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.
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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.
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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
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I have to share, while I’m on a roll, an open letter from the very talented Von Glitschka. He’s asking all Illustrator users who have features they would like to see added or changed in Illustrator to do something about it and tell Adobe. The more a feature is requested, the better chance you’ll see it in a future version! See the letter here! Iconfactory has a few things to say about Illustrator as well here. Do you agree with any of them? Tell Adobe!Let’s start a revolution and love Illustrator again!
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I’m having issues with my site and Firefox. Please be patient while I work it out. Thanks!
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As promised, here is the first of hopefully many such videos showcasing features that I hope Adobe will add to future versions of Illustrator.
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Freehand is dead. It’s a painful truth which has forced many of us illustrators to migrate to Adobe Illustrator to earn our living. Although I have acclimated pretty good, it hasn’t been the smoothest transition as many of my Twitter friends can attest. When I learned Freehand 13 years ago, I was surrounded by many other more experienced Freehand users who trained me in the efficient ways to draw, since our employee reviews were largely based on production.Flash forward to the present. I work alone at home, training myself and stumbling through the quirks of Illustrator. I know there are ways that Illustrator can be more efficient, and I know efficient ;). But when I verbally explain to friend or forum members how things can be improved in Illustrator, I usually get one or more of the following responses:
- a blank stare
- a rolling of the eyes
- accusations that I just can’t let Freehand die, and that I should quit being a baby
The truth is, I want very badly to love Illustrator. I use it more hours than I see my own family each day.So, I’m going to start making Illustrator videos for the following reasons:
- To share with Adobe Illustrator Developers when I make feature requests. A picture is worth a thousand words.
- To share with friends, so either they stop rolling their eyes, or they can share a better way of doing things with me.
- To share with everyone, so maybe someone else can learn either from my techniques, or my mistakes.
Let it be known that this will not be a Illustrator bashing session. I really want to learn the best way to do things, and I want Illustrator to step up. Adobe killed Freehand, it’s high time they brought back efficiency that they took away. It’s an Illustrator Call to Duty.
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No time for color this week, just a couple sketches.
Faith is overshadowed by superstition here. The basic idea of this one was from my wife. She may not be artistic, but she’s definitely creative.
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It’s a good thing that Thanksgiving is between Halloween and Christmas (at least in the States it is). Acts as a buffer and gives the two extremes a bit of breathing room. The turkey always gets it in the end anyway despite his intentions to make peace.
Hmmm… this might work well for this years’ “Happy Holidays” card.
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7:08:31 AM PM – I keep having these dreams that I went back to my old job, and my old house that I lived in when I was 12. Why do I keep having these?
9:58:38 AM – Just figured out how to wrangle the text boxes in Illustrator. Switching from Freehand to Illustrator has been very painful.
2:54:52 PM – It’s so hard to hear Camille screaming and throwing a fit upstairs and stay detached so that I can work. Poor Jen.
4:15:22 PM – The kids just got home from school and are watching Arthur on PBS while Jen is at a PTA meeting. Aurthur’s a great babysitter until I’m done working.
4:25:55 PM – Arthur’s not doing so great. Camille is at my heals begging me to stop working.
Needless to say, I’m a fan of Twitter, and I add “tweets” all the time. For those of you not familiar with Twitter, I suggest you go HERE to find out what it’s all about, and you’d never really understand it until you try it.
But in a nutshell, its global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? You have a 140 character limit, making sure you don’t write an epistle, rather just a quick note.
While writing several “tweets”, or Twitter entries, the other day, I thought, “Hey, I’m practically writing in a journal for all to see!” (Yeah, I’m a bit dense, but I figured that out all on my own). “What if some journaling software had a widget where I could add small, time-stamped entries to my journal without actually opening up the program, adding an entry, adding a time stamp, but do all that as quickly as I can with Twitter through Twitterrific?” I asked myself (I work alone).
My question didn’t go unanswered! But I had to ask around first. I went to Journler’s site and asked the community there. I was quickly answered by “NovaScotian”, an AppleScript genius. He said that no such widget existed, but until then I could use a quick AppleScript he wrote for Journler. He didn’t have it already, he created it then and there, and tweaked it to my wishes!
So, now all I have to do is click on the AppleScript icon in the menu bar, select Journler, and a little window pops up for me to write my “tweet”, hit enter, and it does all the dirty work for me! All my “tweets” are entered into a daily journal, with a time stamp just like the entries at the beginning of this blog entry.
I would never write the details shown above if I waited to write a normal journal entry. I would have forgotten, or just thought they were too trivial to write, yet now I have a vivid record of what life’s really like around the Bruner household. No worrying about grammar, no trying to schedule in journal time. Just write as it happens, and I have the best journal I’ve ever had.
If you’re interested in doing the same thing, go purchase Journler, and look at this forum topic to get the code and instructions.
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Although scolded every time, juggling the farm animals was a habit Cindy couldn’t kick until her early teens.
Update:
I played with this a little more to give it a warmer hand sketched look. I kinda dig the rougher feel of the cow below. What do you think? What style do you think children’s book publishers would welcome more? Click on the cow to see it up close.
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Almost 10 years ago a friend asked me to draw this illo for her because she was getting married at such an old age (she was probably in her early 40s at the time), and she actually used it on the front of her wedding announcement. I still can’t believe it.
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Not terribly long ago I found a new love. She’s hard at first, but with warm hands and a firm touch, she loosens up and becomes more pliable. Her fleshy tones are a bit unnerving, just begging for a little primer before her true colors shout out.
Super Sculpey, I can’t keep my hands off you. You form so easily and even in the face of ice cold sculpting tools, you bend to my every whim. You never complain about me putting you in your place, and never, ever, do you revert to your original form.
Through the refiner’s fire you emerge as tough and determined as ever to please. Your final act in life is to become what you were destined to become: Art.
Super Sculpey, may you never become brittle in the face of adversity, and may your true form show forever.
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