Jeff's Draw Blog

Casino Girl

2012-02-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

This young lady is an employee of the local Indian casino. I was attempting to sketch her from memory but failed. I didn't quite capture her likeness nor did I get her nonchalant, relaxed expression quite right. Whenever I'm at the casino I see her strolling along and find her to be rather interesting. She is rather attractive and appears to take a lot of care in maintaing that attractiveness. Her hair and make up is always done to the extreme. She looks more like somebody on a TV show rather than a change person at the casino.

Some other things I failed to remember were the bagginess of her work shirt and the change pouch that she wears like a fanny pack. Perhaps I will try again later. Or maybe I'll just go into the casino and ask her to stand still while I sketch her. That doesn't seem too weird or anything.

Solo: Shipping and Transport

2012-02-07T18:58:00.000-08:00

I designed this Star Wars themed T-shirt months ago. There was once plans for selling this design but those plans have since fallen through. And, unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to sell it in my Zazzle shop or anything like that. It sort of walks a very thin line between parody and copyright infringement; a line I'm not too comfortable walking. But at least it makes a good portfolio piece and there's nothing stopping me from having it printed for my self if I want. Sucks for you guys!

Tricky Dick

2012-01-29T12:45:00.000-08:00

Now that I have Netflix I watch a lot of documentaries. It seems like, in most of them, they will mention something horrible that Richard Nixon did. In one documentary they showed a clip of him on stage with his wife, after winning the election and he was moving his head back and forth waving at the crowd while fluttering his long eyelashes. It was totally weird, like some kind of super villain trying to pretend to be kind and innocent. Needless to say, I was mesmerized by the fluttering of his long eyelashes. I always thought he looked and acted like a real life cartoon but in that moment he reminded me of a celebrity caricature in one of those old Warner Brothers cartoons.

Webmaster T logo

2012-01-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

This is another Logo I did for the folks at ProInternet Television. It's for their sister site WebmasterT.com . The color scheme for the final version was changed to red and grey for the website. I think I'm more partial to the pale green and orange though.

These are the concept sketches. The original suggestion was to put the main character, Webmaster T in a Loony Tunes style circle and have him throwing the yo-yo foward so that it is coming at the camera. I tried out several different versions of this but also threw in some of my own ideas, and they ended up picking one of mine. This is one of those designs that could have gone in a number of different directions. I'm sure I had like eight more ideas in me, but these were the best.

ProInternet TV Logo

2012-01-19T23:12:00.000-08:00

This is a logo that I designed for the website/company ProInternet Television. It's now live on their website and it's also featured quite a bit in this video. This was a fun one to design. Below are some initial concept sketches. The client wanted something featuring a sort of retro TV design. They ended up liking the first one the best but they had also mentioned liking the combination of the TV and Computer in number 5. So I came up with the idea of adding a keyboard to the design and they were pleased.

New Years Resolution

2011-12-31T14:52:00.000-08:00

Usually I don't make any New Year's resolutions, unless it's something kind of vague like, make more money with my art. And that's usually something I would be doing no matter what. This year, however, I've decided to make a real resolution; I'm going to finish all the projects that I've had on the back burner for a while. I'm going to start one at a time and finish them to completion within the first few months of this year. Then I'm going to start on the projects that I've been meaning to do for a long time and hopefully have those done or going on before 2012 is over.

The first thing I'm going to do is finish inking and lettering Rudolph The Hideous Abomination. I started working on and posting this comic like two years ago. Then I got pretty busy with freelance work so I wasn't able to work on it quite as much. After a while, I got so sick of working my day job that I decided I couldn't do any art projects that weren't going to bring me money. I was really hoping I could start making a living with my art real soon. So I started focusing on doing stock illustrations and designing T-shirts when I wasn't doing freelance work. So, I just didn't have the time to work on Rudolph anymore.

2011 was a good year for freelance work but not so good the stock illustrations. Around July my sales dropped drastically even though I had uploaded a number of new illustrations. So my money making plans didn't really work out. Because of this, I decided I could no longer put so much stock (no pun intended) into doing stock illustration. So, I decided to exploit every source I could. This year I've started selling products on Zazzle.com, designed souvenir T-shirts to sell locally, entered contests and started a new webcomic, The Daily Doodle. There's a lot of other things I'd like to start in the coming year, some of which I've had on my mind for a while but I just can't do anything new otherwise I'll feel guilty about the things I haven't finished. So, I've decided not to be too concerned on whether or not these projects will be lucrative and finally put an end to that nagging guilt!

Surpanda

2011-12-20T20:03:00.000-08:00

Several months back, I designed this mascot for Surpass Hosting.

I kept his color scheme pretty basic, keeping him black and white like a real panda and adding a blue tie to go with the site design. The dark grey one on the right is the first iteration but I wasn't quite happy with it so I did one that was plain black with some lighter contour lines. I prefer the black one better but I showed both versions to the client just to give them a choice. They ultimately chose the dark grey one because they felt it matched better with the website.

These are some initial sketches that I did, just coming up with different designs. They preferred the cuter more classic look of the ones on top. So from there I did some more sketches working out the body shape and other details.

After we got the look of the bear down, I did some more sketches giving him various accessories. In the end we kept it pretty simple, just giving him a blue bow tie.

My Zazzle Product Review

2011-12-17T15:04:00.000-08:00

Many months ago I decided to start selling products on Zazzle.com in one of many attempts to make some extra side money with my artwork. Prior to choosing Zazzle I did some research and looked for reviews on many different print on demand websites. Unfortunately, at the time, there wasn't many reviews for the quality of the products themselves. I mainly wanted to print T-shirts, so it was important to me that the quality of the shirts would compare to screen printed shirts. Out of the very few reviews, Zazzle seemed to get the best for their T-shirt printing.

For many months now I've been uploading and designing T-shirts and other products but I've been a little weary of promoting them since I hadn't actually seen a physically printed item. So, about a month ago I decided to go ahead and purchase a Coolthulhu T-shirt for myself. And I've got to say it came out pretty good. The shirt itself is a 100% cotton Haynes tagless tee. It's pretty thick too which is good because I was a little worried that they would be like flimsy undershirts. I always upload vector files to ensure the image is as crisp and clean as possible and it definitely came out really crisp when printed on the shirt. Overall I'm extremely pleased with the result.

Here is a picture of the printed T-shirt. It's a little dark and grainy because I took it with a cellphone but you get the idea.

In addition to the Coolthulhu shirt, I ordered a morning Power Up mug. I think mug print on demand technology has been around for a while. Don't they do that in the mall? Regardless the mug is a pretty standard porcelain number and the image comes out pretty clean with all the right colors. The image appears to be stained right on the surface of the mug too. There's nothing bumping up as if it was another material stuck to the surface.

Over all, I am pleased with Zazzle and will continue selling products on their site. If you are interested in giving me some of your money, you can order many of my products right here: http://zazzle.com/jeff_art

Retroviruses

2011-12-08T22:01:00.001-08:00

I did this sketch for my friend Alison who is going to school to be a doctor.

Some recent sketches

2011-12-01T18:47:00.001-08:00

Here's a couple of sketches that I did at work. The kid in he hoodie at top and the girl with the ipod are both based on real life young people that I saw at work. The rest is just crazy nonsense.

Story Sketches

2011-11-12T11:27:00.001-08:00

My pal Dylan asked me if I would provide him with some sketches to use as story fuel. So I went through a few of my recent sketchbooks and found four images that I thought would inspire some good short stories. I love this idea. Hopefully we'll be doing it a lot in the future. The stories will eventually be posted on his fiction blog once it's up and running. I'll post a link to it once it's all done.

Dylan Reviews Everything header

2011-11-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

This is another header image I created for my friend Dylan. He's going to be starting a blog site in the near future (real near, I hope) where he reviews just about everything that exists. It should be fun.

The final image will actually have a transparent background and the outer space background will be the website background. That way the header will seamlessly blend with the site design.

I'm pretty pleased with the way it came out. I definitely spent way too much time on it. Mainly looking for the right font to use in the logo. I probably spent the same amount of time looking for the font as I would have just lettering it myself. But I really, really didn't want to do it myself. I found a good font though. The font is called, Lunch. I'm not sure who the designer is. They were not credited on the site I downloaded it from.

Beef Cake T-shirt

2011-11-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

I'm participating in the Woot shirt contest again this week. This week's theme is "In the kitchen". I decided to go simple for my design and do a visual interpretation of the term "beef cake". I'm pretty pleased with it. Hope you like it. You can vote for it right here: http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=58048

Your Fly Is Down Shirt

2011-10-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

I had a little extra time this week so I was able to participate in the Shirt.Woot.com derby. This week's theme is, awkward situations. So, I came up with this one involving a fly with his fly down. I'm the cleverest, aren't I?
Here's the link: http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=57854 . Thanks for your votes!

