Monday, May 9, 2011

Richie Ashburn marquetry

For the longest time, I've wanted to try marquetry.  Marquetry is the art and craft of applying pieces of wood veneer to form decorative patterns, designs or pictures.  I must confess, this one of former Phillies great, Richie Ashburn, was accomplished on the computer.  Exotic wood were scanned and positioned to form the Hall of Famer rounding third base.  In short, no sawdust was inhaled in execution of this piece.
  

Friday, May 6, 2011

Sam Kinison

This is one of my illustration board cutouts from many moons ago.  The fire was added much later as a digital file.  I sold the original cutout of Sam Kinison on Ebay.


Sam Kinison, July 1992

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Nascar Frank

Several years ago, a friend of mine asked me to do a paper sculpture of her boyfriend, Frank.  Frank is a huge Nascar fan, so I decided to do a caricature of him in one of those coin-op kiddie cars.  Dale Earnhardt was his favorite driver, so Frank is sitting in his number 3 car.  This is all made of paper, except for the digital background, which was printed on paper.

Nascar Frank, July 2006

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Tiny Animals

Some of the animals on the World of Animals piece are so small that you cannot see them unless I upload the original art.  The original is 9000 pixels high and there are many reasons why I wouldn't want a digital file that size on this blog.  Here is the next best thing; the originals of the tiny creatures that inhabit my World of Animals.

 Honey Bees

 Butterfly

 Mandarin Duck

 Moray Eel

 Squirrel Monkey

 Oxpecker


 Red-Eyed Tree Frog & Poison Frog

 Screech Owl

Horned Starfish

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

A World of Animals

A World of Animals was the most ambitious project I ever attempted.  It took over four months to complete and over 1000 layers in Photoshop.  My original Animal World was a paper sculpture.  When the decision was made to do a digital version, I decided to add more animals.  The monkey, owl, duck, ostrich, ibex, black bear, bees, rabbit, fawn, butterfly, frog, starfish, eel, piranha, crab, shark, and octopus were all additions.  Almost twenty new brushes in Photoshop were created to imitate animal hair, leaves, and skin textures.  What do you think?

A World of Animals, March 2008

Monday, May 2, 2011

Osama bin Laden

We finally got that scurvy dog, Osama bin Laden!  While I don't have any art of that idiot, here is a very happy Barack Obama.

Barack Obama caricature, December 2008

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Kritter Kids "Dominoes"

I am attempting to colorize all my old comic strips.  But it's more than just adding color.  The old lettering is wiped out with new text added.  Also, little blemishes are removed.  In the case of this strip, "Dominoes", the little frog in the background was pretty rough, so I drew a new frog over the old one.  The sky is a photo I took of a sunset.  The colors in the sunset were muted and blurred so not to overpower the artwork.  I made my own brush in Photoshop to lay down all that grass.  I saved the brush as "KidsGrass" so it can be used for all my Kritter Kids comic strips.

Kritter Kids "Dominoes", December 1990