Raggedy Ann and Andy's Camel

When I was a kid I loved Bobbs-Merrill's 1977 movie, "Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure". This is my first fan art piece and I'm so glad it's of "The Camel with the Wrinkled Knees" who is one of my favorite childhood characters. Since I inked & colored it in Flash CS3, I decided to animate him a little to bring him to life. I added music from the movie. You can see the animated version at my deviantArt page here.
UPDATE: Decided to use this for Illustration Friday's work "Toy".

Barkles Feature on HAI

Yay me! I'm so excited. I just learned that my Barkles illustration is being featured on Hire an Illustrator today. Thanks so much to Jane and Darren and the team at HAI! I really appreciate it. What a great way to start the weekend.

Barkles 503 Page

This is a commissioned illustration I did for a new social networking company called Barkles. It's a place to share your opinions and get rewarded. The site is launching soon and this illustration is for their 503 error page. It's the page that tells the user that the web site's server is simply not available at the moment. This is usually due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server. So their idea was to have their mascot tearing the page to expose the server. They were pleased with the final, as was I. And since this had me busy I decided to also submit it for my Illustration Friday drawing for this week. A little double-duty here. The word this week is "layer". Barkles is pulling back a layer.

Tee Lake Resort - Tshirt Design

My partner & I took over his parent's four-cabin resort on Tee Lake in Lewiston, Michigan last spring. We moved from Florida and it's been quite a journey. Check out our official website www.TeeLakeResort.com and come stay with us! Anyhow, guests were asking for merchandise so I designed this illustration and we put it on the back of white t-shirts. I'm glad to announce it's selling well!

UPDATE: I turned the fish into its own t-shirt! Available at RedBubble.
http://www.redbubble.com/people/artbyandy/t-shirts/6938038-1-fishy-fish

Hunk in Retro Trunks

I'm going to be doing some super hero character designs for a client soon so I thought I'd get a head start and do some study drawings of the muscle man physique. So, I picked a picture and just drew it as is. Then I put the photo aside and looked at my drawing for inspiration to draw the cartoon version. I liked my cartoon version and decided to ink & color him.

Cartoon Carpenter

Flipping through an old magazine to find something to sketch as a warm-up, I came across this carpenter. So I sketched him out as realistically as possible. Then I decided to re-draw him in a more simplified cartoon version. I was happy with the outcome and decided to ink & color it. This didn't take me too long and was a fun exercise.

UPDATE: Now available at my online shop, The Digi Street, as a digital download for your personal craft projects. Click on the images below to take you to that product page.

Puppy Sweater

What's cuter than a puppy in a sweater? This week's Illustration Friday word is "sweater". I used the photo of a puppy to do a warm-up sketch and get me in the puppy-drawing mood.

UPDATE: This puppy in a sweater illustration is now available in my shop, The Digi Street, for your personal craft projects. You can click on the image below and be taken to that product's page.

The Luv Brothers

The Luv Brothers is my brother's Rocky Mountain Bluegrass band in Summit County, Colorado. They asked me to illustrate their debut self-titled album's CD cover. In the end, I wound up laying out the entire package. Here is the actual CD package along with the original images.

You can check out their myspace page or their Facebook page.

Greek T-Shirt

This commissioned piece is a t-shirt design I did last spring. The translation is "My Grandparents got me this t-shirt because they love me this much." The children are in traditional Greek clothing.

Cold Feet

This is a wedding invitation I did as a wedding gift for a friend along with the outline before I colored it and the sketch. In the sketch, you can see I was having issues with the mouth.

IF - Reverse

Happy Valentine's Day! Cupid had the arrows reversed onto him. He's gonna get it! Clicking on the image will give you a larger view of the artwork. Below is the inked version before coloring. And below that are my sketches. I scan my sketches and ink & color in Adobe Flash CS3.

UPDATE: Now availabe as a digi-stamp for your personal scrapbooking, card-making and crafting use. Visit my online shop to purchase and download for only $2 (black & white) or $3 (colored). http://www.thedigistreet.com/.

Surrender Dorothy

When I think of the word "Surrender" I immediately think of of one of my favorite movies, The Wizard of Oz, and the time the Wicked Witch of the West did a little HILARIOUS skywriting on her broom! So when Illustration Friday announced the word "surrender", I knew exactly what I was going to do. In fact, oddly enough, it's actually something I've wanted to do for awhile but just never got around to it. Until now!
I always try to include my sketches. This sketch of the layout is of the piece as I saw it originally in my head. It's just a quick sketch to get the basic composition down so I could refer to it later. Then I found some photos online of Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West and did some real life sketches in order to establish in my mind the look and feel for the soon-to-be cartoon version I wanted to create.
The final sketch I scanned and brought into Flash to ink & color. You can see some of my notes to myself. I knew it would be easier to make those adjustments in the computer rather than erase lines and re-draw. You can see the broom needles needed to be shorted and I wanted her right foot moved to the left more.

UPDATE: If you'd like to use this illustration for personal use such as scrapbooking or crafting, you can now download it at my shop, The Digi Street! Click on the image below to take you to that product.

UPDATE: View this post to learn about the t-shirt for this illustration!
http://artbyandy.blogspot.com/2011/03/surrender-dorothy-t-shirt-available.html

Simplify Exercise

This is an excercise I did this morning trying to simplify from real life. The first image is an advert in a magazine. The second image is my attempt at sketching it realistically. The third is my 1st attempt at simplifying my "realistic" sketch. The fourth is my 2nd attempt at cartoon-izing the hand. And the final image was inked and colored in Flash CS3. Overall, I'm happy with the result and it was great practice.