case he runs into any baby bullies in the day care...

Firefighter

I did this for the Dreamstime contest this month - the topic is 'help'.

In my head I thought of someone who was helpful and immediately came upon the idea of a closeup of a firefighter racing to a fire.

And because this was for a stock illustration site I did the entire illustration in Adobe Illustrator.

Squaremania: Green Lantern

It's Green Lantern...squared!  Evil Doers turn into fraidy clucking chickens at the sight of  Lil' square Green Lantern.

I did this illustration based on the Hal Jordan Green Lantern (at least his costume from the comics...I don't think Hal Jordan was ever this shape).  I was going to give him a six pack but Ryan Reynolds proved (by sporting them in the Green Lantern movie trailer) that it looked rather silly.

And anyway - Green Lantern was never about the muscles, but rather flying around, being an intergalactic superhero and fighting all things yellow.

Squaremania - Stinky Tea

This is the color version.

If you find a skunk as you're stirring your tea, I'd consider getting a new cup...

squaremania - Stinkin' tea...

So far I've finished the drawing of the skunk in a tea cup:

 and I'm currently working on the color...

Squaremania: Important Family Meeting

It might feel like deja vu because I'm posting an illustration that I put up over a month ago...but I've gone back and made some changes.

The first thing I did was combine the version of the panda with his frog ear hat on:

It was sort of cute, but I felt that it distracted from the overall message of the illustration - because all you could see was that ridiculously adorable hat...

Anyway - the original always bothered me.  I thought it was a little too plain - so I ruffled up the bed sheet a little (it's not a straight line anymore, and the sheet now extends below the bed frame.  You can't really see either of these things, but it does help to break up some of the monotony).  The most important thing I did was add the picture frames.  I was originally going to put a mobile up, but I thought it would have been too complex and distracting, so i went with the pictures.  And even though I fully colored them, when finalizing the picture I wanted to push them further into the background so I desaturated the color and added the oval shadow.

And now it's done!

Squaremania - lil' Superman

Here's a Squaremania version of Superman:

This was done in Adobe Illustrator (lines) and Photoshop (color).

Shark faces...

I did a shark illustration for Dreamstime last year.  I've separated out the shark from the rest of the drawing and added a variety of expressions for the different stock illustration sites.

These are vector drawings done in Adobe Illustrator
for Shutterstock, Dreamstime, Istockphoto, Fotolia, and Vectorstock

Squaremania - lil' Batman

A couple of years ago I went to the Vinyl Toy Network (which has since been renamed Designer Con) which was a convention for some really cool art and toys.

I was getting things ready for an art gallery I was doing (summer of 2009 at Nickelodeon Animation in Burbank) and decided that one portion of my gallery would be popular characters in my style, that a series of vinyl toys could be based on.  Out of that I did a lot of characters from Marvel, DC to Freddy Krueger and IG88 (a robot bounty hunter from Star Wars).  They were all a sort of bobble headed kid versions.

For that same gallery I was exploring square animals which eventually turned into Squaremania.  And I had always wanted to do some human characters as well, but just ran out of time for the gallery...and since I had such a good response to the animals, I kept going in that direction.

Over the christmas break I did a couple of rough sketches and decided that it would be fun to do a series of Squaremania versions of my favorite superheroes.

First up is Batman:

I'm going to add a different background to better suit the character...but since I just finished painting him, I thought I'd put him up on the blog.

Batman also fit's this weeks Illustration Friday topic of "resolutions" - as we all know, when his parents were murdered he resolved to dress up and run around in tights to avenge their death.

Squaremania: Kitties for Adoption, the cleaned up version

I played with the size of the panda a little bit so that way he would be bigger than the kitties.  I think I'm going to add some sort of background in there too - so I've printed it out again and I'm going to flesh out what's going on around them...

Microstock report for December 2010

This is our microstock report for December, 2010.

Shutterstock led the way again.  It was the first time in a while where it came down to the last couple of days whether or not we would cross $100 for the month.  But then two ODs were sold on the 29th (ODs are worth $2.70 each)...and all was right.

It's been the same story as the last few months - we haven't had time to upload many, if any, images for the stock sites - and so our numbers are slowly going down.  We uploaded a couple more images this month, but they were really a combination of older vector illustrations.