Hardbodies Bully Sketch

2011-10-20T12:56:00.000-07:00

Sure you'll watch the 1984 film Hardbodies for the excessive nudity but you'll keep watching it for this guy.

TV Series Presentation

2011-10-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was commissioned to produce these two pages of sequential art to be used in a student's presentation of a TV series. Each panel represents a different episode in the series.

Superhero Penguin

2011-10-08T12:48:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago I posted a rockstar penguin character that I designed for Red Dawn Party. Several months after designing that character for them they returned requesting a superhero penguin character. They basically wanted the same penguin but dressed like a retro superhero.

The costume didn't change too much from my initial sketches. I wanted to keep it pretty basic so as not to stray away from that retro superhero look.

I did multiple mask sketches. There were a lot of directions we could go with it. It was eventually decided that the mask would be in the shape of a "W" to go along with the product it would represent, The Wownie, a relaxation brownie.

After working out the details on the costume I did multiple sketches for possible poses to illustrate him in. They decided to go with the classic superhero stance with a flowing cape. In the final illustration I brought the cape down a bit and added some raster dots to tie it into the comic style graphic design on the product packaging.

Small Sketches

2011-10-01T12:02:00.000-07:00

These are a couple of small sketches I did in a small sketchbook. My sister gave me these little sketch books and they're rather fun to sketch in. I really like the way the sketches turn out. I think when I'm sketching in a larger sketchbook I have a need to fill all the space on the paper. So usually there would be a lot of little sketches or doodles, like these, that fill up the page but when I'm doing it in a tiny sketch book one little sketch takes up the whole page and it becomes it's own little drawing without all the extra clutter. It's really quite fun.

Dylan's Discourse Header

2011-09-27T23:00:00.000-07:00

My pal Dylan has been busy revamping his website. He's branching it off into three separate blogs. He's creating a humorous review blog, a blog for his fiction writing and his main blog will become sort of a portfolio site that he'll update occasionally and will cover a range of topics.

Anyway, I've offered to donate some artwork to help him out. This is the header for his main blog. I also came up with the name Dylan's Discourse. Please, hold your applause. I'm not entirely sure how I came up with the Pacman theme. Dylan does write about video games for many of his freelance jobs but I think the concept mostly came from the idea that he consumes all sorts of entertainment media and then writes about it.

You can check out the header in use right here: http://blog.dylanduarte.com/

Chinchilla With Human Hands

2011-09-24T11:31:00.000-07:00

I created this monstrosity quite a while ago. It was sort of a joint venture between my sister and I. She has a couple of chinchillas as pets and we were marveling at their cuteness one day, talking about their tiny little human like hands. Then for some reason we got the idea to use Photoshop to give one actual human hands. Turns out it's not as cute. Just a bit unnerving.

Rock Start Penguin

2011-09-18T14:13:00.000-07:00

Back in January I was hired by the Red Dawn Party company to create this rock star penguin character for the branding of their products. This character was inspired by my cool penguin illustration. The client found it on istockphoto and decided to contact me to see if I could create a similar, yet possibly cooler character for them.

These are some of the initial sketches I did. At this point I was brainstorming ideas. I was just sketching out different elements for the client to choose from.

Eventually they decided on certain elements that they liked which led to these initial design sketches. After seeing these they decided on modifying him a little further. They decided to lose the guitar and give him some more clothing and stylistic elements that were in line with ed hardy tattoos and rebel spirit or true religion clothing.

Coffee Dude

2011-09-10T19:14:00.000-07:00

Today's sketch is the Coffee Dude. This is a tiny sketch that I did in a tiny sketch book with a regular sized pencil.

On another note, I think I might stop posting a Sketch Of The Week and start doing a Sketch All Of The Time. I feel like this weekly structure is starting to restrict me a bit. Sometimes I'd rather post a finished piece on the weekend and some sketches during the week, or maybe no sketches one week and lots of finished work. Hopefully that will result in me posting more cool art.

Graveyard Hippy

2011-09-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

I was having a bit of fun with my cool grey markers again, with this sketch. I was actually going to make this a little comic page and it was going to be revealed that the hippy was shaggy from Scooby Doo and that he was standing in front of Scooby's grave. Unfortunately, the midnight hour was fast approaching and I had work early in the morning so I never got that far.

Admiral Ackbar

2011-08-27T09:31:00.001-07:00

Ever vigilant, Admiral Ackbar is always on the lookout for possible traps.

I got these new Prismacolor brand, cool grey markers to shade my ink sketches with. They're pretty neat. A couple of the lighter ones don't show up when scanned though. Ackbar actually had some spots on his head that I made with one of the light ones.

I'd definatley recommend these markers for sketching with. My only complaint is that the pack includes three black markers, which isn't all that big of a deal but the entire pack could have been cheaper otherwise. Plus, I don't think I'll be needing the black ones as much since I'm using some Copic pens for the line work.

Dog Shirts

2011-08-21T20:30:00.001-07:00

Did a couple of entries for the woot derby this week. I guess I had to make up for not doing one last week. Dog Days is the theme. I did a couple of pop culture references with mine.

I call this one, Dog and Dogger. Vote for it here.

This is called, The Infinite Loop. Vote for it here.

Fishing shirt

2011-08-20T15:04:00.000-07:00

Usually on Saturdays I post a Sketch but I don't really have any recent sketches worth posting and I don't feel like going through any older sketchbooks today. So, you get this:

This is another T-shirt I designed recently to be printed by my friend Nick and sold locally. It's not specific to the area so we might end up selling some online too. This is just a sample shirt and ink color but Nick has printed it on a variety of different colored shirts.

The Wiz and friend

2011-08-13T08:18:00.000-07:00

"Nothing can stop me because I'm the Wiz!" Remember that from Seinfeld?

Anyway, I wanted to try shading some ink drawings with markers. I always liked the way it looked. It's basically flat cell shading but because it's marker on paper it doesn't lay down completely flat and there's a little texture to it.

I wanted to buy a pack of cool grey Copic markers but holy geez they're expensive! They're great markers but I don't want to pay that much for a sketching tool. So, I settled for a light blue Prismacolor marker which I had lying around. Eventually I might buy the Cool Grey Prismacolor pack which is half the price of the Copics. It might be neat to shade the drawings and then colorize them with Photoshop or something.

Power Up T-shirt

2011-08-07T09:17:00.001-07:00

Once again, I have entered the Shirt.Woot derby. This week the theme is, Everyday 8-bit. They want everyday life depicted in an 8-bit video game style.

When I came up with this design, based on the Super Mario one up mushroom, I was pretty excited because I thought I had a winning idea. Apparently, so did a lot of other people. There's multiple designs on there that utilize some variation of a coffee power up. There's one in particular that is really similar to mine, that has made it into the top 9. They don't really attempt to parody Mario with theirs, it's more of a reference . Plus I was kind of trying to parody those Mario 1-up t-shirts specifically by making it green and stuff.

What do you think? If you like it, go give it a vote: http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=55574

Ballpoint Pen Sketch

2011-08-06T11:32:00.001-07:00

These sketches were done with a ballpoint pen. There's something about a ballpoint pen that feels real nice when sketching. It's like the in between of pencil and ink. You can create light and dark lines like a pencil but the lines are bold, and smooth like ink.

featured in this sketch is Rudolph from my comic Rudolph The Hideous Abomination. I've been inking the final chapter of that lately and the character has been on my mind. Even though I've finished penciling the comic I was still trying to improve upon the structure of his design a bit. That's something I always do even if I'm no longer using a character. I do it all the time with the Disappointmentville characters. I think it's like a test for myself to see if my drawing ability has improved.

Hockey Mom

2011-08-03T21:10:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year I was approached by the folks at Hockeymom.com to design a mascot character for their brand new website.

This is the initial design. It was requested that I use Sarah Palin as the main influence.

Eventually my original design was scrapped and I was tasked with doing some new sample sketches. This time they wanted two characters, a blond and a brunet. I guess everyone involved in the making of the site had different ideas of what a Hockey Mom should look like. So the sketches were going to be used to help them decide on one.

The original design for the brunet character included a little daughter with sparkly boots and a doll.

Later, they decided to change the daughter to a boy decked out in hockey gear. They also had me tweak the facial features on both the blonde and brunet to make them a little less cartoony. Personally, I like the cartoony features better. I think it makes it more appealing and recognizable. This is especially important when creating a character to be associated with a brand. But I'm sure they had their reasons for taking in a more subtle direction.

