SOTW: The Fartman

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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.