Veer has our smallest portfolio (only 2 downloads this month, but each was worth $7.00) - but only because 20 images were turned down this summer due to open shapes and I haven't wanted to spend the time uploading them again.  Cory Thoman, who got me into selling stock illustrations, has recently signed up with a couple of newer agencies, so I'm probably going to sign up with them as well...but only if I can find the time.

If you see the rest of my blog, I've been working on my proprietary projects, so making generic illustrations hasn't been a priority...

But maybe in the new year - I've missed watching an illustration take off and sell like booze and hotpants.

Squaremania - Skunk in a tea cup

I've been meaning to do a series of Squaremania animals in tea cups - And this christmas break is just the right time to start!

If time allows, I'd like to do these as watercolors...but we'll see if I can fit it in before it's time to go back to work...

Ever since my wife and I came back from Europe (three years ago) we've been obsessed with tea.  In Paris there were these two nice restaurants that started it off...and once we got back we looked up all the tea houses in southern california.  We've even been known to look up tea houses when we go on a trip (we visited a tea house in Chicago when we were there for a wedding last summer)...

Squaremania: Batman

Way back when I originally started drawing animals in the squaremania style - I had wanted to do some human characters as well.  I was preparing a gallery show and ran out of time...so the only things that existed, at that time, were the animals.  At the time I was working on a napoleon drawing - but it never went anywhere...

Anyway - I was looking at a toy magazine today at the bookstore and saw a bunch of DC comic heroes and decided they'd be a good fit for Squaremania - so I'm starting with Batman...and I'll see about getting to the other characters...

Squaremania - Kitties for Adoption, cleaner rough

I liked this rough drawing enough that I'm going to finish it up and make a proper illustration out of it.  So far I enlarged the drawing in photoshop, lightened the opacity and printed it out so I could use that as a guideline for a tighter drawing:

I changed the adoption sign to make it more like something that someone would have on or near a box of kittens.  The original drawing actually said, "kitties for sale" but it was pointed out that my wife and I are going to be adopting.  More important - there are way too many stray kittens in need of homes that a person doesn't need to purchase them, but rather, rescue them.

Squaremania - Kitties on the Run...

My wife and I are going to be adopting a couple of kittens from a rescue later this month - but because of it, I seem to be drawing a lot of cats recently.

This was based on one of the kittens we saw.  He would pretend to be grooming himself and then suddenly pounce at nothing and then run around.  It was ridiculously cute how much energy he had.

We ended up choosing a brother and sister who were twin himalayans.  I don't know why I drew them being chased...but if people don't adopt kittens and puppies, then they get put down...so that's something to think about if you have room and time to care for an animal.

Squaremania - Kitties for Adoption!

This winter my wife and I are adopting a couple of little kittens from a rescue.   I've been drawing a lot of cats recently...and we can't wait to bring them into our home.

Squaremania - Lil' Panda in a Strange Land

I got a book for Christmas on the art of Greg "Craola" Simkins.  He's a fantastic gallery artist that comes up with some pretty twisted and intertwining works of art.  Anyway - it inspired me to sketch this:

I tend to draw very calculated things and this piece kept making me pause because I wanted to think about what I was doing...I think a good exercise would be to draw whatever is in my head and not get bogged down in making sense or in perspective.  At least I should sketch more...and it's nice to draw a character, every once in a while, that isn't square...but only every once in a while...

Lil' Square Kitty

My wife and I are adopting a couple of really cute little kittens this coming year.  We spent a couple of hours getting to know them at the vet.  They're from a rescue that takes in strays (they spay/neuter them and test them for diseases).

IF: Mailer - for publishing companies and christmas postcards

We did two versions of this as mailers.  Instead of regular christmas cards, we thought it'd be fun to do postcards.

"If you hear the pitter patter of square hooves on the roof, it's just Lil' Santa Panda and his square reindeer!"

"Just watch out for lil' square poops falling from the sky on Christmas Eve!"

IF: Mail - squaremania stamps

I thought it would be cute if my characters dressed up as stamps for this week's Illustration Friday topic of "Mail"