Scorpio Illo.

This is the latest incarnation for a series of '7' mascot characters I am doing for 'Tactix Creative' in Arizona. This specific mascot is the 'SanTan Scorpions'. Scorpions are one of those creatures I look at and immediately think "God has the best portfolio."

A scorpion is a member of the Arachnid family, but it's body shape resembles a Lobster more then a spider and it has claws and a wicked looking stinger. The whole design of a scorpion is cool. Very scary and intimidating looking and that is the feeling I wanted to capture in my mascot art.

Mascot for 'SanTan Scorpions' - Middle School


Larger Preview - Alternate coloring

Soaring Vectors - Step by Step Tutorial

I teach a digital illustration class once a week at the local college here in Salem Oregon. Each week I show them how an illustrator goes about creating their artwork. These simple step by steps are provided by the illustrators featured and document their own creative process in an easy to view format. It allows my students and other industry peers to see how various artists work from concept to completion in a variety of styles.

This week I created one I am calling 'Soaring Vectors' which documents a recent sports mascot project I worked on. This weeks download includes '18' step by step images and commentary for each step is thoroughly provided in the Notes.rtf file included. This allows the viewer to print out the notes for future reference and read while viewing each step of the process. You can download the step by step tutorial here. (4.4mb).

I have created numerous step by steps on a variety of projects I've worked on over the past year. Eventually I'll have all available for download soon from a specific web site I am still fine tuning. This will also include all the shared creative processes by other artists too. If you'd like to be featured or share your creative process with my class shoot me an email and I'll tell you what I need. Full credit and links including a small bio is included with each artist featured. At this time approximately 600 creatives in our industry view the weekly content.

PS: Yes I bite my finger nails. Nasty habit I've never been able to break.

My art has gone to the birds!

Not sure why I've been commissioned to illustrate so many birds the past few months but here are two more. I am actually creating '7' school mascots for 'Tactix Creative' in Arizona. These specific mascots are for a school called 'Williams Field Black Hawks' (High School) and 'Higley Hawks' (Elementary School). These are tricky little buggers. You see you only get a maximum of '4' spot colors and two of those have to be 'Black' and 'White'. The schools colors are 'Red' and 'Grey' and 'Gold' and 'Grey' respectively.

This project is interesting in that all mascots have to be approved by the district and it brings up interesting opinions. Since one is for an Elementary school they don't want the mascot to be too aggressive or mean looking. But they want him cool enough that kids will still like it. Were as the High school prefers a more aggressive mascot and it's OK to have a furrowed brow. Either way who really wants to wear a weenie looking hawk on their school shirt? I can't help but think that soccer moms are influencing the art direction by not wanting Jr. to be scared by the mean looking hawk character? (OK, rant over)

The thing I like best about these type of projects is it's a good mix of illustration and design. I design my illustration more then normal on this type of work since it's being used in such a graphic format such as t-shirts, banners, floor decals etc.

Mascot for 'Williams Field Black Hawks' - High School


Mascot for 'Higley Hawks' - Elementary School

Devil in the Rough

Another doodle illustration using some brush textures.

Guardian Angel of Doodlers

Often referred to as 'St.Doodle'. This angelic creature is often wrongly labeled as a nefarious bi product of poor attention skills. Nothing could be further from the truth. In actuality this benevolent overseer watches over sketchers, scribblers, garden variety scawlers and any pee-chee loving doodlers with a penchant to draw on a whim.



PS: Played around with textures on this doodle.

Picasso Dog

One day a week I teach a digital illustration class at the local college. Each week I have my student do what I call 'Creative Thinking Exercise'. I told the students: "This weeks exercise is to draw the following three themes mimicking the 'Cubism Style' of Pablo Picasso. Get funky with it, play around with thick and thin lines and solid areas of black. This is a drawing exercise so no color. Keep it simple black and white."

Themes
- Dog
- Human (Full Figure or Bust)
- Bowl of Fruit

Here is the one I did for the dog theme.

Fat-Bot

A few weeks back the theme for 'Illustration Friday' was 'Robot'. At that time I didn't have the time to create one from scratch. This weeks theme is 'Fat'. Well when I started sketching out an idea out popped a robot image. I liked it. Seemed appropriate with the current climate regarding oil prices such.

Monkeys, Robots and Pirates oh my!

When a client calls me and asks "Can you illustrate a Monkey, a Robot and a Pirate?" you have to pinch yourself to make sure it's not a dream. These are a few of the characters I created as 1 color iconic avatars to use on some card promotions for Upper Deck Company.

It's tricky sometimes being limited to 1 flat color. (The style the client requested) And the turnaround time was a bit nuts too but these three were my personal favorites out the group of '7' I created.