Color.

And here is the card in color.
Tis the season!

Christmas Card.

Yep it's time to start working on our annual Christmas card and as usual I'm getting to it later than I'd like. Here's the pencil drawing.

Frankenstein

My friend John Quinn invited me to be contributor to a sketch/character design blog called "Gum or Mints". The objective is to produce a drawing based on whatever the particular theme of the moment is. Currently it is Frankenstein. Go check out the blog yourself to see some of the other excellent pieces posted by all the contributors.
Thanks again John!

Speaking of Buzz....

This was also done for Hasbro's Toy Story line but it is the illustration for the the actual toy packaging. There's a lot of work that goes into putting a toy on the shelf and we're not even talking about the actual "piece of plastic" yet!
This was done in Photoshop.

Product Concepts

These were product concept sketches that were done for Hasbro on the Toy Story property. They are more to illustrate what the function of the proposed toy would be as opposed to the specific details or final posing. They all made it into production a while back and I ran across the actual toys at the local Target so thats what prompted me to post them. I love drawing stuff like this.

Oddities.

Sometimes you just have to ask yourself; "What do you get if you put a big head, button eyes, a huge shnozolla, diapers, a safety pin, bunny ears, a cotton tail, lots of wrinkles and a dainty travel purse all together"?
Yeah, I can already hear my old character design teachers screaming and running for the tall grass on this one!

It's fun though!

And even more Critters!

These bunch of animals are from the same assignment as the penguins and gators a couple of posts back. I did a ton of these for Hasbro and these are my favorites of the group.They may be a little "cutsie" for some but I like them.

Sculpts.

My good friend Alvaro Cervantes who is an awesome sculptor (check out the Puro Sculpture link) and probably first inspired me to mess around with sculpting asked that I post some pictures of sculpture that I've done in the past. These were all done on spec in the hopes of some day being limited edition bronze pieces. Nothing really came of them but I did get an artist proof bronze of the Tarzan and the Ratigan so I can't complain. The Ratigan was done with Roma Plastellina while the Hunchback and gargoyles were done in Super Sculpie and Tarzan was done in Chevant. These were great learning experiences and taught me much about sculpting and on a more basic level visualizing the form in three dimensions.

Critters 2: Gators

These are from the same batch of animal concepts as the penguins. They were all done for Hasbro Toys as character explorations a couple of years back. I enjoy doing stuff like this; messing around with shapes and proportions. I was looking at T.S. Sullivant's work as inspiration when I was doing these. The way he caricatured animals was masterful. My drawings are very pale "dart throws" in comparison!

Critters 1

Here are a couple of character studies of penguins that I did recently. Black Prismacolor.

I did this illustration of Hades (from Disney's Hercules) a number of years ago for fun while I was messing around with a painting program called Deep Paint. The program was a bear for me to use but the result was interesting. I always loved the character so I had this printed up on some canvas and it's hanging in my studio.

I've been fortunate enough to illustrate several My Little Pony projects over the years from packaging illustrations to story books. These particular ones were done for packaging and are some of my favorites.

I've taken the odd pilates class at our local YMCA. It reminds me a lot of Tai chi. One day after a particularly painful series of stretches I made some crack about "my ass feeling like it just fell off". It inspired this card to the instructor (thankfully a good friend). It's a miracle that she puts up with me!
The image was done with brush and black ink and colored in Corel Painter.

I did a drawing demonstration at a local school about 2 years ago and it was during Dr. Seuss' birthday I believe. In any case the faculty asked if I would do a little "Seuss" style drawing that could be printed onto some bookmarks that they handed out. I came up with this. Done with a #2 brush and black ink.

So I've finally caught up with everyone else and I've actually put a blog together. Ultimately I'd like to get a full website up to accompany this but in the meantime this should be a fun way to post some work that I've done, keep in touch with others folks, etc.
These first four images were done for Hasbro Toys as a character design exercise. They were done in Photoshop.