Thursday, December 2

it's only arsen if it was on purpose

You might think that I have been disregarding this blog due to the lack of updates. You'd be right. Don't worry, in two weeks I'll be done with school until the end of January, so expect some magic soon...

Friday, November 26

way to go, chief!

hopefully soon you will be able to buy this on a card to congratulate a friend for some generic achievement. hopefully soon you will WANT TO buy this on a card to congratulate a friend for some generic achievement.

Monday, November 22

suck it, hallmark

Hey everyone! Yet another image-less post! I sure know how to keep you interested, eh?

Time for news though...

I have been hard at work on some new illustrations I am hoping to make greeting cards with. I will have them up soon, I just haven't had access to a scanner for a while because I've been sick for the past week. Which brings me to another point, who wants to buy me a scanner? No? Anyway, yes you heard correctly: greeting cards. Kinda lame right? WRONG. Just wait until you see them. THEN you can call them lame.

But in all seriousness, I am hard at work at doing the research and preliminary "stuff" into registering for an actual LLC business license and am planning on getting a custom domain and building a fully functional website so I can start providing art and design resources as well as start selling products, like, say... greeting cards. I am planning on printing them myself, so I should be able to offer them to you at a pretty reasonable price (say $3 or so with free shipping?).


I have one more day of classes before Thanksgiving break, so expect some images of these so called "cards" to be popping up sometime soon. They are pretty awesome if I do say so myself. Which I do say. Because I made them so of course I think they are cool. But really, I would use these to express to people how I feel towards them on various occasions. No joke.

Wednesday, November 17

all the colors of the rainbow



Another t-shirt design. It's 7 colors, so a little high to make it cost effective for printing though.

Tuesday, November 16

t-shirt design - one year closer


Click the big annoying link above and click the "5" on the top right. If Threadless decides to print my shirt design (based on votes and comments) I could win some money which would reaalllly help me get a head start on printing my own shirts!

Anything you can do to spread the word would be amazingly helpful! Tell your friends, link to this page or the voting page linked above, post it on twitter, your blog, or facebook. I would really appreciate your support!

the man with the red umbrella

this was the illustration I neglected to post this weekend. better late then never, right? 11"x14"

Monday, November 15

i set fire to our bed

my sincerest apologies for ditching you guys over the weekend and not posting when i promised. there are plenty of excuses for why I neglected to update, and they are all great. first of all, I do not own a scanner, so I have to make gruesome 10 minute trek over to our lovely design lab on campus. i've made that trek at least 5 times in the last couple of days, but alas, people like to use the computers with the scanners even if they aren't scanning and leave the 20 computers without scanners to those of us trying to update our blogs. my other excuse, which is even better than the former, was that philly based artist Chiddy Bang came to our campus to preform this saturday night, so of course I went to that. i just so happen to know some of the people who helped organize the concert, so about 5 of us got to hang out with Chidera and friends after the show for a few hours. and if your going to be angry that i choose that instead of being hunched over a scanner and computer, then there's nothing else to talk about. you may go.

anyway, enough about me, let's talk about me. i've been working on some pretty big plans for this modest little blogger profile, including our own domain name, maybe expanding to stuff outside of my personal work, and most of all, adding a store. my long term plan is to have a screen printing shop in my basement, but those are unimaginably expensive, so that will have to wait. for now, I will have to get by with a cafe press shop. their base prices are a little ridiculous, which is why this is only temporary.

once I start making a little money, I am planning on ordering wholesale and managing it on my own, allowing me to drop the price (hopefully significantly). but in order to do that and provide decently priced shirts in a world of freaking $20 t-shirts, I am going to need to sell some stuff! as of right now, the shop is pretty bare, excluding the one shirt I have. all my free time from now until eternity will be dedicated to getting more content up here and on my shop. expect more shirts, posters, greeting cards (oh, i'm not kidding) and whatever else suits my fancy.

