Illustration Friday - Homage

Kudos to Sanja Jansa for this week's inspired Illustration Friday topic: Homage.

Picasso said "All art is theft"; I prefer to think that all art is homage. Intentionally or unintentionally, I continue to pay homage to the artists that have influenced me.

This poster is an intentional homage to Tim Burton. The font is very Burtonesque. And speaking of Tim Burton, everyone should see his adaptation of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It's lovely and demented and I'm downright obsessed with it.

This poster design was donated to Los Altos Youth Theater in California. The line art is scratch board, with digital color.

More Adventures in Digital Painting

Occasionally, my part-time graphic design gig affords me the opportunity to do some illustration. I created this digital painting (and the one in the previous post) for an insurance company (a rather hip insurance company).

I began this illustration with the line art, and then applied the color in a separate layer. The second image shows the illus without the line-art layer. Spooky!

Adventures in Digital Painting

A couple years ago I was pleasantly surprised to receive a Wacom tablet as a joint birthday present from my extended family. Most of them didn't know what it was, but I explained it was like an Etch-a-Sketch and that I was really happy!

Recently I found some great tips on www.danidraws.com. Dani Jones is a great illustrator (and teacher). Her video tutorials demonstrate digital painting techniques that really make sense to me. The key (in one sentence) is to use textured brushes to build the color with varying degrees of opacity.

The first image is the final illustration. I've removed the line art on the second image so you can see the technique a bit more clearly. To see great illustrations and tutorials visit Dani's website!

Go Figure

Some sketches from a figure drawing session I attended last week.

Illustration Friday - Garden

This illustration is older than dirt and hasn't seen the light of day in several years. I did this for some friends that were starting a landscaping business. I never thought it could have another use until voilà! Illustration Friday gave me the excuse to post this odd little drawing. I think I did a good job of capturing the face of horticulture horror.