Harry Birthday Dad!

Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans! 

I have further cause to celebrate as July 4th is also my Dad's birthday. Sure, it hasn't been that long since the last time I made him a card, but this I've been sitting on this gag for a few years now figured it was high time to bring it out.

I don't expect Dad, or many other people for that matter to get the reference despite the line's frequent roles in Hollywood parodies. It comes from the 1971 film "Dirty Harry" were Clint Eastwood solidified the "cop on the edge who doesn't play by the rules" subgenre, as seen here:

"Dirty Harry" happens to have been the first movie I watched after graduating from college. I listened to the audiobook of "Little Women" that same day. Good times.

Tools for Tomorrow

INSIDE:

To the Dad who was always on the cutting edge of technology 

and prepared us with the tools we’d need for tomorrow.

Recently I began thinking about how essential my parents were in helping me to recognize quality storytelling.

During the Nineties there were a great many spectacle driven movies that I felt I needed to and threw a fit when my parents would deny them to me. Looking back at how lackluster many of these titles were, I’ve come to realize how my parents were really protecting my taste palette from being desensitized by these flash-in-the-pan flops.

As alternatives, my Dad introduced me to cerebral science fiction features like “Planet of the Apes” and “2001: A Space Odyssey”. These were things I certainly wouldn’t have willingly watched on my own and were partially responsible for forming much of my current sensibilities.

Given how my career has been molded by such moments, I wanted to celebrate my Dad’s choice in sci-fi cinema on Father’s Day and honor the heritage of my Geek patriarch with a card that made reference to something other than Star Wars.

Originally I was going to have multiple mini-illustrations from many sci-fi movies but decided to narrow my focus on just one film that played to Dad’s love of cutting edge technology.

So Long, Farewell! (Aaron & Sarah)

Sorry, no "Sketchbook Sharing" post this week, on account of being exceptionally busy this week. However, on thing I knew I had to squeeze in was this farewell card for a local couple, Aaron and Sarah, who are leaving this weekend to start a new chapter in their lives to move out to Colorado. 

I opted for drawing the two of them as The Captain and Maria from "The Sound of Music" with the rest of their friends (myself included) taking the place of the Von Trapp children from the reprise of "So Long, Farewell".

It seemed fitting since after their farewell, they're going to have to "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" because Colorado actually has mountains, whereas the highest point of elevation here in Michigan is the snow pile in that corner of the Wal-Mart parking lot. 

Plus, of all the personalized greeting cards I've made for my peers, the ones that include movie references are always the most fun to do. 

A Gift, from my home to yours (Christmas Cards 2013)

Well, I've started to get confirmation that the cards I sent out last week have started to arrive so it's as good a time as any for this year's big reveal!

A Gift, from my home to yours. 2013

Photoshop. 8 1/2 x 11 original. 

Last December, in an attempt to stay better connected with my creative colleagues, friends from college especially, I sent out homemade Christmas cards with original art and a brief summary of how I was doing and what I had been up to in the past year.

Seeing as how last year I only got this idea after Thanksgiving, it was a real fight to the finish. This year I started trying to come up with ideas as early as Halloween. Now I have an inkling of what retail outlets go through when it comes to changing their holiday decorations.

INSPIRATION: 

Last year's card was of a dark room lit by the soft glow of a Christmas tree and by the heavenly light of comforting angels. After finishing a piece that involved such heavy blacks, I decided that next time would feature a scene with lots of white, likely an outdoor scene with lots of snow. 

Throughout the year, I collected various images in hopes of helping choose a subject.

  

From left to right: Wally Wood, Hal Foster, Norman Rockwell, Rudolph Guenoden, Ellison Hoover, Frank Cho

SKETCHES:

My first idea was for a romantic "winter wonderland" kind of scene with a couple and their dog climbing up a sledding hill. Not a bad idea, and I may come back to it later, but my compositions just felt too much like the cover of a Land's End catalog. It also seemed to lack substance. It was a winter scene, but not a "seasonal" scene, and felt somewhat insincere for a Christmas card. 

The idea for using squirrels came about as a result of a Skype conversation I was having with my friend Kirsten Zirginbl, were I mentioned the squirrels in the back yard which were "as big as housecats" and "always coming to the door looking for handouts. They have no fear of man!"

Thats when it hit me, the idea of a simple creature coming to the big intimidating house, to not ask for something, but instead offer a humble gift that was in essence, all they had. It just struck me as a better message for the spirit of Christmas.

However, even that got off to some rough starts:

Eventually I settled on a high angle shot inspired by similar shots in Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace. 

PROCESS:

When I started getting towards the finishing stages, I started getting in the habit of taking screen caps at the end of the day so that I could get a sense of my own process and be able to identify what I accomplished each day and use it as motivation for the next.

Merry Christmas Everybody!