SO- buy my stuff and write it off as a charitable donation to a poor college student who just wants to design (hopefully cool) t-shirts and stuff. You might get a special prize if you buy something. maybe. I'll definitely give you a shout out on the site and link to your site if you have one.

also, if your not already (which your not), you should totally follow me on Twitter and DailyBooth because I post things on their that I don't on here. for example, my friday doodles will now be updated on DailyBooth and not just on fridays, so be sure to check it often!


this was a long, boring post with no pictures, so if you skipped down to the bottom, here's a summary:

buy my stuff now so I can eventually make it better and cheaper for you
follow me on twitter
be sure to always keep one eye on my continuously updating doodles on DailyBooth

Saturday, November 13

COMPUTER MALFUCTION DETECTED

well, the illustration I was going to originally put up has died. That is, the file that I had on my computer of the scan got corrupted somehow. It might be the really bad usb drive that I found. Who knows? Let's not get bogged down in details. As an replacement, I give you these strange characters I wasn't reallly planning to show.

also, from now on, my doodles will be posted to my dailybooth profile. I'll keep the rough sketches there and the more completed work here, just so I don't dilute things.

i'm off to dream, i'll post the intended drawing tomorrow when I have a chance to rescan it. keep your ears open for some cool news that might possibly coming your way involving the evolution of the site... and stuff. sorry, just got back from seeing Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. awesome movie which has been released on dvd very recently. absolutely great movie, i'd suggested you watch it and prepare to get your mind blown. and I'll leave you with these:




Friday, November 12

doodle poodle

Time for this weeks doodles. You might notice there are not as many, and this might make you sad, and I'm sorry. This is only the doodles from this past week, whereas last time was everything from this semester up until that point. I'm not a machine you know!

and make sure you tune in later today when I post my newest work!





Thursday, November 11

and you thought you had gotten rid of me...

I have some very exciting stuff that I will be posting tomorrow, including the second week of friday frenzy and the final version of that little umbrella man I posted last week, so make sure you stop back tomorrow for those tasty treats!

also, if you're not already, follow me on twitter!

ok, i've got important stuff to do, like create an empire to take over the world, so I'll be back tomorrow.

Sunday, November 7

finally friday frenzy pt. 3

the third and final installment of this weeks frenzy. But don't worry, it will be back next friday.







Friday, November 5

it's finally friday frenzy pt. 1

Since the vast majority of my time and effort during my lectures goes towards doodling, I figured I might as well make it productive. It is my pleasure - nay, HONOR - to introduce to you the first of many finally friday frenzies!

basically, every friday, I will take the doodles I have created in class that week, scan them all in, and post them here. Since this is the first one, I have a little bit of a backlog of images (18 scans to be precise, some of which have multiple doodles) so to get the most out of my limited resources, I will be making this first finally friday frenzy a three part adventure. That means today, tomorrow, and sunday you will be bombarded with poorly drawn ridiculousness! Let's start the weekend off right with the first batch of doodles:

umbrella man

I just started working on this tonight and since I like to keep ya'll in the loop with whats going on, I thought I'd show you an (early) early (early) progress shot. This is about 1 and a half hours in, but that include coming up with the concept, getting reference pictures, drawing the half inch grid on the whole page, and drawing the guy out in pencil before going over it in my brand spankin' new copic markers (thanks mom and dad for the great birthday present).


and here's me posing with my new toys... and no that's not an expression I make often, only when I can't contain my excitement.


Tuesday, November 2

Creativity

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."

- Steve Jobs 

Sunday, October 31

down

down  |  sharpie on aluminum plate lithograph  |  edition of 5  |  13x22 in


this is an illustration I made for my lithography class. I wasn't thrilled with the quality of the final prints (this scan was touched up in photoshop to make it look a little better. My plan for this concept is to add some color in, either by redrawing it (skipping the lithography part) or just using this scan. We'll see.


Follow my blog with bloglovin

Friday, October 29

there's a snake in my boot!

finally! a substantial update! this was something I drew last weekend and just got around to coloring it today. I wanted to get it done soon so I could include it in my portfolio for an application I am working on so I can spend spring semester in new york city!


also, I have decided to hold a contest!

exciting, right? I know. All you have to do is comment on this post (with comments, criticism, suggestions for other drawings, what you think my favorite flavor of ice cream is, I don't care), and follow my blog, and you'll be entered to win this drawing! who knows, maybe someday it will actually be worth more than the pulp you could get from recycling the paper. since, admittedly, there are not many people that actually follow my blog yet, I will not pick a winner until there is at least 25 different people entered, so it may be a while.


more boring rules:

-to officially enter, follow my blog and comment on this post.
-don't enter more than once with the same name (you aren't that dumb, right?) or with multiple aliases (I will catch you).
-I will pay for shipping (if necessary) to anywhere in the United States. If your international, end up winning, and like the illustration enough to pay for shipping, we can work something out.
-there is no deadline for this contest, I will not pick a winner until I feel there are enough entries (read the paragraph above).


there's a snake in my boot  |  15x11.5 in  |  pen & watercolor
also, I have another finished project, but I am not going to post it until later this weekend, so check back!

