Venable's Stude

Just before Christmas, I finished up this concept illustration for a client I had worked with in the past. Charles Venable is a customer of my Dad's hot rod/custom shop, and he's an avid land speed racer.

Venable and my Dad are building this 1953 Studebaker to run at a few East Coast courses, and there are plans to take it to Bonneville this summer and attempt at breaking a record.

(For those who aren't familiar with land speed racing, this is all about miles per hour. The "course" is a long, flat straight ranging any where from one mile on up, with another length of track to slow back down. One car on the course at a time; see how fast you can go. If you saw the movie, World's Fastest Indian, you have seen what LSR is.)

The purpose of this illustration was to work out the scheme for the scallops on the front section of the car. The car itself will be painted satin black, with gloss red scallops. (They say this pint job is good for an extra two or three miles per hour!)

This project was done entirely - from initial sketch to finished art - in Photoshop CS4.

Venable has a Photobucket album showing photos of the actual build. Click here to see the progress (and some photos and video of his '34 Ford Vicky that he currently races).

Ramrods web site

One of my repeat clients just got their web site pushed live. Head over to www.ramrodstx.com and check them out.

I did the graphics, and Billy at Ramrods built the site himself.

They are a full-service hot rod, custom car, and restoration shop located in Terrell, TX.

These guys are an absolute pleasure to work with. If you need some custom work done, be sure to give them a call!

Dallas H.O.G. T-Shirt

From alligators on lawnmowers to swine on motorcycles! Well, the image of a hog on a hog isn't really that novel, but it's one of those things that can be interpreted in so many ways that it will continue to be drawn for years to come.

One of the sales managers at my day gig, Kerry Turner, a very avid motorcycle dude, approached me to create some art for the Dallas Harley Owners Group. I was given a lot of freedom to create a wild hog character on a motorcycle. The character was sourced from photos of actual wild boars.

I don't normally have the opportunity to work with more than one or two colors on a shirt design, but this time I got to go with 6 colors. That added a lot of dimension to the hog character, and really made the art "pop".

The basic production of this piece started with some rough sketches in my sketchbook, then a freehand sketch done digitally in Photoshop.

(The HOG logo was obviously copy/pasted, but the rest is all freehand with Photoshop's Brush tool.)

The Photoshop sketch was placed into Illustrator CS4, and I went to building the vector shapes and colors. This particular piece was done primarily with Illustrator's Blob Brush tool.

(Final Art)

This morning Kerry brought me the shirt sample and I'm really pleased with the print quality.

(Actual Shirt- Back)

(Actual Shirt- Front)

Gator Power Illustrative Logo

I've mentioned my friend Chandler before, and he recently hooked me up with some work for one of the suppliers he deals with at his day gig. IrriGators Supply out of McKinney, TX has seen a need in the commercial landscaping power equipment market, so they have created Gator Power Equipment as a division of their company.

They had already had some branding using an Alligator mascot for the older company. The previous artist has since passed away, so they needed to find someone who could keep the spirit of the former branding.

Previously, the Alligator was posed in a way that he made the "G" in "IrriGators", and this is part of the branding system they wanted to keep with the Gator Power visuals.

I did a few quickie pencil sketches and scanned them and emailed them to the client. They approved the basic concept pretty much immediately, but needed a few changes.

The main thing was that they needed the alligator to be riding on a commercial zero-turn mower rather than a traditional homeowner-style riding mower.

The previous branding used a lot of the Fajita Mild font... and if you know me well, you know I have some misgivings about using this font in places where it will ever appear less than about an inch tall. My main beef is the legibility is very poor when seen small or from far away. This mascot/logo image would be placed on everything from business cards to t-shirts to the 16-feet-long by 8-feet-high side panels of an enclosed trailer. Scalability and legibility are as important as ever here!

So naturally, I had to make some other suggestions, but my contact Scott suggested a second font that showed up in a lot of the old branding. Mistral is another font that I've always avoided for legibility issues. (It was also very cliché in the late 1980s -- I have referred to it as, "The Comic Sans of the late 1980s".) However, I found it stayed pretty legible in all-caps -- something highly unusual for a script font.