Unfortunately, due to budget reasons this is as far as the project went and my designs weren't used on the final website.

Chemistry T-shirt

2011-07-31T08:49:00.001-07:00

Last week I participated in the Shirt.Woot derby with my friend Nick. Even though we barley got any votes I really enjoyed the challenge. So, This week I decided to have a go at it on my own. I think If time permits I will probably be participating in it every week. This week's subject is "chemistry."

If you like what you see then please go click the "I'd want one button" right here:
http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=55358

Viking Lady

2011-07-30T14:00:00.001-07:00

So, this here is a Sketch Of The week but I'm gonna stop putting "Sketch Of The Week" or "SOTW" in the blog title. I feel like it's a needless amount of letters and words. I'll still include the "Sketch Of The Week" tag in posts though. It's my blog, I do what I want!

I'm sure you'll love this sketch if you're a nerdy male between the ages of 18-34. Or possibly a nerdy lady who likes strong female characters who don't wear a lot of clothing. Either way you're probably a nerd.

Wedding T-shirts

2011-07-27T21:54:00.000-07:00

These are some wedding T-shirts that I recently designed.

The main font in this was downloaded from a free font website and I modified it a bit. I exaggerated the curly tails and made them look more like peacock feathers so that it fit with the theme better. I believe the name of the original font was, A Yummy Apology.

Woot fairy tale shirt

2011-07-23T13:11:00.000-07:00

Are you in the mood to vote today? Then head on over to woot and vote for this shirt. My pal Nick had an idea for a T-shirt to enter into the Shirt.Woot derby and enlisted my artistic talents to produce this shirt. It's a good ol' collaboration amongst friends.

So, if you feel so compelled please head on over to our entry and vote. You're votes will be much appreciated.

SOTW: Park Guy

2011-07-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

Last week I attended a local festival in the park. This guy was walking around the festival and was the only one celebrating a french holiday that was happening that weekend. He was quite the character and a good accordion player. He said that he was going to wear his french hat but was afraid that it would rain and instead wore a cowboy hat with a mask fixed to the front. The hat had some autographs signed on the brim, although I'm not sure who's they were.

He actually stopped and talked to my sister and I for a while and sung us a song about some birds that were eating a dead fish carcass. He had made it up when he was hanging out in the park one day and witnessed that very event.

SOTW: Sigh

2011-07-16T11:08:00.001-07:00

Boy, This guy sure is sad or tired or both! This is one of my favorite sketches in my current sketchbook. And that's all I've got to say about that.

Another Cartoon design

2011-07-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I was once again hired to design a cartoon character to be used in a series pitch. The character was to be a 13 year old girl and her look was partially inspired by actress Selena Gomez.

This design was commissioned by the same individual that commissioned me to do the basketball themed characters that I posted a while back. You can see those right here.

SOTW: Watercolor Zombie

2011-07-09T10:08:00.001-07:00

I'm still trying to get the hang of watercolor. I love the way it looks with black line art. It adds some great texture and doesn't distract too much from the drawing. There's a lot of little happy accidents that occur too. It's not an easy medium to master but it sure looks neat.

Zombie Meets Alien

2011-07-07T18:15:00.000-07:00

My old class mate Samantha recently had a birthday and I decided, like most artists probably do, to draw her a picture. Many years ago in our high school days Sam, my pal Dylan and I would spend time in History class having a good time not paying attention. On many occasions, upon her request, I would draw alien characters for Sam. This seemed an appropriate and meaningful subject for her gift. And I threw in a Zombie to go with her party's Zombie motif.

SOTW: Brain Crazy

2011-07-02T10:19:00.000-07:00

Is your brain going crazy? Well then, you've got the Brain Crazies!

Maybe somebody you know has the Brain Crazies and they look something like this. Be careful when approaching them or you might get lassoed by one of their crazy-arms.

SOTW: The Fartman

2011-06-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

Guys, I don't even know! I really have no idea what I was thinking when I drew this. Maybe I've lost my mind! What I do know is that I was having some fun using my Copic brush pens and I managed to produce a fine looking ink drawing in doing so. So let that be a lesson to you kids; If you're having fun, you'll produce some good work...or something.

Clearlake T-shirt

2011-06-19T22:05:00.000-07:00

I've just completed yet another T-shirt design. This is another one that will be sold around my home town area. I've got a few more T-shirts that I want to design both to be sold locally and online. Then I think I'm gonna have to take a break from it for a while unless I get some kind of amazing idea or these shirts start selling like crazy. Whichever comes first. Hopefully it's the part involving money.

This is the original concept sketch.

SOTW: Angst

2011-06-18T09:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome everyone to another edition of The Sketch Of The Week! Beginning last week I started abbreviating the title to "SOTW". I hope this doesn't confuse anyone but I wanted to make make the URL's a little shorter.

Anyway, Let's move on to the sketch. I must apologize for presenting you with two weeks worth of somewhat depressing concepts. I certainly hope I'm not bumming anyone out too much. This one is a bit of a joke though. I'm sure many of you have had a similar experience when you were feeling rather anxious or depressed while laying down; you're quite the opposite of relaxed, your body becomes rigid and it seems as if you are attempting to press your head into the pillow as hard as you can.

SOTW: Something Dark

2011-06-11T12:09:00.001-07:00

Most of the time, regardless of my moods, I'm content doing my usual straight-forward-happy-go-lucky cartoon doodles. Even when I fall into a somewhat sadder mood they seem to provide some kind of escape. But on occasion the emotions that I'm feeling are so particularly strong that my usual art provides me with no comfort. So, it is during these times that I feel a need to capture the emotions onto paper, to the best of my ability.

When doing these more personal, emotional sketches I usually don't do a lot of planning. I just focus on what I'm feeling and illustrate the imagery that pops into my head. Many times I fail to capture any coherent composition or properly convey my feelings, but in this case I was able to do both. In fact it turned out so well that it was as if I'd ripped the emotions from my mind and trapped them onto a piece paper. It's quite therapeutic and I think I'll try doing stuff like this more often.

Originally I had no plans on sharing this with the general public. I suppose out of some discomfort with sharing something so personal. But a couple of things changed my mind. One being that the emotions I was feeling had faded away a bit since I had drawn this. Another being that I myself always enjoy looking at an artists personal work. It's like a window into somebodies psyche and it makes you realize that you are not alone in what you are dealing with as a human being. And you know, there's a lot of people in the world, So there's always going to be somebody that will be able to relate or at least take something away from the art.

New Stock Illustrations

2011-06-08T19:20:00.001-07:00

Here are a few new illustrations by yours truly, that are available for download on Istockphoto.

Yeah, I make stock illustrations. You want to fight about it?!

I know there are a handful of illustrators out there that aren't too happy with the microstock business. They feel like it prevents them from getting commissions because clients have the option to download stock for much cheaper. I disagree. The truth is, someone willing to purchase your royalty free illustration at a low cost probably isn't going to want to commission you for an original piece anyway. In fact if there wasn't any stock-illustrations to choose from they would probably just download a stock-photo.

Interestingly enough, I've actually had a client find my work through Istock and commission me for an illustration job. They were completely willing to pay my normal rates and they've been a repeat customer too.

So why not take advantage of this changing market, get illustration out into the public view and make some extra cash on the side?

For the last year and a half I've been making around $30 bucks a month on Istock. It's not much but It's surprisingly consistent. That's why recently I've decided to shift my focus a bit and work on stock illustrations when not doing freelance work. I'm hoping that I can make this a good chunk of my income so that when I finally quite my day job, I'll be able to survive the slow months as a freelancer. The trick is coming up with the right themes and subject matter to illustrate in order to attract those potential downloads.

You can go check out some of my other stock illustrations RIGHT HERE.

Do Stunts!

2011-06-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

I love photos on kids toys. This has got to be one of the greatest. The expression on the boy's face conveys a joyous excitement and utter terror all at the same time. Also the girl is most definitely some kind of sociopath. She's way too happy about the "stunt" she's preforming, shredding the boys face with the flying saucer's whirling propeller blades.

Sketch Of The Week: Cowboy

2011-06-04T19:16:00.001-07:00

Today, I was out at Wild West Days, a yearly old west themed street festival, selling some of my t-shirts along with my screen printing pal Nick. The weather was quite horendous and not really all that appropriate for any outside festivities but we all braved it regardless. Not because of any passion for what we were doing, just because our space rental fee was nonrefundable.

Sketch Of The Week: Lummox

2011-05-29T12:31:00.000-07:00

I guess this guy looks more like a brute than a lummox. Oh well he's already been branded with the lummox "L" so it's too late.

