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One of my favorite Presidents is Abraham “I don’t need no stinkin’ middle name” Lincoln. I don’t know if a lot of people know this but I studied a fair bit of history in college and often during breaks between my history class I would draw famous historical leaders in my notebook. Also I would add stupid comments or quotes from them in word bubbles next to them. While I mostly took western civilization classes I would often draw Abraham Lincoln throughout history interacting with everyone from the Mesopotamians all the way up to Churchill. Some people who would sit nearby would often ask if I really liked Bill & Ted (I have never seen either movies), which I would just smile and say no to.

Well this year was President Lincoln’s 200th birthday so I thought I would take on this small project where I would try to draw a couple of illustrations of him. I thought I would have started earlier but it just didn’t happen. Tonight I started my first illustration in what I am calling the Honest Abe series. Here is how far I got tonight in what I would call a clean rough. I was thinking of taking this into Corel Painter but I might hold off for the next illustration to do that and instead just do a very flat cartoony coloring in Photoshop.

I don’t believe I am going to draw his legs but I am holding off on drawing his hands for another night. Like Hitler, I have trouble drawing hands and it usually takes me a while to get something acceptable. Most people don’t appreciate this joke when I tell it, but it’s true that one of the reasons Hitler was rejected from art school was his lack of an ability to draw hands.

Happy New Year everyone. I have been working on a new project and today I thought I should do a test for a look that I wasn’t sure would work. I decided to use my logo for the test because it is way more simple of a shape than what I will use for the project. This test most likely won’t going to go any further than this but I liked the way it looked so wanted to share it with you. This took me about an hour and half to do, but with a more complicated word/shape I am afraid it is going to take a lot of time to tweak to make it look right.

I have contracted a cold on my trip out to New York. So I didn’t go out and do much today. Luckily though I finished most of the stuff I had to do this weekend yesterday.

Feeling kind of puny from the cold I thought I would set it up so I could lay in bed and work laying down (and occasionally doze off from the NyQuil). I thought I would work on this typographic poster that I have been wanting to do. I have been seeing a lot of 3D typography lately and they all seem to look as if they are using the same technique (or tutorial). I wanted for this project to show 3D type that looked a bit more organic and not like it was made simply by rendering something out of a 3D program and adding a couple of effects in Photoshop.

So this is where I am at with the line work. It is starting to take shape and is a lot more work than I originally thought it would be. I usually like to work outside of the workspace in illustrator just because I don’t like to feel confined to that rectangle they put as the drawing board. Because I didn’t feel like moving my stuff into the drawing board area I just took a screen cap to show you what I have been working on. So you can see the progress so far below and a couple of notes on my workspace.

Continue reading Sunday project and my workspace.

I was going through some old files and backing stuff up for my trip and found an old file (1.2GB PSD!) that had a project I did while I was at VFS. This was an assignment for my print class where we had to design a submission for Print Magazine’s young designers competition. The concept for my submission was to show how young designers even though we have all these digital tools we still draw a lot of inspiration from the great designers who came before us. But in the end I mainly liked the wallpaper which was just a small part of the illustration I submitted. The wallpaper isn’t truly Victorian but my feeble attempt at emulation is obvious. I exported some large versions of just the wallpaper that you can download below if you are interested.

1600×1200 Wallpaper (1.7mb)
1920×1080 Wallpaper (1.7mb)

This post is about the process for an illustration I am working on for my good friend Meagan. I told her a while back that I was trying to draw more and she asked if I would do one of her. I didn’t really have anything to work on this evening so I decided to start this project. Lately I have been trying to draw in my sketchbook and finish it off before my trip but for this I decided to use the opportunity to practice working with the tablet and Illustrator (ugh).

Continue reading Meagan Illustration Process, pt.1: Lines

First off, congrats to my brother Aaron and his girlfriend Kadee on their first born, Athena Sunshine Marie Peterson. I went down to Portland today and was with them so I wasn’t able to do any work until I got home tonight around 9.

Today a friend of mine sent me an email with this beautiful promotional book that the good people at Bethesda was handing out at PAX’08 in promotion of their upcoming game Fallout 3, The Vault Dweller’s Survival Guide. I usually don’t really go for remakes of the kitsch 1950’s/60’s style, but I ate up this book’s illustrations and textures that are combined with the well written and humorous copy. The book is 50 pages long and is full tips (in the style of the Worst Case Scenario… books) for surviving in the nuclear wasteland version of America in 2077. A nice touch that didn’t require too much work but goes a long way for me nostalgia wise is the little notes section in the back. The little blank map and lined notes area reminds me of the great game manuals that used to come with my NES and SNES games.

After going through about half the book I went to the official site to find out more about the game. I had played the original one a long time ago but don’t remember much other than it was based in a post-apocalyptic world that started in the 1950’s. The screenshots from the game look really gritty and realistic like Gears of War. I am sure that this is going to be a good game given Bethesda’s track record and after reading about it I can’t wait to play it.

This is also a great chance for me to mention something I saw over at Cartoon Brew a while ago that I was reminded of when seeing this. The Punch Below the Belt is a real book issued during the second World War. While this sort of stuff does evoke an emotional response from me (at times disgust), I do find these sort of things very interesting and think of them as things that we shouldn’t forget that we have done and how recently.

Also on a side note Google has released their new browser Chrome today. Hopefully this is something that I can use to finally replace my bloated Firefox browser.

Oh hello there! As you can see if you have been here before, all my posts (all 4 of them) have disappeared. Thanks again Site5. But this is the start of my (serious) effort to blog more and show what I am working on each day.

Well after my whole website got deleted uploaded what backups I did have, I decided to add my last video that I finished, Forge Gaming Commercial, to my portfolio. Please go check it out and tell me what you think.

Tonight I started working on an illustration to keep from getting rusty in my 2D work and to provide a nice break from the NLE I have been doing for a friend. I decided to take a sketch I had done a while ago and try to ink and color it in one night using Illustrator and Photoshop. And now it is 3 in the morning and I am tired from the long weekend and I thought I would upload what I have so far.

Original Sketch:

Current State:

That’s it for the day. I probably have to work on some other projects tomorrow but I will try to finish this before the end of the week.

Oh and one last thing. If you had linked to my old blog, would you be kind enough to update your blogroll with my current address. Thanks and see you soon.