Illustration Friday: Fierce

garth — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 04:45:52 +0000

I just love drawing fat fingers and little kids’ toes. Nothing fierce about those at all.

Click to see it larger. Watercolor and ink with brush.

Illustration Friday: Seed

garth — Sat, 03 May 2008 22:55:57 +0000

Click to see larger.

Watercolor and ink with brush.

Illustration Friday: Primitive

garth — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:56:31 +0000

Any dentist that uses needles, drills, picks, cold water, abrasives, scissors, floss, anything with high pitch sounds or tastes bad is still in the dark ages as far as I’m concerned. Brushed ink lines and watercolor wash.

Ink Wash Monster

garth — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:24:32 +0000

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love drawing monsters. They can be ugly, cute, scary, cuddley… I’m guilty of the same. Here’s a fun ink wash study of a cuddley cute one, but that’s subjective.

Giant Puzzles

garth — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:18:35 +0000

Just in case you have a hard time focusing on those huge puzzles with a gazillion teeny pieces, here are a few that will just put your mind at ease. Then when you complete them, they can be used as little futons to take a nap upon. They’re big (20×30 inches), they’re made of thick, soft, but durable, foam, and you’ll learn the life cycles of various creatures while having fun!

These aren’t the cartoony illustrations I’m used to drawing, but it’s fun to take on a different style once in a while. Again, logo and illustrations done by me, and Giant Life Cycle Puzzles furnished by Insect Lore.

Critter Carnival

garth — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 04:56:40 +0000

The summer days are long, and there aren’t enough rocks for all your offspring to play under. What’s a bug mother to do, send them to the compost pile? Right, good luck getting them to return for supper from that wonder wasteland… There are safer alternatives, one that even conforms to strict ASTM F963 requirements!

Introducing the Critter Carnival! This amusement park is the ultimate playground for your young larvae! Watch them play and perform in the zany carnival bug-play arena with a slide, swing, maze, tightrope, ferris wheel & teeter totter. Even a large protective dome to keep those pesky humans from squashing your precious pupae. It’s your very own one-ring circus!

Logo design by yours truly, and product by Insect Lore.

Sticking it to PAAS

garth — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 05:23:10 +0000

I awoke Saturday morning with the dread of covering the table with newspaper and filling the house with the smell of vinegar. I was equally dreading setting up a factory of the same old dyed Easter eggs… I just wanted to do something different, so I decided to stir it up a little, so I gave the kiddies a choice… a little to my wife’s dread. Dye or Paint? I was beaming with pride when the voting was unanimous for paint! So off I went to find the kiddie paint brushes.

Our children aren’t the kindest to their paint brushes, and a few have had to be thrown away. I’m guessing that’s what had happened to ALL of thier brushes. My wife blamed it on the Parents Against Art Supplies (PAAS… Isn’t she clever?) So I had to calm them down a little as I ran to the craft store to buy a new stash and we painted away. We painted far fewer eggs than we would have dyed, which is just fine by me, and we had a great time. Here are the results done my me, my 10 year old son, 7 year old daughter, and 4 year old daugher, in that order:

Junior’s NYC

garth — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 04:56:35 +0000

I recently enjoyed a wonderful apple pie á la mode at Junior’s in New York City in Times Square. Boy, I can still taste it.

Masks

garth — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:53:21 +0000

This is probably one of my biggest pet peaves with Illustrator: the ability to select hidden/masked items.

Thanks for watching my sub-par videos and for the great comments!

Update - I had to temporarily delete this video. YouTube conversion messed it up. I’ll rerecord and repost soon.

Illustrator Drawing Tools Feature Requests

garth — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 19:00:45 +0000

This one covers several drawing tools and requests, all listed below the videos. It’s all about giving us options to work the way we like to work, not the way Illustrator tells us to.

Part 1

Part 2

Feature requests:

The ability to place several scans/bitmap images at a time
The ability to move an item to another layer just by clicking on the desired layer
Line preview with the pen tool (make it an option)
The ability to toggle between the pen tool, the selection tool, and the subselection tool on the fly
Somehow indicate that a path is closed or open
The option to have the fill color show, or not until the path is closed
Bezigon-like tool
Deleting a point with the delete key only deletes the point, doesn’t break the path (make it an option!)
The option to highlight selected path, or not