This is just a quick little sketch I did one day to test if I was learning anything. I've been trying real hard for the past couple of years to move my artwork away from the trendy flat cartoon drawing. I have more of an appreciation for really cartoony stuff that doesn't completely neglect practical 3d shapes. You can do so much more with a character that has a 3 dimensional form, like effortlessly drawing their head in any position.

In retrospect this sketch probably isn't the best example of what I've learned but it definitely shows improvement in my understanding of three dimensional forms. Just check out some of my old Disappointmentville comics and see for yourself.

Sketch Of The Week: Insomnia

2011-05-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

I recently found this sketch just hangin' out on my hard drive. I drew it about two years ago with intentions to turn it into a full illustration but for whatever reason I moved on to other projects and forgot all about it.

T-shirt Gauntlet

2011-05-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

Next to drawing comics, designing T-shirts is my favorite art related thing to do. So, recently in an attempt to make a little bit of passive income I created some original designs to sell on Zazzle.com. So far I haven't made any money. Maybe it will pick up after my inventory increases. Or maybe Zazzle is not all it's cracked up to be.

These are some of the latest designs I've created. You can Check out all of my designs by going to zazzle.com/jeff_art

You might remember seeing an LOL illustration similar to this on one of my Sketch of The Week posts. I decided that I wanted to use my OMG and LOL images for T-shirts but the LOL needed some improvement. So I redrew it and gave it a more limited color pallet. Get it here!

I did a few variations for this Fat Pride design. The king style for light and dark T-shirts and the chef version for an apron.

This design was inspired by a Sketch I did featuring a parody of the popular Hang In There motivational poster. Be the talk of the town and get your self a shirt or a mug!

Sketch Of The Week: Weird Doodles

2011-05-14T17:18:00.000-07:00

I haven't been doing a whole lot of sketching recently since I've been a bit busy. I have, however, been doing some doodling.

I enjoy looking back at doodles like this more than any other sketch that I've done. I suppose it's because I don't really remember drawing a lot of it. Nor do I really remember what was going through my head at the time. They're stream of consciousness doodles that I do when I'm on the phone or have my focus occupied in some other way. My hand works almost independently from my higher level of thought. It's like a glimpse into my subconscious and boy, is it weird.

Sketch Of The Week: American Dream

2011-05-07T10:45:00.000-07:00

Maybe you have 2.5 kids, own a house, are happily married, and even host barbecues on the weekends, but is it all worth it if the majority of your waking hours are spent feeling like this?

Sketch Of The Week: Charlie Sheen

2011-05-01T13:03:00.000-07:00

I'm sure everyone's sick of all the Charlie Sheen business by now. Well too bad!

While looking through a recent sketchbook for this week's sketch I found this one that I had forgotten about. I think it would be great if they let Sheen back on Two and A Half Men and made his character go through a similar breakdown. It might actually make it a good show then. Zing!

Sketch Of The Week: Rabbits

2011-04-22T21:30:00.000-07:00

Not much to say about this sketch other than it's a page of rabbit doodles. Plus some other mystery rodents.

Cartoon Character Designs

2011-04-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

Last Year I was commissioned to illustrate and design some characters to be used in a pitch for a possible animated series.

The client wanted the look of the show to be inspired by graffiti and street art. He referenced the art of Justin bua as being a being a big influence as well. (I highly reccommend checking out Justin bua's work.)

I took a look at Bua's work and tried to capture some of the visual elements from his paintings. So, I gave the characters large hands and feet, and tried to capture an element of exaggerated movement and flow in their gestures.

The trick was to not get too detailed with the designs. Bruce Timm's theory with Batman: The Animated Series was to keep the character designs simple and stylized otherwise they would become too difficult to animate. There's probably a bit of a Bruce Timm stylistic influence in these designs as well.

Sketch Of The Week: Nosferatu

2011-04-16T10:53:00.001-07:00

Recently, for the first time I had the pleasure of watching the original silent film Nosferatu. It was a beautiful film. The visuals in this movie were moody, creepy and fantastically composed. It was a motion picture in the truest sense. Each shot looked like a photograph that came to life. This only served to heightened the creepy factor.

Speaking of creepy. Max Schreck looked amazing as Count Orlok. He is now one of my most favorite movie monsters.

Sketch Of The Week: Coffee Lady

2011-04-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

This may look terribly absurd and it is, but I've seen this very image in real life. Working in a grocery store means you encounter a lot of interesting and strange individuals. Working in a grocery store in my home town means they are the majority of grocery store patrons.

One day after work I decided to do a little shopping of my own. I found myself over on the tea and coffee isle perplexed by all the different types of tea. As I stood there trying to make a decision on what flavor of green tea to purchase, I heard a nearby voice.
"Coffee. Coffee.", the voice repeated.
I thought it very strange that somebody would just repeat the word "Coffee." over and over as if it was some sort of statement. Assuming that I was just hearing it out of context, I went back to making my tea selection. Then suddenly the shrill female voice returned,
"Coffee. Coffee!", her voice increasing in volume with each instant of the word.
I still could not imagine why somebody was yelling out "coffee", without even an inkling of a question mark.
"Coffee!! Coffee!!!", the voice came again as if calling for someone named Coffee.
Finally, I just had to turn around to see what was happening. There, dead center in the isle, staring me down was a short heavy set woman, wearing a moo-moo dress and propping herself up with a tiny cane. A look of confident purpose on her face.
"Coffee." She said again, still making no indication whatsoever that she was asking a question.
"A-are you asking where the coffee is?" I stammered, astonished that she had been standing there repeating the word Coffee and not once considering that using a full sentence would be more effective.
"right there..." I faded off as I pointed her in the proper direction. "I'm sorry...I...uh..." I struggled to find words as I was dumbfounded by the situation I had been faced with.
"Don't worry about it, We all have those kind of days." She said as she hobbled by me. I couldn't believe it; she still hadn't realized her mistake. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with me, lady! I usually give answers to actual questions.

Bait298 Logo

2011-04-06T19:18:00.000-07:00

I created this logo as a favor to my friend Noel for use on his Youtube channel. I actually completed it from start to finish in about 2 hours. I'm not so sure if it's the greatest logo design I've ever done or will ever do but it didn't turn out half bad for something I did so quickly.

Speaking of Noel and his Youtube channel, I suggest checking out the video he made for his song. The song is called Have Another Mustache Ride On Me. It's a great song that's made better when the Muppets are singing it. Just a word of warning, the lyrics are for adult audiences only.

Coolthulhu T-shirt

2011-04-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

Note: The colors are a little different on the Zazzle shirt but not by much.
I'm still figuring out how to design for their printing process on light colored shirts.

This is my latest T-shirt design for the Jeff's Art-On-Stuff store at Zazzle. Make sure to buy yourself several and then tell your friends to do the same. Then while you're at it buy some extra ones for gifts and what not.
This is the original concept sketch. I've had it pinned to my bulletin board for a long time now. The thing that inspired this design was mainly just money! When I cooked up this idea I was just trying to come up with something I would enjoy illustrating but mainly featured a subject that would sell shirts. Of course the demi-god Cthulhu has a cult following and anything with a cult following sells merchandise. Plus, it's mainly geeks like me that appreciate Cthulhu and his cool factor, and geeks love novelty T-shirts... I think.

Now go buy yourself one! http://www.zazzle.com/jeff_art

Sketch Of The Week: Karl's class mates

2011-04-02T10:34:00.001-07:00

I'm a big fan of The Ricky Gervais Show and that round headed bafoon known as Karl Pilkington. After hearing about the HBO series, where they animate the original podcasts, I couldn't wait. So I got my grubby little hands on them and listened to every episode. Also, with the help of my good friend Dylan I was able to get copies of a bunch of the XFM radio broadcasts where the whole thing started. Recently, I've gone back to listen to all of those. I really can't get enough of Karl, Ricky, and Stephen.

This sketch was inspired by karl's description of a couple of class mates he had in his early school days. These boys both had over sized heads and webbed hands, but oddly enough they didn't hang out in the same circles.

Sketch Of The Week: Mr. Freeze Face

2011-03-26T11:34:00.000-07:00

Usually, I work in a mostly digital cartoon style but sometimes I like to venture off into slightly unfamiliar realms. I'm a big fan of old movie posters and pulp illustrations and have wanted to try my hand at creating my own. I'm definitely not as skilled with a brush as I am with the pencil, so I've been experimenting with a mix of water color and colored pencil to create a similar look.

I use water color as my base color and then after it dries I tighten everything up and add details with colored pencil. I think I might be on to something here. I've still got some more experimentation to do though. I think I need to apply more detail with the water color before moving on to the pencils to avoid having too much of that pencil texture.