Tuesday, October 26

the evil cyclops

well, unfortunately I'm fresh out of watercolor brushes and until I can get some more, I have 6 or 7 ink drawings just sitting around waiting to be colored. I guess I can show one of them before they get colored, it has been a while since I've gotten anything new up.

Pay close attention to the bottom right hand side for a certain flaming breakfast item that was shown earlier.

the evil cyclops  |  pencil, micron pens

Tuesday, October 19

moleskin love

I hate to sound like a salesman, but if you maintain a sketchbook, moleskin is definitely the way to go. You can use pens on them without any risk of it bleeding through to the other side of the page, so no wasted space. They are sturdier that most other sketchbooks too, which is good for me so the edges won't fold because I just keep it in my backpack. Anyway, click below and buy one. Do it.

I honestly don't know what this is supposed to be....

Today I wrote 2 papers, made a poster, and spent hours on my lithography project and I still managed to get something up here, so my day was a success!

No, I don't know why the eye man is kicking a baseball, I was never very involved in sports  |  pencil and ballpoint pen

 And since I mentioned it above, I might as well show the poster I made too!

First Friday Concert  |  Friday, November 5th at 7pm  |  illustrator and photoshop

so yeah, if your around on Friday, November 5th and live on or near Messiah Colleges campus, come by the fishbowl for some great music and a nice relaxed environment.

Monday, October 18

my priorities ≠ college priorities

I was planning on spending the majority of my weekend drawing, but alas the responsibilities of being a full time college student with 2 jobs has hindered that. It's really frustrating when schooling, which is supposed to be taking me where I want to go in life as far as a career, is actually hindering me from doing what I want to do.

So... because I feel bad that I haven't updated in a while and in a last ditch effort to not look unproductive, here is a page from my sketchbook. The character on the right you will definitely be seeing again (hopefully) soon. I have no definite plans for mr. robot face, but I'm sure he'll pop up somewhere.

sketchbook 10-12-2010  |  ball point pen

While I'm at it, here is a small preview of an illustration I'm working on. I've finished the pen drawing, but I want to go over it with watercolor when I have a chance, so watch out. Anyway, without further ado, I would like to introduce the buring cupcake:



This is only a tiny zoomed in section of the whole drawing, so this little guy is actually pretty small.

Fall break is fast approaching and hopefully it will be relatively homework free so I should be able to put some solid hours into finishing up some drawings and starting some new ones. Look out!

Friday, October 15

let's switch things up a bit...

So after uploading my work and actually looking at it, I realized one thing about the majority of my stuff:

It sucks.

Therefor, I have decided to drastically change my style and am currently working on a lot of new material for the blog. I was so eager to put some content up here that I didn't really stop and think if I really want people to see some of my older work. I'm not going to delete any of my posts, but I am adjusting the standards by which I judge work to put up here. Hopefully within a week or so I will start finishing up some of the drawings that I'm working on and get them up, so stay tuned!

Saturday, October 9

Imagination

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

- Albert Einstein

look what i did!

look what i did!  |  created in corel painter

expand the empire

I'm considering adding tutorials or little how to's periodically, anything from tips and tricks to step by steps for some of my drawings. It probably won't happen until I get a few more followers just because I don't want to spend time making them and then have them get lost in the archives before anyone sees it.

Let me know what you think, there is a comment box, ya know ;)

Friday, October 8

get inspired

get inspired  |  pen and pencil, colored in photoshop, layout and text in indesign

the hazards of life

Another project from school from last year. Unfortunately I can't take credit for the captions, they are from readynow.org (check it out!). I remade all the images in illustrator.















the world is so colorful

wireties

rubberbands

the republic of getty

I was digging through the archives and found this project from my freshmen year of college...