Angels on the Airwaves

This is the cover for a Christmas card I sent out to some of my college friends and artistic peers this season. (Hopefully all recipients have gotten it by now) Facebook and the internet are great communication tools and all, but I feel like I've lost touch with a number of fun and influential as a result of the growing years and miles. I figured this would be a good way to reconnect, let people know how to reach me, let them know what I've been up to and planning on doing in the next year and find out what they've been doing too, etc.

I'm hoping for a spark in establishing a stronger community and maybe even build some traffic for this very blog.

I had been cooking up the notion of doing the cards since Thanksgiving time, but it took me quite a while to come up with an idea for the cover. I was shooting for a "scene" like something out of the old Saturday Evening Post covers, but wanted to avoid Santa imagery, feeling it would come off as trite. That and I already did Santa for Sleep Care last year. In the end, I fell back onto my strengths; heavy darks and a mid century period setting.

Here are some of the works I found particularly inspiring. Consider them your online stocking stuffers!

 

Edit: And wouldn't you know it, after everything is all done, that when I discover an image that I have never seen before that looks almost identical to the end result. Go figure.

Care Package ... OF DOOM!

Here's a little something I've been working on for the past week. We're sending a care package to my cousin and Dad thought it would be great if I could draw a dragon on the opposite side of the box. Dragons are a bit outside of my wheelhouse, so it took me a while to practice sketching one out to my satisfaction.

The practice run on seen here is a bit different from the finished product. Well, the scent that the Sharpie produced a particularly powerful wallop that I hadn't anticipated, so after the dizzying headaches subsided, I had decided that perhaps the background details weren't as important as finishing the actual dragon itself.

Next time I'm going back to either pencil or ink. Hopefully that'll be soon.

Dance Card

This is a card I drew for my friend Kayla, for her going away party. She is leaving Michigan to attend college in Washington, quite a distance. Kayla is a graceful and highly coordinated dancer, so playing on the idea of Dance seemed like a good direction to pursue.

I had heard mention the day prior to the party that someone was going to go out and buy a card, so I opened my big mouth and said I could draw one. So, much like my Father's Day card, I had to work feverishly to get it completed in a matter of hours to at least be presentable.

Also like my Father's Day card, I haven't gotten over this streaming stars pattern. Maybe its a sign I have a potential career working with Paramount Pictures.

Given how I frequently post illustrations related to a weekly theme, I thought I'd take some time, to share some of the images that helped inspire this particular illustration of my own.

Edwin Blashfield

Franklin Booth

Cesar Phillip Allegoria

Frank Frazetta

Alphonse Mucha

I'll have a colored version up sometime when I haven't been up all night.

Father's Day

A bit of a belated posted but this was kind of a rushed job. In the past I've drawn homemade cards for birthdays and other such occasions that I've posted previously. The tricky part is the amount of care and detail that I want to put into these as far as being personalized for the receiver as well as needing to be done on time. Case in point, this is an idea that popped into my head late Thursday night, and with Father's Day on Sunday, I did pretty much nothing else but work on this card so that it would be ready.

So here is a scene from my childhood with my Dad reading a bedtime story to me and my brother and his words cause the moon and star pattern on the bedsheets to rise up and morph into a knight charging at a dragon. 

If I had more time I would have liked to have shown the gradual transformation from moon to dragon and star to knight, but what can you do?

My Dad liked the card but remarked that  he had hair at this time, which I certainly don't remember. hahah.

Art Student Show Invitation

A card I designed for my mentor Kathy Sullivan, who is displaying the work of her students, including myself.

Since the reception is at the library I originally had a book motif but it looked a little silly, so I went with an art studio appearance with some Franklin Booth style crosshatching in the background.

Greeting Cards

Greeting cards I've drawn for my friends and family for the past few years.

INSIDE:

(Image of a birthday cake on fire)

"Hope your birthday isn't a bust!"

A birthday card I drew for my brother this past month. I got real excited over the cheesy pun, and put it together really fast.

INSIDE:

"You can wait another year for your jetpack."

A card I drew for my dad's fiftieth birthday, inspired by the atomic age culture of the 1950s and 60s that he would have grown up with, and the promise of jet packs and rocketships. Includes references to Major Matt Mason, Forbidden Planet, Lost in Space and the art of Flash Gordon illustrator Al Williamson.

INSIDE:

"Party like its 25 Million B.C. !"

A birthday card I drew for my friend Bernadette Cartensen. The joke is that it was her 21st birthday and her initials are B.C. so that gave me an excuse to draw dinosaurs and watch old Ray Harryhausen movies for reference.

INSIDE:

"Choose Wisely. Happy Birthday."

A card I drew for my brother's birthday last year. Caricatures of the leads from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade". My brother was born in the same month as "Last Crusade"'s original release and he doesn't always practice common sense, so I was trying to be fun as well as convey a heartfelt message.

INSIDE:

"You're my ray of sunshine!"

I drew this as a anniversary card, but I had a terrible cold at the time and was spending all my time resting on the couch watching episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Scooby-Doo", distorting my already weird sense of humor.

INSIDE:

"Hands off my candy! Happy Halloween."