One issue I'm having with doing pieces completely non-digital is getting them properly scanned or photographed. My scanner seems to wash out a lot of the color and subtle detail. It might be time for me to invest in a better scanner.

Cook With Nick And Cinnamon

2011-03-23T18:18:00.001-07:00

My long time friend Nick is a jack of all trades but master of none. One of those trades that he's not a master of is cooking. He loves to cook and learn about preparing food. Long ago he started a website, CookWithNick.com. I'm not really sure if the website is a serious cooking and recipe site or more of a hobby thing. I guess it's a little of both. It depends on what mood Nick is in. I suppose for him it's a serious hobby.

Every now and then I do a little Chef Nick illustration for the site. Since there's no payment involved I usually take the opportunity to do something different. This time I decided to practice my traditional inking. This is something I would like to get better at. I prefer digital inks for the most part because you can do it very quickly and it's easy to undo a mistake. But the old fashioned way has its advantages too. The ability to move my paper around is one. The ease of doing small flicks when doing cross hatching is another. Plus, having a clean finished ink drawing in the physical world is a lot more satisfying than having a digital file.

Sketch Of The Week: Gusthave

2011-03-19T12:58:00.000-07:00

Nothing too fantastic this week. I've just got something a bit strange from a while ago.

At some point my pal Dylan Duarte had this idea for a short story starring a man named Gusthave (pronounced "Gust-Have") and a talking chair. It was a strange story but quite interesting and funny. Dylan imagined Gusthave looking like Danny Mcbride in Eastbound and Down and so that's how I drew him.

Nice T-shirt

2011-03-15T18:37:00.000-07:00

You might remember, a couple of months ago I posted a Sketch Of The Week that featured my concept sketch for this very T-shirt design.

Originally my plan was to pay my friend Nick to print this shirt so I could sell a bunch locally at street festivals around my home town of Nice (pronounced "niece" despite it's spelling.) The plans have changed somewhat since Nick has decided to get back into the the t-shirt printing and selling business. He used to just sell various novelty tees on the internet but this time around he decided to steal my idea and start selling souvenir shirts locally. Rather than being angry at the fact that he took my idea, I'm happy about it. This is what I wanted all along. Now I don't have to worry about losing any money I invest in unsold T-shirts. I'll just collect a royalty on every shirt Nick sells that bears my design. Also, Nick is selling the shirts to local businesses thus increasing our potential clientele. Hopefully, come tourist season we will sell the heck out of these shirts and make it worth our while.

Sketch Of The Week: Old Man

2011-03-12T12:34:00.000-08:00

Back when I was still doing Disappointmentville USA I did a comic called, Worst Fear which featured the future version of the Jeff character (based on myself) and Billy his younger coworker. For whatever reason I loved these characters more than any other character that Dylan and I had created for the comic. So, soon after Worst Fear I did three more comics featuring Old Man Jeff and Billy.

Eventually, Dylan and I decided to end Disappointmentville but I still had the need to do more with the Old Man Jeff and Billy characters. This led to the birth of a new idea, Old Man Jeff and Billy: Buddy Cops. I would take the duo out of the Disappointmentville universe and place them into a new one where they were partners working on the police force. I wrote several pages for this comic, in my usual way of writing. (extremely rough thumbnail sketches of each page with dialog written on it.) but this idea got filed away as began working on other projects.

Recently, while cleaning out the drawers of my drawing table I rediscovered the Buddy Cops idea. I found that I still very much like the idea and a lot of it was pretty funny, or at least I think so. The only issue was that I really have no interest in doing characters directly based on myself and my friends anymore. I'd rather create new characters inspired by life but not based on anyone directly. So I decided that if I make this into a comic I would re-work Old Man Jeff into Old-Man-Somebody-Else which isn't really all that challenging. I'm sure the characters need updating anyway as I've evolved my style somewhat. And so, this sketch is a prototype of the new Old Man character.

All the Old Man Jeff and Billy comics:
Worst Fear
Old Man Jeff
Cheesy Jokes
Not How We Imagined part 1

Quick Comic: The Sheening

2011-03-09T19:17:00.001-08:00

It's time for another hastily drawn comic starring everyone's favorite news maker, Charlie Sheen! You better read it fast because in about 15 minutes nobody will remember or care what this is about.

Sketch Of The Week: Shop Lifters

2011-03-05T19:57:00.001-08:00

Jeff Morin Police Sketch Artist... Nah! That sounds like a boring job. Although it would probably be better than my current day job and I do like to use my artwork to bust criminals.

As some of you may already know, I work at a grocery store by day wasting my talents stocking cheese and ordering milk. One day I was lingering in the back room by the double doors, sighing and complaining when, through the door's window, I noticed a couple of guys on the liquor isle up to no good. The fellow on the right (we'll call him Righty) shoves this huge bottle of vodka in his pants. He and his friend (Lefty) began to walk very quickly toward the front of the store. I was having none of this and went into full on Batman mode, following them and matching their speed. They both split up and Righty made his way past the cash registers while Lefty escaped out the front door. I stepped in front of Righty and asked "Where are you going?" trying to hide the nervous squeak in my voice. I calmly asked him to give me the bottle back and he tried to act as if he didn't know what I was talking about, to which I replied "Bullshit, I saw you shove that bottle down your pants." He still wasn't budging but he wasn't trying to leave, so he knew he was caught. Being that I was all alone and my fellow employee's weren't paying any attention to this confrontation I was engaged in, I decided that it would be easier for me to recover the merchandise rather than detain the suspect. So I offered him a deal, If he gave me the bottle I wouldn't call the police. And what do you know it worked. I rescued the $60.00 bottle of hooch.

I felt like a bit of a hero until later when my bosses reviewed the security footage and found out that Lefty had taken a bottle too. Also, one of the employee's saw them leaving and said that they were yuckin' it up as they tore ass out of the parking lot. Needless to say I was not too happy about that. If only I had a cool car and scary costume like Batman, then I'd track them down and teach them a thing or two about the importance of justice.

Later on I used my excellent artist's memory and some screen caps from the security footage to create these accurate sketches of the two douche bags. I hung it up in the break room for other employees, just in case they ever returned but they never did. Probably because they were too terrified of encountering the Milk-Man again. (Cue Danny Elfman's Batman score)

Catholic Digest Cover

2011-03-02T19:21:00.001-08:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you one of the greatest magazine covers of all time...
I've had this magazine in my possession for years simply because of this hilarious cover photo by Mowers Photography.

You know, at first glance, you might think that this cover is about the danger of your children encountering porn online, but upon further examination, it seems that Catholic Digest is pitching cyber sleaze as good wholesome fun for the whole family.

These children have obviously discovered some top notch internet pornography and boy are they excited about it. There parents don't seem to overly concerned with stopping their children from seeing the full penetration happening on screen though. No, instead they are mesmerized by what they are seeing. Mom is shocked and a little scared, but in a good way. Dad is not really shocked, scared, or even disgusted. He seems pretty into it. It's obvious because of the expression on his face, that he is memorizing that URL for later.

I wonder what the Pope thinks of this.

Quick Comic: Planned Parenthood

2011-02-28T19:41:00.001-08:00

Sketch Of The Week: Internet Speak

2011-02-26T12:47:00.001-08:00

These are some stock art ideas I created back when I first started contributing to Istockphoto. I was going to do a whole series of internet abbreviation characters. I actually completed two of them based on "LOL" and "OMG".

Unfortunatley these were rejected by the Istock inspectors for prominently featuring typography. I disagree with their ruling because they're characters shaped like letters not actually letters themselves. It's just as well though, I have some better ideas on what to do with these illustrations.

Since LOL and OMG were rejected the others never got completed. For now they only exist in sketch form.

Sports Caricatures

2011-02-24T19:52:00.001-08:00

For the past year I've been doing a lot of work for WinTheTrophy.com. They're a free sports betting/social gaming site where users can compete against each other and win virtual trophies. I was originally commissioned to do some promotional comic strips. Shortly thereafter, they launched a service in the Win The Trophy store that allowed users to purchase a custom avatar illustrated by Me. To help promote this service I was tasked with doing caricatures of three famous sports stars. Can you tell who they are?

If you guessed Mike Tyson, Michael Jordan and Tiger woods then you, sir or madam, are correct.

Mike Tyson was the easiest to turn into a cartoon character because he's already one in real life. Michael Jordan was a bit tougher but I think he turned out pretty decent in the end. Tiger Woods turned out to be the worst of the bunch, in my opinion. He kind of looks like a rejected Filmation character from the 80's.

Sketch Of The Week: Captain America

2011-02-19T14:28:00.000-08:00

This sketch of Captain America is based on this cover by Salvador Larroca from Wizard 218.

