When Pigs Fly...

A couple of weeks ago, Beth and I took a trip to Portland, Maine. It is a great little city. Clean, easy to get around, plenty to do. I highly recommend checking it out*. Being esteemed members of the Holiday Inn Priority Club (jealous?) we received a complementary upgrade to a sixth floor room with a bay view. It was beautiful. The entire harbor was right outside our window. So, too, were countless playful seagulls.

Being an early riser, I would have about an hour to myself every morning before Beth would begin to stir. It often happens, that when I go on vacation, I get an overwhelming urge to draw. Subsequently that urge is quashed by all the excitement that is being on vacation. Portland being a sleepy town in the morning, and my fiance being a sleepy person in general, I was ready to draw. I sat myself at the desk, took out my pad of paper, grabbed the Holiday Inn ballpoint, and gazed earnestly out the windows. It was beautiful. The sun had just come up. There was a milky haze over the city. The waterfront was devoid of tourists. A couple of skiffs made there way out to their lobster traps. A stunningly quiet moment that had to be captured. I took a deep breath, summoning the courage it takes to first mark the pristine white page, and I drew...









...pigs.

I don't know where the idea came from**. Maybe I just wanted to draw a pig (it's happened before). I started playing with the expression, "When pigs fly," and thought it might be fun to put a little different spin on it. Make sure you click on the images to zoom in and catch the punchlines.

I should have written this post about the joys of drawing with ballpoint pen, but I'll save that one for later.

*I have no affiliation with the Maine Board of Tourism.

**I really just wanted to draw pigs.

Q: When do you doodle?

Ring Ring
Hello?
Yo dude! I was gonna run to the store. Do you need me to pick anything up?
Ummm...Nah! I'll get the taco stuff.
Okay. Are you sure? I was gonna go out anyway.
Well I guess you could grab some beers.
Sounds good. What kind should I get?
Have you tried that new Sam Blackberry?
Nope.
Well that's what I'd get.
Alrighty. Will do.
Cool.
Cool.
See you later tonight.
Peace.
Click

A: I doodle when I'm on the phone.

Ride 'm COW-BOY

"He wandered out of the dust of the Mojave with nothing but the clothes on his back. He wasn't too pretty, and he wasn't much of a talker...But that cow-boy sure could ride."

This illustration was created as a t-shirt design for Threadless T's. For those who don't know, Threadless has open submissions for T designs, printing new designs every week. Cool stuff. Check them out.

This design began about 2 years ago in this rather grotesque drawing. Sadly, this was my attempt at a sexy illustration (also conceived as a t-shirt). I often enjoy looking back at old work, but this is the type of thing that makes me want to introduce my head to the oven. Do I really have such trashiness in me? No way! I couldn't possibly! I was raised better than that! OOPS! Jersey Shore is on! Be back later...

...30 minutes later

Even a clear defeat of a drawing such as this is not without its little victories. I think that the horse has a lot of energy and I really love the scratchboard look of the piece. It gives a sense of age, looking a bit like an old block print. All I need to do is erase the young lady with unlikely proportions from my drawing, and I might be on to something.

Here we are, two years later, and out of the ether comes a play on the word cowboy and a bit of a send up of rodeos (and my affection for western cinema).

Thank you photoshop. Goodbye Pam Anderson. Hello Cow-Boy.

***If you like this design, please go to Threadless and give it a high score and leave a few friendly words. You do need to have an account, but it is free and only takes a few seconds to make one. Thanks a million!*** Just click the link below!

Just click the link above!

Soft and Wet - Prince's Tips for Digital Painting

Besides the pencil, there is no tool that I use more than my Wacom Intous 3 tablet and Adobe Photoshop. It takes up very little room (about 10.5 x 13.5 inches on my computer desk), can accomplish limitless affects, and there is no clean-up. I love this thing.




The struggle with digital painting is to avoid the slickness that comes naturally with the soft (and accident forgiving) brushes that come with photoshop. I found that many of my early attempts at digital painting had the consistency of a stretched out balloon. A dry, rubbery feeling. Not a bad weapon for the artistic arsenal, but it can look strange. This fellow on the left, for example, looks as though he were blown up from the inside. Looks like he rather enjoyed the experience.


I generally want a more organic feel for my illustrations. I don't want to advertise that my work was created on the computer. I think it is distracting. One of my artistic heroes, Adam Rex, is a master of this. I was shocked when I read on his blog that he rarely uses oil paints anymore. That he creates most of his incredibly lush children's book illustrations using his computer and tablet.

I have found a method that I believe brings out the feel of oil on board or canvas. It works for me anyway. I like to use a mixture of multi-point digital brushes (harder than an air brush but softer than that pencil edge) and the smudge tool. I avoid working in layers as mush as possible, treating the digital painting the same way I would an oil painting on canvas. I lay down color with the brush and then smear it around with the smudge tool, just the way I would smear the oils with my finger (you know you love finger painting). I generally use the smudge to to help define how hard or soft my edges will be. It is very versatile. I think that the effect works. As you can see from this digital-oil sketch, there is a tactile quality to the color that is lacking in the balloon man above. You can imagine that slippery/squishy feel of the soft and wet (had to tie in the title somewhere) paint. My hope is that people wouldn't even stop to consider how this was created.

post script...Don't ask about the content of this sketch. The whole thing was just a stream of consciousness doodle, more about achieving the desired affect, rather than what the illustration would be. The Shriner hat (I don't even know what a Shriner is) was added to balance the red of the cheeks and nose. I think that with a quick costume change, this fella could make a pretty nightmarish leprechaun.

Happy painting.

The Mission

To share my ideas, doodles, struggles, achievements, frustrations, monsters, jokes, puns, sketches, superheroes, illustrations, and inspirations.

I am a naturally bashful person and find blogging about myself to be grossly unnatural and even pretentious. Let me assure you that I don't speak with a faux-British accent. Nor do sip tea with a pinky pointed to the sky. Hell, I don't sip tea unless it is iced. Even then, it is more of a chug than a sip.

What I do...is draw.

My hope is that this blog will serve as my compass, guiding me toward artistic growth, and (name your deity) willing, a career as an illustrator. My immediate desire is that those of you who read this blog will at least be entertained by my little musings, attempts, and failures, all of which will be made of lines.