I've always wanted to be better at character design so I took some down time I had to practice a bit.
The other month I did a digital illustration of San Francisco and it let me reflect on personal style, something I never really thought I had because I was a bit embarrassed about my own artistic process. After some more work in Procreate and learning about other artists process, I've come to embrace my style more and actively want to make more work in it.
When I was in San Francisco the other month for a wedding, I took a photo from the elevator of our Union Square hotel that looked out towards Coit Tower. I knew right away that it would be my next piece.
Over the past month I worked on this as time allowed and I generally feel more ownership over it since this was based on a photo I actually shot vs. trying to adapt someone else's source material.
This past weekend I hosted a small party for my daughter since most of my LA friends hadn't been able to meet her yet. I wanted to play off the idea of a "sip-n-see" so I combined a bourbon bottle with a baby nipple, using the label as the space for the party info.
I saved it over a transparent background, again knowing that as I texted the invite out depending on when recipients read it would determine if their background was black or white and wanting it to look good on either.
Finally, the bottom line on the label is a repeat because it replaced my address, not about to just casually post that online.
This was created entirely in Procreate on my iPad.
When I lived in New York I was always drawn to the Flat Iron Building. I couldn't really explain why, but there was just something about it I always loved. Then while talking to my mom one day she told me that her dad used to have an office in the building. More than likely a coincidence, but a nice one regardless.
I took a photo of the building years ago and decided to illustrate it.
Was at my in-laws last night and had my iPad so I started a doodle in Procreate and it turned into this.
Took some time to digitally draw/paint a photo I found of San Francisco. Made this in Procreate.
I had an idea 2 to 3 years ago about doing an illustrated series of cat dictators. Well, I think deep down I know I'm not an illustrator and kept putting it off. Son when I started playing around with Midjourney it hit me that it would be the perfect tool to finally make it. I partnered up with Anaiis Rabiela, a super talented student from the class I taught at book180, and we set out to make a full website for it. While I used Midjourney, she turned to ChatGPT to spit out baseline encyclopedia entries for each. After all, her focus should be on adding tone and jokes vs. being an academic writer.
It was a fun exercise to see what we could make and how fast we could make it with these new tools. For comparison, my children's book took 5 months. I think where this will make the biggest difference for now is with social. Not being limited to what we can shoot in the agency's closet will be a huge creative boon for those who learn to use these tools. You can see the full project here.
Decide to do an illustration of my house. My now wife and I moved in back in June of last year and things have gone pretty well since.
I'm debating the merits of starting an Etsy shop where I sell custom prints of people's homes.
A lot of the time I'll see different techniques on Instagram or Pinterest and think they look fairly simple, but I like what they accomplish. Sometimes I'll try my own hand to see if I can replicate them.
The problem is that I don't really have my own style, at least visually speaking. I think my style is more a tonal style. I have a particular sense of humor that I try to inject into my work. Usually a sense of irony with maybe a darker twist when the audience will allow it.
I was able to recreate the visual style for this, but when it came time to make it mine I realized there was only one good solution. There was a stunning lack of people in the original versions of this style I saw, and I began to wonder why that may be.
That's when I decided to add in the shark attack to explain why everyone else had run away.
Enjoy!
I've always been bad at freehand drawing, I think I mentioned that before. I remember in high school in my art classes when we were painting I'd sit there banging my head against a wall while everyone else did it with ease.
At the time I at least took solace in the fact that I could wipe the floor with them when it came time for photography stuff. Anyway, In an attempt to develop a freehand style I'm trying to hand illustrate more stuff and see where it takes me.
This is mostly flat styled but I tried to add a bit of depth using some textures to lightly shade.
Over the past month I've been developing a pair of complementary fonts titled "Clothes" and "Clothes Sans." I wanted to do something that was completely hand drawn because It's an area that I know I need to practice more. I use vector as a crutch with illustrations and wanted to get out of my comfort zone.
The other week I had this vision of a robot cowboy. Last night I finally had time to turn the vision into a reality (as much as an illustration is reality).
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