Now, I mean no disrespect to Salvador Larroca. He's a better artist than I am in many ways and deserves his success but this cover is the epitome of what I don't like about modern day comic book art. It's very well rendered and inked and Mr. Larroca knows how to spot his blacks but the characters poses are really wierd and stiff. Just try posing your own body in the same manner as Captain America and you will realize that no one runs that way. It looks like he's ice skating or something. Also I think the attention to detail has caused the pose to become very stiff. Cap is supposed to be running really fast but the line work doesn't really suggest that. There's no real flow to it and it has a very straight line of action.

So anyway, I decided to try producing my own version of Captain America in a similar running pose. I obviously had the ability to see what I didn't like about the cover art so I wanted to see if I could sketch ol' Cap in a similar pose while keeping my criticisms in mind. I decided to exaggerate the proportions a bit more. Exaggerations in a characters proportions and gestures really help sell the idea of movement and life. (Comic artist John Buscema was a master at this. His characters always convey life and movement when there really is none.) I also, modified the running pose so that it was more natural and used a more bent line of action with a slight twist in Cap's waist.

obviously my sketch isn't the greatest drawing of Captain America ever but I think I did a pretty good job of Illustrating him in a more natural appealing way. I recommend that other artist do exercises like this. Look at art that you find unappealing, figure out why you feel that way and then attempt to sketch your own version. It's very helpful in preventing you from making similar mistakes in your own artwork later on down the road.

Sketch Of The Week: Chef Gerard Hock Pierre

2011-02-12T11:30:00.001-08:00

This is the prototype for a brand new character that I've created. He's gourmet chef Gerard Hock Pierre! He's known around the world for his gourmet french cuisine. He enjoys the flavor of coffee and cigarettes and uses them in his cooking as often as possible. When he smokes a cigarette he has the amazing ability to keep the ashes from falling off until he is completely done smoking it. Only somebody as gifted and purely French as Chef Hock Pierre can preform such a feat.

The Chef has quite an interesting origin. He hails from another planet in a far off galaxy. Everything about his home planet is exactly like France and therefore it's known as France Planet. When he was a baby his parents sent him off in a rocket toward earth to save him from the destruction of France Planet.

I would like very much to do some comics with this character. Unfortunatley I don't have a lot of time to draw comics right now. Plus I have a whole library of characters I want to draw comics of. Perhaps I'll explore and refine this character a little more with some illustrations until I have the opportunity to do some comics.

An Old Man In The Shower

2011-02-08T20:26:00.001-08:00

For today's blog entry I'd like to present you with something a little different. Rather than show you a piece of art I've done, I present you with a little piece of inspiration. Something that will inspire us all. That's right! photos of an old man in the shower!

This old guy can't contain his excitement about showering.
Just the mere Idea of soap and water fills him with unbridled enthusiasm.

"HA HA HA HEEEE!"
The old man squealed with Joy as he fired a hot stream of water on his locks of graying chest hair.

Long ago when I was just a teenager, my parents had purchased a brand new detachable shower head. These were the pictures on the package. I've saved them all these years hoping to one day share this strange wonder with the world. I can only image what was going through the minds of all the people involved in creating the package art to this box. Sure it's understandable that they would want to make their product look enjoyable but come on, It can't be that good! No old guy is ever going to enjoy showering that much. In fact, old guys don't usually like showering at all.

It's actually somewhat of a hobby of mine collecting strange pictures used on packaging and the like. I've got a couple more I think I might have to share in future posts. Until then, enjoy this gift I have blessed you with.

Sketch of the Week: When It All Goes Wrong

2011-02-05T12:48:00.000-08:00

This piece of penciled artwork was originally supposed to be turned into a vector illustration based on the classic shoulder-angel-and-demon concept. Maybe it was poor planning on my part, but everything in this piece went horribly wrong. The original concept was for the characters to be very cartoony like my usual style. Considering that the illustration was very close up I decided to make it more detailed than usual. Unfortunately, the added detail of the main character and his realistic proportions made it so he was more of a cross between cartoony and a more realistic comic book style. Because of the guys awful design the angel and demon came out just as awful because they were supposed to resemble him. On top of that, My attempt to make it look as if they are standing on his shoulders failed miserably and instead they look like they were just place over the top of the image of the guy. Then there's the dudes expression, I'm not sure how this happened, but he's supposed to look like he's making a decision but it just looks like he doesn't really care about anything.

After completing this sketch I scrapped it as a potential illustration. Eventually I'll be taking this concept back to the drawing board for a second try. I'm confident I'll be able to pull it off the second time around, just as long as I don't forget the mistakes I made here.

Sketch Of The Week: Parakeet Man

2011-01-29T10:32:00.001-08:00

The other day I was thinking about how we, as humans, empathize with animals. We seem to see physical human traits in our pets even when there are very little. For example, I often comment on how my pet parakeet seems to have a dumb or content expression on her face. But, What expression is there? She just has a beak and two eyes that she can close and squint. So I decided to go about visually interpreting the human characteristics I saw in the bird and the Parakeet Man was born.

I wonder if birds see bird like characteristics in us. Do we just look like weird shaped birds to them?

Sketch Of Week: Lady With High Pants

2011-01-22T15:17:00.000-08:00

About a year or so ago I was getting really sick of my drawings. I yearned to make my cartooning more lively and creative. So I set out to find a wealth of different influences and to learn some new techniques. This led to me filling my sketchbook with a whole assortment of doodles with the purpose of learning from them and becoming a better cartoonist. If I remember correctly, this was sort of an exercise in drawing the female anatomy and breaking away from the generic attractive female formula. I love how the gesture and facial expression came out and how dorky she looks with her pants hiked up so high.

Sketch Of The Week: YellowJackets

2011-01-15T12:25:00.001-08:00

When I was a wee lad, In the fifth grade, I created a superhero that I called The Yellowjacket. Yellowjacket was pretty much a copy of Batman with a little elements of Spider-Man thrown into the mix. I drew quite a number of Yellowjacket comics all the way up until my Sophomore year of High school; each issue full of highly derivative characters and stories.

Despite the fact That Yellowjacket wasn't very original, I still hold the character near and dear to my heart. For fun, I like to imagine that the character has still been having comic book adventures all these years and I'll re-imagine his look and status quo.

The first Yellowjacket in this sketch, ( going from left to right) is actually the second version. I imagined that he had become obsessed with fighting crime and it destroyed his normal life. He became homeless and lived in a clock tower in the city. Of course he had no money to repair his costume when it got damaged so it became a shredded up mess.

Number two was the original. This is the one that was featured in all those comics I drew. When I first designed him back in fifth grade, I remember showing him to my friends and they made fun of the fact that Yellowjacket's bee shaped belt buckle looked like a penis.

The third was more of a daredevil style character. It was after his homeless phase. He sported a modified costume without a cape.

Number four is a concept I came up with a couple years ago. For Fun, I actually drew a sloppy comic that took place after the last one I drew in high school. The comic was kind of a parody of the old ones and was quite comical. In the comic a scientist gives Yellowjacket a Yellow Jacket ( it's more of a wind breaker really) which gives him the ability to fly.

Realistic Mario Brothers

2011-01-14T18:32:00.000-08:00

This photo manipulation was born out of my ridiculous obsession with realisitic Mario stuff. I always thought that the ultimate realistic Super Mario Bros. Would be a live action movie that was more faithful to the games than the 1993 flick, which had very little resemblance to the game. In fact, I originally planned on doing this as a fake movie poster but after finding the images I needed online, I decided it would be cooler to show more of the surrounding mushroom kingdom. My approach to the subject matter was still to treat it as if I was the director of a Super Mario movie and re-imagine certain elements so that they were more feasible in a realistic setting; for example, Mario and Luigi don't have their initials printed on their hats.

Below are the 13 photos used in the construction of this image. I've grabbed them from various sources all over the web. I don't have the names of all the photographers/creators of each, but I've credited the ones that I do know.

Except the dude with the hat on the bottom, the bodies and heads of Mario and Luigi are stock photos that I purchased from Istockphoto.
Luigi's head by Brian Dixon
Mario's head byKevin Russ
Mario's body by Mike Sonnenberg
Luigi's body by Tommaso Altamura

This fantastic Pirahna Plant Sculpture was created by Jaime Margary. I recommend checking out his work. He does a whole host of other creepy looking video game related sculptures.

This castle is brought to you by LilyStox on DeviantArt

This background looks to be compiled from both photographs and some digital art. I don't know who the artist is but I found it at fantasy-backgrounds.com.

If you enjoy this be sure to check out my Shy Guy picture too.

