Thanksgiving is all fun and games for everyone, except for those being eaten.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
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Animals Art: Photoshop Cartoons Character Designs Random Doodles Sketchbook
Category: Art: Photoshop
Thought I’d share with you a super cartoony illustration I put together recently for the LA Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society (NCS LA). This piece was used on the invitations for the NCS LA’s upcoming holiday party on December 12.
Why an angel bear? Well, as mentioned once before here on the ol’ blog, Cornelius is the mascot of the NCS LA. As legend has it, he once saved the life of LA cartoonist George Herriman (Krazy Kat comic strip creator) from a runaway toboggan in the early part of the 20th century. Of course, Cornelius passed away long ago, so he is depicted as an angel bear which is appropriate for the NCS chapter located in the City of Angels (Los Angeles).
If you are a professional in the creative arts and wish to come to our holiday shindig, by all means, please contact me for details. It will be a great evening on December 12 of colleagues and their spouses enjoying a dinner and some entertainment led by New Yorker Magazine cartoonist Matt Diffee. Cost is $35 per person, and on a volunteer basis, we are collecting new art supplies to donate to the sick kids of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
It seems that it has been awhile since I have posted some art here on the ol’ blog. I would apologize, except for the fact that I have been insanely busy working on a new children’s book! I can’t say anything about it for now, but it does involve a good 20 or so illustrations, and I am doing them all traditionally in watercolor and colored pencil. So there hasn’t been much time for anything else.
That being said, last night I experienced a little insomnia. Went to bed, then two hours later I was wide awake. Not good. So, I channeled my energy into doing a sketch in my sketchbook, which escalated into giving it a quickie coloring job on the computer.
With all the media talk of sharks and shark attacks this summer, I decided to doodle my own fierce shark with a baby seal to add a touch of desperation. Enjoy, and swim safely out there in the big oceans!
A couple of months ago I was hired to do a corporate illustration in a comic book style for the ServiceMax company. Specifically, I was asked to draw the piece in an old school Marvel/DC Comics style showing a business-suited hero pulling an office building with screaming workers away from the brink of destruction. The art director gave me a rough sketch of what he wanted, and after a little back and forth, the hero emerged.
This style is a little out of my wheelhouse, but was fun to draw for the client nonetheless. It is nice when someone hires you to do something they haven’t seen you do before. We artists often like the challenge. It breaks up the monotony of doing the things you get pigeon-holed into doing all the time. Thanks, ServiceMax!
“Hey, ho, hey!” That’s the greeting of the NCS LA. To those not in the know, NCS LA means the National Cartoonists Society, Los Angeles Chapter!
The NCS LA reorganized this year to become a pretty busy group of professional cartoonists. We used to have one gathering a year in December, but since this past December, we have been doing monthly activities where professional cartoonists can socialize with colleagues, learn something, and hopefully soon will involve some volunteer drawing for worthy causes.
Part of what the NCS LA has discovered is some of the history of our group. Our mascot has become Cornelius the Bear because back in the day he saved the life of Los Angeles cartoonist George Herriman, creator of the comic strip Krazy Kat, from a runaway toboggan. Cornelius is no longer with us here in the City of Angels, of course, so he himself is depicted in angelic terms on our official crest. I recently drew my version of Cornelius as seen above wearing the NCS LA uniform of a plaid sports coat.
That image of Cornelius was used on a flyer I put together advertising to our membership a field trip we took a few weeks ago to Revolutions 2, a fantastic museum exhibit of original illustration art at the museum in the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, CA (go see it before it closes in early August if you haven’t already – it’ll knock your socks off!). Illustrator William Stout showed us around the exhibit, and was able to tell tales of his own art that is in the display. Afterwards, we went to lunch at a place where Walt Disney and his animators used to hang out (yes, that’s my Walt on the flyer, too).
If you are a professional cartoonist creating comic books, comic strips, illustration, animation, editorial cartoons, or any other genre in cartooning here in Los Angeles, or will be visiting our fair city in the future, please get a hold of me to find out when and where our next gathering will be! We’d love to welcome you here!
Every now and then you have a dead moment (so to speak) at work waiting for your next assignment. Such a moment was upon me today, so instead of surfing the net or getting a sixth cup of coffee, I decided to start doodling. While keeping things very sketchy and rough, the doodle kept expanding in size, scope, and hideousness until it arrived at this heaping hulk of a concept monster.
Is he a brute with beastly intentions? Perhaps a misunderstood miscreant with a heart of gold? Or maybe it is someone who just regrets not having taken better care of his teeth in his younger years.
Whoever he may be, he most definitely is a sketch who evolved in a moment of a little workday idleness.
Recently I started working on storyboards for a new animated film called Animal Crackers. I had some time between assignments last week, and just to keep busy, I started sketching. This bear came out of hibernation by way of my Cintiq screen. (That’s a monitor you can draw on with a stylus.)
While the film does include many animals, this is not one from the movie lest your hopes were up for a sneak peek. For that, you should visit the Animal Crackers Facebook page where you can see some of the characters as designed by the amazing Carter Goodrich!
I thought it was time that I posted another selfie. No, not a photo of myself, but rather it was time to try a new version of my toony self by way of a self-caricature. It takes a little longer than holding out a camera and snapping the image, and it is much less blurry this way, but it is fun to see how far the image can be pushed and have it still look like me. Really, it all comes down to just wanting to make a new profile picture for Facebook.
If you would like to see past samples of self indulgence, CLICK HERE!
