Monthly Archives: October 2012

Trick or Treat!

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Trick or Treat Kitties!

I tried to capture their respective personalities, but in reality my cats are rather ambivalent to Halloween… of course, in reality I would never try to dress them in costumes. Well, “never” may be a strong word…

The truth is, that while my tuxedo cat Simon may very well frolic in a costume, he’s equally likely to become inexplicably terrified of it. The end result is more-or-less the same: running around the house like a maniac, except in the latter case he will end up under the bed, with his impressively bushy tail even more bristled out than usual.

And my little tabby Tinkerbell? She wouldn’t even be in the picture, because the instant I attempted something like this there would be just a puff of smoke as she vanished, never to be seen again (until dinnertime).

I suspect that I may have to come up with a project that forces me to draw Simon over and over again until I get over my hang-ups about drawing black fur… I’ve used him and my previous black-and-white cat as body doubles in past projects, but usually chickened out and made a light-furred cat rather than dealing with their actual coat color.

This was a quick ink drawing on 9×12 inch smooth bristol paper with my micron pens. I was going to practice my brush pen with this one (it’s usually great for fur) but was already dealing with having no power or heat due to Hurricane Sandy and had to make do in the room with the most daylight instead of the one with my drawing table in it. Oh well!

PS: Be safe this Halloween! And please keep your cats indoors tonight, so they can be safe too.

Getting ready for Halloween!

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Illustration for lottery scratch-off Halloween promotion

Just in time for the season, another client piece! I wonder how many more-modern Halloween parties in the Northeast US this year will be disrupted by the storm currently bearing down on us…

This might be the last picture from the series I’ve made for Cactus to promote scratch-off tickets for the Colorado Lottery, although they were a joy to work for and to draw so I can only hope there will be more. I posted one of my sketches from this piece on my Critterwings Facebook page, and plan to do that more often so you  might want to mosey on over that way…

Illustration for lottery scratch-off Halloween promotion

All the pieces in this series were created for an e-mail campaign about traditional holiday celebrations (with scratch tickets) and the coloring is deliberately subdued. Original drawing 12×14 inches, ink on smooth bristol paper, colored digitally.

Chinese Elements for the Rawlings Conservatory

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This weekend, the Rawlings Conservatory of Baltimore begins their annual Mum Show, and they needed some decorative banners for this year’s theme: The Dragon’s Garden: Elements of the Chrysanthemum. (On display now through November 11!)

Chinese Elements

If you’re in Baltimore, it’s always worth stopping by the Rawlings Conservatory with their beautiful gardens and historic palm room. It’s like a tiny (and free!) version of the more famous nearby Longwood Gardens.

This ended up being more of a design project than just illustration, but I wanted to be sure to include plants from the gardens to tie the theme together. And that meant new drawings! I didn’t have time to do anything more elaborate, but I’m pretty happy with how they worked out.

Ink Drawing of Bamboo

Ink Drawing of Wormwood (Artemisia)

Ink Drawing of Chrysanthemum

The plants were all drawing on bristol with ink, scanned in, and layered with textured files. Some of the photos came from my personal collection, and others came from sources on http://www.sxc.hu/: Bamboo forest background, , Fire background, Metal background , and the paper strip

A little something different: cartoons for science!

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I haven’t had much time lately for personal work, and that’s because I’ve been working on more client work than usual, including this project which was finally released last month. This was a pretty large animation project for which I created all of the artwork as well as the animation. Because it was being animated, I had to use a much simpler art style than my usual ink drawings, and make something more in keeping with my infographics work. But it still needed to have some personality and playfulness.

As big a challenge as the animation was, working to simplify the subject matter while keeping it accurate and entertaining was even bigger. Fortunately, I had a great team to work with. We did a TON of iterations in both text and storyboard form, and I drew many, many pictures along the way. I’ll be posting some of the work-in-progress with a little more info about how it was made over the next week, but now, with no further delay:

I’m still playing catch-up from my busy summer and client work, but I’ll be posting more updates soon. Up next: some early sketches from this project.