Sketch Of The Week: New Years Baby

2011-01-08T13:37:00.001-08:00

So, the idea behind this sketch was to depict a baby celebrating the new year in the same manner as irresponsible adults, by drinking tons of booze and firing guns into the air. After drawing it I realized there's not much about it that seems like New Years. Instead it's a slightly troubling image of a cute little baby with a revolver and a bottle of hooch. It seems more like some kind of a social commentary about our youth.

So, you might notice that this and my previous Christmas related sketch were done using colored pencil. I'm not sure what it is about sketching with colored pencil, but in my opinion my sketches turn out better and I seem to learn more from them. I haven't quite figured out what it is. It might be the softness of the pencil and the ability to vary the shades more. Also colored pencils don't have that reflective nature like graphite pencils do. Well whatever it may be, I know I'll be doing more sketches with colored pencils. Plus, It's really fun to draw in different colors.

Shy Guy

2011-01-07T20:04:00.001-08:00

( Note: Stay up to date with my latest art and comics by following me on Twitter or becoming a fan on Facebook. -Jeff )

Here it is everyone, a screen-shot of Shy Guy from the upcoming live action Super Mario Bros. Movie. Nah! I'm just messin' with ya. I made this in Photoshop. I kind of have this obsession with the idea of Mario and the Mushroom Kingdom being interpreted realistically. As does the rest of the internet I assume, based on the various realistic paintings and illustrations of the famous plumbers.

Shy Guy in his cartoony video game form is not much less creepy

I've actually been working hard on another photo manipulation featuring Mario and Luigi which I hope to post within the week. Before I started on the Mario and Luigi one, I had the idea to do one of Shy Guy. I figured it would be relatively easy to find the photo components online, and it was. It was also sort of a good way for me to warm up my Photoshop skills in preparation for Mario and Luigi.

I guess inspiration hit me when I remembered seeing that creepy mask in the Franklyn movie trailer and realizing that it looked a bit like the Shy Guy mask. From their it was only a matter of finding a photo of somebody wearing a hooded robe which would be an easy task considering the popularity of Star Wars. Sure enough I found a photo of an emperor palatine costume that just so happened to be red. I envisioned the image with Shy Guy lurking around a creepy forest, so I found the perfect picture brought to you by Five-G on deviant art.

So there you have it, folks. A realistic, creepy looking Shy Guy. Stay tuned for more Mario madness.

Quick comic: Scrooge Didn't Learn A Thing

2011-01-02T12:38:00.000-08:00

Sketch Of The Week: Nice Is Nice

2011-01-01T11:44:00.001-08:00

Happy new year everyone!

Around spring, summer, and fall here in the County of Lake there's a ton of street festivals in all the small towns. Vendors from all around come to rent spaces and sell there wares made in the orient. This year I'd like to be one of these street vendors and peddle some T-shirts adorned with my own designs. Along with some existing designs, I'd like to create and sell some new ones based around the surrounding towns. This concept sketch is based on my home town of Nice (pronounced "Niece"). Nice is stationed on the shores of Clear Lake where there is an indigenous population of Heron birds like this. I'd also like to have the shirt say "Nice is nice", with the words reflecting in the lake. So what do you think, If you are a local or somebody who might be visiting, would you buy this shirt?

Fantasy Illustrations

2010-12-29T13:21:00.000-08:00

A while back I did a post about some fantasy illustrations I was doing and showed the creation process from one of them. I had refrained from posting the other illustrations and giving too much information as to why I was doing them because they were involved in a Christmas surprise. Well Christmas has come and gone so I can reveal to you what it was all about!

My cousin Kelly, who is a very talented writer, decided to collect a bunch of short stories she had written into a nice book and give them away as Christmas gifts to the family. She asked me if I would like to contribute some illustrations to the book and of course I said yes. And The Mists Of Kalador was born...
Below are all the illustrations I did for the book excluding the one that I posted previously, which you can find here: http://jeffmorin.blogspot.com/2010/11/trying-something-different.html

Something I learned in my early days when I illustrated an album cover, was that when something is printed it always comes out darker than it looks on a computer screen. So, with these illustrations I made sure not to make my shadows too dark, knowing that they would be darker when they were printed in the book. Because I kept this in mind they came out just how I imagined in the book.

Sketch Of The Week: Fat Santa

2010-12-25T12:22:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas and other holidays, everyone!

Sketch Of The Week: Lady Superhero

2010-12-18T10:35:00.000-08:00

This sketch is a bit old but I always liked the way it turned out. Believe it or not I didn't have any reference for this drawing. When I was drawing it I was just doing my best to use what I've learned about anatomy and figure drawing. I love the exaggerations of the form and the way the shapes interact with each other. Now if only I could apply this technique and knowledge to my finished work.

Color Planning

2010-12-15T15:43:00.000-08:00

When creating an illustration, I have a bad habit of not planning my colors out in advance. Usually, I won't begin thinking about my color choices until I'm ready to color the image in Adobe Illustrator. This can be a bit of a problem because I wind up spending a lot of time trying to figure out what colors work well together and constantly tweaking them as I go. This is especially time consuming in Illustrator because every block of color or gradient is it's own separate shape with it's own properties. After all this extra work I usually wind up with a color pallet that is a bit different than what I had originally imagined.

So in order to put a stop to this waste of time and remain more accurate to my original visions, I've decided to start using Photoshop to plan out my color pallete. Photoshop makes it really easy to quickly lay down color with the Brush and Fill tools. It also has a lot of Adjustment features making it simple to change hue, saturation, color balance, and many others. Here's how I did it...

Using my pencils as a guide, I start by blocking in the shades. For an effective composition it's important to keep the shade of each color in mind. Each major shape should be distinguishable against the others. If the image reads clearly in black and white then the composition works.

I knew this illustration was going to be a night scene with some cool colors. Since I had already laid down the shades, this was a simple matter of colorizing the image. I did this by using the Hue/saturation option in the Adjustments menu and checking the colorize box. With the slighty warmer colors on the vampire and wolf, I did the same thing, moving the hue slider around to make the colors a little warmer.

Now, I can just save the image as a JPEG and place it in the illustrator file and use the eyedropper tool to pick my colors.

In the end this method of planning helped speed the process along and made the coloring process much easier.

Quick Comics: Really Tangled

2010-12-12T12:08:00.001-08:00

Why did I, a GROWN MAN, go see Tangled? I don't know. Here's a comic based on that fine film/fairy tale.

Much like the secret comics I drew previously I drew this one really quickly. I'm thinking about doing quick comics like this more often, basing them on movies I've seen. It' s a rather enjoyable experience and it keeps my drawing hand limber. What do you think, would you like that?

Sketch Of The Week: Guardian Angel

2010-12-11T12:01:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know Guardian is spelled wrong. My sketch book doesn't have spell check.

I'm sure a lot of you know some good Christian folks. I'm also sure that a lot of you know some over zealous, overly evangelistic, crazies who like to appoint themselves as your personal guardian angel. You know the type I'm talking about; The type of person that believes that it's their job as a Christian to warn you against the evils of everything you do or enjoy. I'm not talking drugs, sex, or rock an roll either. I'm talking about warnings against seeing Harry Potter or Twilight movies because they have been designed to fool us into thinking that evil things are good. This is the type of person that will very seriously tell you that the devil has had his hands all over your artwork, or that will flat out lie to a young girl, telling her that her favorite musicians practice satanic rituals in the studio to place curses on their listeners. This is the type of person that places a warm penny on a wall covered in latex paint and believes that the penny sticks there because of God's power.

Yes, indeed I'm sure many of you know a person like this. I, of course do not and any resemblance that this angel has to a person living or dead is purely coincidental!

My Facebook Fan Page

2010-12-05T20:07:00.000-08:00

Apparently there's this new fangled thing called Facebook. It's real popular I guess and they made a movie about it and everything. Anyway I started a fan page there for my art. I figured it would be a rather effective way for me to keep people informed on my latest art projects and related news.

I'll be posting links to new releases weather it's on this blog, istockphoto, Inner-Nut.com, or my portfolio site at Jeffmorinart.com. Plus I'll try to keep it up to date with what I'm currently working on and perhaps post some process work too. So if you're interested in my work or would just like to talk about art, head on over and click that little "Like" button on the top of the page. I sure would enjoy hearing from you.

http://www.facebook.com/jeffmorinart

Sketch Of The Week: Hang In There

2010-12-04T12:39:00.001-08:00

What do you think, Should I make this into a demotivational poster?

I had a dream about a week ago that there was a black cat that crawled up the side of our house somehow. I think it was trying to get into the window or something but It couldn't and it got stuck and died. In the dream I was helping my mom knock the cat off of the wire it was clinging to.

