I did some cleaning, organizing, a few loads of laundry, a bit of online shopping, played some old video games and sketched this on the iPad...
Nothing artsy fartsy to report today except for I redrew the letters in the name Phoenix, who's getting an EMN background treatment like the Layla-Mae piece I shared yesterday. I'm still not a 100% satisfied with the letters in both of them so I might tweak them again. I also sketched the little dude at the bottom and really like the way it came out.
One of the design projects I'd been working on over the last couple months was finally revealed Saturday night. It was the album artwork for my buddies' band The Wet Bandits. They finally released their new album, "Elysian," on Halloween and made it available to stream on Spotify & Apple Music and purchase via iTunes. My friend, Adam, the guitarist, asked me to design a beat up version of the Warner Brothers water tower. I think it was originally going to be a sticker but obviously turned out to be much bigger. Below are the original sketches from Adam's stick figure drawing to my detailed sketch that eventually turned into the digital illustration. There's also a timelapse video at the bottom of how I began the building out the tower then beating it up in Adobe Fresco. I eventually moved it into the desktop version of Adobe Illustrator to finish it. I also did the CD layout which is currently in production and I can't wait to get my hands on a physical copy I sketched a ghost wearing a Frankie Mcfly shroud for day 26 but haven't inked it yet so Tuesday will be a twofer.
After drawing out some names as extra goodies for a couple kids who received t-shirts of mine as gifts I was asked to do some for my cousin. One is for his girlfriend's daughter and the other for his little brother. The difference with these is that they're going to be created digitally versus hand-drawn like the last two. I worked on Layla-Mae's all day Friday and just finished sketching it out around 5:30 AM Saturday. There's still a lot more work to do, besides digitally inking it, like tweaking the letters to make them look more like the others and coloring it all in. I've been having fun with this and can't to see it finished. When it's done I'm going to print them out on adhesive vinyl sheets to make stickers.
It's happened every year for the last three years that I've done Inktober, I start running out of ideas and spend more time thinking of what to draw than actually draw. I think I've just entered the slump. Today I spent hours trying to come up with an idea and only sketched a few with pencil. Tomorrow I'll have to draw & ink two drawings to catch up.
I drew myself as Bruce Banner transforming into the Hulk from the cover of his first comic book. I sketched it out a few times before laying down the final lines and inking. I included a sketched a did a couple weeks ago when I was considering doing "Jacktober" which is a variant of Inktober that pays tribute to comic book artist Jack Kirby. If I had more time I probably would have drawn Betty & General Ross equivalents down in the right corner to fill out the space.
I snapped pics of the ceramic skull I'm painting for the upcoming "31 Skulls" art show and I'm digitally coloring in the cells before I go and actually paint it. I'm using the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator to quickly draw and fill the cells. My goal is to have all the colors balanced out and equally distributed around the skull.
I picked up some new colors today for the skull project and I started inking that sketch in my new black book. Double WIP'n it.
I ripped off the cellophane wrapper, slapped on one my stickers and started sketching in my new sketchbook tonight. It's some sort of decomposing skull with plants growing out of it.
This new job I'm working on is a refresh for my buddy's bands logo. He wants the new design to look like the old one but make it look older & beat up. He also requested a separate graphic that is basically the same concept but of an iconic image. Both are still in the early phases but starting to take shape.
I started working on the new band logo job tonight. Sketching out different variations of the general idea. Getting things out of my head and onto paper before vectorizing.
I picked up another small graphic design job today! I met with my buddy, Adam, (socially distant, outdoors and with masks on) to discuss redesigning his bands logo. We talked about what he and his bandmates have been through over the years and their plans to release their first LP. I also talked about how I've been considering doing more graphic design work for clients now that Covid has taken away my DJ & vending gigs. His band logo, and the other design I've been working on, are good first jobs to help me get my feet wet doing freelance work, which has never been appealing to me before.
I didn't get too artsy fartsy today but I did take a little time to think about how I want to build out the website. I currently have all my t-shirts and stickers on one page in my store and that's it. I plan on doing the same with the new one but I also want to create individual pages for each style of t-shirt that has more details and information about each design. I wish creating websites were as easy as sketching them.
Here are a few more sketches I made today for the client project I've been working on. We figured out which path to go down so now I'm trying to expand on the original idea and to come up with my first round of variations.
I started working on a new project. It's still in the early phases but here are some sketches I did tonight. I might share more as this progresses.
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Frankie Mcfly's
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