They took my wheels!

It's been another busy week and I realized today that I forgot to update the blog. This is a sketch painting I've been playing with for the better part of 3 years. I'm guaranteed to repaint the whole thing each year. I finally thought I should share even though I'm planning to work on it some more.

AI Weekend Demo

This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of speaking before the students at the Art Institute of Inland Empire. You couldn't have asked for a better audience and I wish them all the best in their studies.

At the end of the talk, I had time for a quick demo and I wanted to share it here. I saved out a few steps, although not as many as I would have liked. I have a very similar step by step painting demo that I will hopefully be able to finish soon.

Late night Cat Party

I've been playing around with my process and how to create finished images quickly. It's a sort of holy grail for artists everywhere. I'm very happy with the subtle variation in color in the bottle, but over I'm not quite sold on the over-all look. It's a bit "filtery" to me even though I didn't use any.

We own two cats and the older one (pictured here) has a fondness for waking us up by vomiting. I always imagine that she's boozing it up while the humans are sleeping.

Study for a Painting

Since I finished with the cards, I've been working on the paintings for the raffle winners and catching up on all the things I neglected during the month I was working on the cards. This is a study for one of the raffle paintings. Enjoy!

Raffle Winners!!! Zoom Zoo in progress!!

I finished my alphabet card project Monday night at 12:30am(technically tuesday) and prompt sent it off to the printers in China. I'm very proud of the fact that the entire project took one month from start to finish. However, it very much seemed like Parkinson's Law was in full effect - "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." I intended to wrap up the whole project a week ago and instead I worked all the way up to my deadline.

On to the raffle winners!  

If you're any of the people listed below send me an email with where you want your prize shipped. 

I'm going to start on them tomorrow and hopefully you will receive them within the month. If you have any requests, I'd be happy to consider them.

If you didn't win, don't worry. I have more things in the works I am planning something when my alphabet cards come in. Keep watching here or follow my twitter if you want updates.

Many thanks to the random number generator on

http://www.mathgoodies.com/calculators/random_no_custom.html

Extra Bonus Round Raffle. Let's get to 400.

Wow! 182 new Followers and 97 Comments last month. I'm doing the raffle tonight for the 4 pieces of art I promised.  So if you haven't commented or followed the blog by then, now is your chance to sneak in.

We're really close to 400 followers. Right now its 18 more people. If we can get to 400 followers by August 9th, I will do a special bonus raffle for one additional piece of art selected from the follower list. It's really easy. Just click follow on the right side of the blog.

I'm still working away on the Alphabet Cards. I'm very very close, but still have a lot to do. In other news, I was hoping to do a kickstarter for the cards, but was sadly rejected with no reason. It's not the end of the world, but I was hoping for some help making the cards an affordable price.

ZOOM ZOO Alphabet Cards - I is for Iguana

Here's another card for my alphabet flash card set. Iguana are one of my favorite animals and I'd love to have one as a pet. I tried to convince my fiance to let me adopt one from the local humane society, but she is a little freaked out by them.

Everything goes to the printers a week from tomorrow. There's still a lot to do, but its nice to see the project coming together. I'm going to try to do a few tweaks to the type - I want to add lowercase letters, but not sure if there is the space on all the cards. For those of you that asked, I'll be selling them online. I haven't worked out pricing, but it should be similar with Bill Pressing's "Intercontinental Cuties" playing card set.

In other news, just 6 days left in my original art raffle / giveaway. Leave a comment or follow me to enter. I'll announce winners on August 9th. Find the rules HERE.

Alphabet Car(d)s - my CTN project

Here's a sneak peek at what I'm working on for this year's CTN. I'm doing a set of animal/alphabet/automobile flash cards. Originally the idea started as doing a children's book and the idea evolved into flash cards. Everything is very much still in progress, but I want to share what I've been working hard on. I have exactly 2 weeks left until I need to deliver the final files so wish me luck.

Speaking of two weeks, only 2 weeks left in the original art raffle. Follow my blog or leave a comment to be entered.

How to train your dragon - OOP

An old, incomplete painting from "How to Train your Dragon." In an earlier version of the story, the kids are taken to a training ground high up on the island and they spend the night in a rickety old cabin. I started this painting with a rough marker and pencil sketch to establish the design. I added rough color in photoshop using color balance and then painted and dropped a few textures on top.

Don't forget about the original art give away! Here are the copy/pasted rules from last week.

You have 2 ways to enter -

1. Be a follower of my blog by the first of next month (August 1, 2011) 
2. Leave a comment on my blog during the month of July (quick! you have 3 weeks!)

2 winners will be selected out of each category.
Winners will be announced August 9th.

For more info on how to follow Click Click!
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=104226

Original Art Raffle! 200 Followers!

I never thought I would make it to 200 followers, let alone 100. A big thank you to all of you.

So in celebration of that, I decided to raffle off 4 pieces of original art. You have 2 ways to enter -

1. Be a follower of my blog by the first of next month (August 1, 2011) 
2. Leave a comment on my blog during the month of July (quick! you have 3 weeks!)

2 winners will be selected out of each category.
Winners will be announced August 9th.

For more info on how to follow Click Click!
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=104226

Thanks again everybody!


A small peek at what I'm up to. I'm insanely busy doing art in order to meet my printing deadline for the CTN expo. It's a lot of fun and pressure working on such a tight deadline.