Later when I awoke and was pondering the details of the dream, I realized that the manner in which the cat was holding on to the wire was very similar to the cats in the "Hang In There" motivational posters. Apparently my subconscious is just as pessimistic as the rest of my consciousnesses.

This is one of the many Hang In There kitties.

Somewhat ironically, as I sit here writing this, there is a group of crows out on my street feasting on the dead carcass of a black cat. Is this some kind of message from beyond? Is God trying to tell me something? If so, it seems pretty bleak.

Takes The Cake

2010-12-01T20:54:00.001-08:00

On occasion, My pal Nick makes custom decorated cakes. I think about a year ago he started doing it with more frequency and he decided that he'd like to make it into a little side business. So, he commissioned me to create this mascot/logo for use on business cards and the like.

Nick wanted a cartoon version of himself in full chef garb running with a cake. This would go along with the name of the business, Takes The Cake. A clever name indeed.

Usually it takes quite a few different sketches before I really nail a design, but in this case I got it with the first one. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't come up with anything I liked better than that. But just to give Nick some options I did one more little sketch. Then I sent the sketches to nick and indicated to him that I liked the top one best, and he agreed. Since the sketch turned out so well I really didn't want to redraw it and risk stiffening up the pose too much. So, I decided to use the thumbnail sketch for the final illustration and make any necessary changes or tweaks in illustrator.

Sketch Of The Week: Smelloggs Zap-Os

2010-11-27T12:43:00.000-08:00

I love a good cereal box design. It seems like they are hard to come by these days.

I haven't done any graphic design projects in a while and I was thinking about beefing up that portion of my portfolio on Jeffmorinart.com. One of the things I wanted to do was to create some cereal box designs based on my own made up cereals. This is one of the ideas I was kicking around.

Sketch Of The Week: Sloppy John

2010-11-20T17:08:00.000-08:00

read in a thick New York accent

This guy, whom I've nick named Sloppy John, Comes into the supermarket where I work. He likes to chat it up with the employees. At first I didn't really like him all that much and it wasn't because he resembled a homeless person or smelled of stale beer and sweat, it was because all he ever seemed to talk about was how horrible our county was. He would complain about the people that lived here with such hatred and anger. The reason it made me so angry was because he was the spitting image of the people he was complaining about.

Eventually I grew to hate him less and I learned quite a bit about him during his many beer runs to the store. This man was quite the paradox; His parents immigrated to New York from Germany in the 40's, he spent some time in the military, he's a homosexual, he was a school teacher, and a pig farmer. On top of that he styles his facial hair like some kind motorcycle enthusiast. In the end ol' John turned out to be a pretty interesting guy with an interesting life.

Trying Something Different

2010-11-17T17:25:00.000-08:00

Recently, I've been working on a personal project of sorts. I don't want to get into too many of the details right now because it's a bit of a surprise for a select few individuals. Basically, for this project I had to do a bunch of fantasy based illustrations. I decided to take the opportunity to experiment a bit with some techniques I've been wanting to try.

Generally, the work I do mostly consists of very cartoony illustrations done digitally. For these Illustrations I wanted to create a marriage of digital and traditional mediums. On top of that I wanted to take the opportunity to practice my inking with a more semi realistic style. I've drawn in this style before but I haven't done it very often using actual brush and ink. (or in this case, an amazing Pentel Brush pen).

My plan was to give the colors a painted quality. I've seen a lot of other artist do this using a flat painted texture and overlaying it on the colors in Photoshop. When done properly, that method can work quite well, but you can still tell that that painted texture was added later. I decided to do something similar but instead create a painted texture exclusively for each illustration.

Oddly enough, I was somewhat inspired by the recent work that KC Green was doing on his webcomic Gun Show. Apparently he used an ink wash to create the gray tones on his comic then inked the line art over that. I thought it gave it a very nice classic illustrated look. I'm not quite as brave as Mr. Green so rather than do it all on one sheet of paper, I traced my line art on to another piece of paper and used a charcoal gray water color to create the gray tones.

Once I had both images scanned in I combined them in photoshop, keeping each one on it's own separate layer. I made sure to set the layer blending options to Multiply that way the white areas would be transparent so my colors would show through. When adding the color I used some of the texture and scattering options on the Photoshop brushes to maintain the painted look. For the most part, the coloring stage was rather quick since most of the work had been done by creating the water color shades before hand.

In the end, I learned some new things about inking, painting, and digital coloring techniques. And I wound up with about 2 or 3 portfolio worthy illustrations.

After the surprise is revealed, I will do another post featuring all 7 Illustrations that I created for this project.

Update 12/29/10: Check out the rest of the illustrations here: http://jeffmorin.blogspot.com/2010/12/fantasy-illustrations.html

Sketch of the Week: I'm A Creep

2010-11-13T18:28:00.001-08:00

There's a lot of little sloppy doodles on this page but for this edition of Sketch Of The Week I'd like to focus on the little lady contained within the dotted line. Whenever I encouter somebody who is both attractive and unique looking I feel the need to draw them. So, I will take a mental picture and save it for later when I have the opportunity to do a sketch. Most of the time the people I feel the need to illustrate are female. And I do realize this probably makes me seem like a weirdo creep.

While my desire to draw these ladies may be influenced by my natural attraction to them it's certainly not my number one motivation. Men are easy to draw because they are hideous angular creatures. But you see, woman are not that easy to draw. There are certain subtleties to the female form. One wrong move and you've drawn a man with breasts. In order to make it easy on themselves a lot of artist, including myself settle on drawing the cliche idea of a beautiful woman (mainstream comic artists especially). This usually consists of a small nose, full pouty lips and of course big ol' boobies. but in life a female could have only some or none of these traits and still be very appealing. So, I feel that it's very important to study what qualities do make them appealing in order to bring them to my future illustrations.

Obviously, this sketch is somewhat sloppy and stylized but it's not meant to be an accurate portrait of this person. That would be difficult anyway since I was just drawing from memory. Instead it's a quick Caricature designed to capture those traits that make her interesting. In this case I found her skinny frame and slumped posture very interesting.

So I'm not sure how many people are even interested in my boring explanations about my sloppy doodles. I would love to hear from you though. Please feel free to leave your comments. Maybe you've got a question, compliment, complaint or you'd just like to tell me how creepy I am.

Sketch Of The Week: Inhaler Man

2010-11-06T22:15:00.000-07:00

I've had asthma all my life. I remember when I was young, for a short time I was a member of some kind of Asthma Club. I guess the point of the club was to make kids not feel so bad for being picked last in gym or something. Anyway, I remember having a magazine or pamphlet that had a cartoon inhaler mascot on it. I can't imagine that the actual mouth piece was on the inhaler man's crotch but it seems like the appropriate place for it to be on an inhaler man. I just can't imagine where else you could put it. Maybe on his butt. Still either way, It's just plain wrong.

Sketch Of The Week: Psychic

2010-10-30T11:35:00.000-07:00

It seems that I've been neglecting my internet presence as of late. Which is no good for a budding illustrator like myself. It's easy to become busy with projects and forget to make time for anything else. So, I've decided that I need to put a stop to that. I'm going to make more of a conscious effort to keep things up to date, starting with this blog.

In addition to creating more general blog posts on a regular basis I'm going to start this weekly feature called Sketch Of The Week. Once a week I will post a sketch and talk about it a bit. It should be fairly simple so I'll be able to keep up with it even if I'm really busy. Now on to this weeks sketch, The Psychic...
I drew this one about a year ago. I was going to turn it into a stock vector illustration for Istockphoto. The sketch sat in a drawer for months until I finally decided to work on it. The only problem was, by that time I wasn't as happy with the drawing as I originally was. There were minor flaws here and there that bugged me. You can see some of the darker lines wear I was trying to fix things in Photoshop. At one point I started to ink it in Adobe Illustrator but I think I just lost interest in it and couldn't bring myself to finish it. I think I would like to do a complete illustration of this but I'm going to start from scratch if I do.

Desk Doodles

2010-08-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

I was cleaning up some of the clutter on and in my desk the other day and I collected a bunch of these scrap papers with doodles on them. I've probably accumulated these over a period of five years. I was going to toss some of them out but it's very difficult for me to throw away any artwork even if it is a sloppy doodle. So I decided to post them here. I know that I like looking at the doodles and sketches of other artists, so maybe there's some folks out there that will enjoy checking out mine. If I find more I'll post them later.

Secret Comics

2010-07-26T20:23:00.001-07:00

I posted these comics on my twitter a while back. I was going to do a series of secret twitter comics but I decided my energy was better spent on doing comics for my website. Doing these was actually quite fun. I drew them as quickly as I could and they actually didn't turn out all that bad.