(As a side note, I would have preferred to do a hand-lettered version here, but timeframe and budget did not allow for that.)

So once we had the basics worked out, it was time to clean it up with vector work and color. Also, I needed to set up a more horizontal layout for certain instances. Most of the alligator and mower were built using Illustrator CS4's new Blob Brush and Eraser tools controlled by my almost-9-years-old Wacom Intuos 9x12 tablet.

It has been a real pleasure to work with Scott and IrriGators Supply/Gator Power, and it's looking like we'll be having some more visuals coming in the near future. Stay tuned!

Illustration Friday: Skinny

My first-ever Illustration Friday submission! The theme this week was, "skinny". This dude is so skinny he doesn't even need to open his umbrella!

Ancillary Creativity

It's been a few weeks since I've posted, and as I was listening to the latest podcast from Escape From Illustration Island earlier today, Thomas James put out the challenge to blog about other creative endeavors. (BTW, EFII is quickly becoming my favorite podcast.)

I know many working designers and illustrators are also musicians on some level. That's one talent God chose not to bless me with. I've tried playing guitar and bass in my college years, but it was very mechanical... sort of a musical equivalent of color-by-number. And I couldn't hit a correct vocal note no matter how hard I try. I love listening to music, but I just can't make it!

Some visual artists write poetry or prose to keep their creative juices flowing.

Others get into photography and perhaps even shoot weddings or something for a few extra weekend dollars.

You get the idea.

If you've been around me for more than a couple minutes, you know I'm into old cars in a pretty strong way. One thing I've been fascinated with is how much creativity goes into building a classic American hot rod or custom car.

I really started to notice it when I took a brief hiatus from working full-time as a commercial artist to work with my Dad at his hot rod shop. It was really amazing how I found myself using many of the same genre of problem-solving skills while working on all that old American iron.

On building the car, maybe I need a way to gusset that chassis crossmember and still leave room for a fuel line and exhaust. Maybe that fuse panel needs to be as out-of-sight as possible, yet not out-of-reach.

Then when we start into re-shaping the exterior sheet metal, things almost become sculpture. Much like graphic design needs to balance form with function, so does re-designing a car.

So yeah, building my 1952 Chevrolet Fleetline is a creative endeavor.It doesn't look like much now... but it's getting there.

Commercial Artist

"Commercial Art". Some would say that's an antiquated term. Even when I was in college in the early 1990's (when computer classes were still optional for design students), they were already poo-pooing that term. They called our department "Communication Arts" -- a term that sounded kinda redundant to me. (All art is communication IMO.)

With the advent of the computer being used for most design and layout, we've been hearing "Graphic Artist" or "Graphic Designer" frequently used for those who work with images and color on a computer screen.  I've been telling people for nearly two decades that I am a Graphic Artist. But... lately I've found myself not liking that term anymore.

In my career, I've seen that term get watered down to refer to anyone who has an Adobe app launched on their screen for at least a couple hours a week. There is really nothing about what some "Graphic Artists" do that could be considered art. At best, they may drop some "art" into a template or check it to make sure it will print properly or show up correctly on a web site. But that's just technical skill. It's not creative, and they're not making art. I've even noticed that some of the most effective people at these kinds of positions are not creative people at all.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to belittle those who have "Graphic Artist" under their name on their business cards and do the tasks I just mentioned. Honestly, I'm not very good at repetitive efficiency. I find myself being distracted by my own creativity when I'm required to repetitive tasks, so my efficiency plummets.

So back to the old school... I remember wanting to be a "Commercial Artist" when I grew up. That term has never bothered me like it does many of my colleagues. And I have always associated that term with people that can draw and make it reproducible. Right there, that's a lot of how I see the way I work. Technology has changed a lot of the methods and techniques, but the thought patterns remain with the creativity of solving visual problems, and making sure the solutions can be carried out to their full intent.

So if you ask me what I do, I'll say, "Commercial Artist".