Christmas Card.

Daisy and I just returned from a wonderfully improved non-Italian 2nd honeymoon cruise and I still feel like I'm moving. Now that the Christmas Cards are officially out and about I can post it here. If you'd like one, just email me your address and I'll send one along to you asap.

Merry Christmas.

The inside:

Christmas Cards from Christmas Past

I have never received as much positive feedback from one of my cards as I had with the one above. After this one every card I make seems to feel pretty stupid and mundane.

As for the one below (pictured is the outside of the card and the inside is below it), I am at that age were everyone complains about their weight during the holiday season and I had gotten pretty tired of hearing about it.

There is a funny story behind the card below. I had blatantly used my friend Jeff as the character for the fourth wise-man simply because this is something he would say with his often inappropriate sarcasm. At the last minute I had second thoughts and changed the look of the character so no one would suspect it was him. Well, two days after mailing this card out I received emails from several people asking if the fourth wise man was in fact, Jeff.

I'll post this year's card soon, I just want to send them out first and not spoil the fun.

Gas crunch comics.

I made these sketches in the midst of the gas increase and swore I would take them to finish but I just haven't had the time so here you go.

Willamina and Theodora.

Daisy and I are moving back to PA. We have both had enough of the wonderfully inept NJ government (honestly, the only good thing about the NJ gov't is the DMV). We are in no hurry, so despite the housing market we are both trusting God to move in a favorable way for us. Since we will be showing our house off, we decided to pass my oldest cat, Willamina, off to my Mother for the time being. Our younger cat, Theodora, will be going to a non-kill shelter on Monday. It was a hard decision but one we had to make. Daisy and I are both allergic to cats and with winter upon us it only makes the allergens worse in the closed up house.

I drew the above ink drawing of Willamina when she was a mere 2 months old (back in 1996) and the photo below was taken of her on her favorite place to rest in the house, my light table, while I am working of course. Which reminds me, I need to start a photo blog. This photo just doesn't seem right sitting here. Hmm... blog 31x30? I'll get on it.

Seek and Find 1

I was recently commissioned to create this (as well as another that I am not finished) seek and find for the Maiden Creek Watershed Association of PA. I had to add specific floral and fauna as well the water table, which made this more difficult in composition than the average hidden picture I do for Highlights. I still like it though. That Raccoon makes my day.

Behind the Wedding

This is a small comic book I made for my wedding about how my wife and I met. We used them as the wedding favors for everyone at the reception. Please go to this link to see the entire book: Behind the Wedding.

It's several pages long so I didn't want to upload the entire thing here.

Logo Designs.

Every so often I get asked to make a logo which makes me happy that I paid attention in my design classes. A struggle I have with a lot of my students is that they think that as an illustrator they don't need to know design (or how to use a computer for that matter). Some of them often find out too late that it is essential. Even if you're not designing a logo per se, there is still a good amount design that goes into each illustration.

I recently finished this one below for His-n-Herbs and I've added some others that I have done over the years. I don't usually show these off.

Every year I get asked to design the logo for the Relay for Life in Medford, NJ. It is a 24 hour walk-a-thon that usually takes place at a local high school track. The logo has to be created keeping in mind that it will be used for a one color silkscreen for t-shirts, mugs, etc.

The logo for my church's youth group of which my wife and I help lead.

A hooded sweatshirt design. Typing Hebrew is not fun, since you have to do it backwards. Coming up with a method to make the design look weathered was also a challenge.

This one was done for Helping Hand, a concierge business. This design was for the 2 sided business card.

In connection with the Relay for Life stuff, this one was done for an after-treatment support group which was started by a good friend, Susan Jones, who has since gone home to be with the Lord.

And finally this was created for Lighthouse Tabernacle, a local church. I used the colors from their stained glass windows to construct the lighthouse.

Work in progress

This is part of a pair of hidden pictures- err, I mean, "seek and find"- being done for a nearby Conservation group. I'll post the finishes once I'm done.

Highlights Hidden Pictures Cover

Just received the copies of the 2009 hidden picture book in which I was picked for the cover.

Also, I am in this month's Highlights Magazine (November 2008). It is an older hidden picture piece I did back in 2001 that I think was reprinted for this issue, but I'm not entirely sure. It's kind of fun to look at how I have improved in just 7 years. I've learned since that removing the tone makes the hidden pictures harder to find and it takes much less time. I wish I had known they were going to reprint this, I would like to have re-inked it.

Short Cuts.

Two weeks ago I had to do a pretty quick turn-around job for Bryn Mawr College. The illustration was to be of 6 different crew boats with 30 people distributed between them. Since I didn't have the time to draw each individual, I drew 3 instead: one coxswain and one female and one male rower, plus the back and front of the boat. I then drew many different heads of different races (as shown below) and stuck them on the bodies.

I wish I had the time to vary the strokes each team was taking, but sometimes you just have to get the job done. I still think it turned out pretty nice.

Old Mac Donald.

I teach a sophomore class called Experimental Workshop at the Hussian School of Art. The whole point of the class is to make the students think outside the box. Most of the time we are creating 3 dimensional pieces but every so often I have them do an illustration. I start off by giving them a list of 58 animals/objects that Old MacDonald and his family are moving. The experimental side of this illustration is to draw everything that is on the list but to draw it using only INK. No pencil or research is allowed. They are given roughly 3 hours to complete.

Last year I decided to do one and here's what I was able to put together. I found that the hardest part of this was keeping the proportions right and just trying to plan ahead for what was coming next. There is some bad drawing here, and this piece is pretty big (6 x 22") that I had to take a photo of it, so please forgive the quality.

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Update: I found a away to scan it in using Adobe Bridge's Photo merge!

Washington's tomb

I drew this back in June when I visited the tomb in Mount Vernon, VA. I wish I had more time but I had to cut the visit short. It really is a beautiful place to visit.

More Psycholinguistic Technologies stuff.

I posted some of these earlier. You'll note the use of the same backgrounds used throughout these sets. I did this in order to cut down on production time and to make it easier for the viewer to quickly point out the differences in the scenarios when using the program.

I discovered in this first set that I really like to draw sad dogs, especially ones that have just gotten into trouble.

The design of this hideously ugly dress is actually based on one that a friend owns, but I won't tell.

I also love to draw grumpy cats.

Although I hate to draw hippies.

You can see Drew Phillips in the top right hand corner of this one. He helped me with the coloring on some of these.