GunSlingers…

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I’ve got this client that I’ve worked with for many, many years now who prints up simple card games for people to buy. He always wants drawings in a sequence… kind of like a limited animation scene. He only wants black and white images ( too bad ), but they’re usually a lot of fun to draw. This time around, the theme was “gunslingers”. The job was to draw a few gunslingers, in three poses: About to draw their gun/guns….
…drawing their gun(s), and…
…getting shot. This guy was the first one I did, a kind of ” Marshall Matt Dillon” from “Gunsmoke” or “Hoss” from “Bonanza”.

My Dad was a big Western fan when I was growing up ( John Wayne was his favorite), so I’ve watched plenty of Western TV shows and movies myself.
BTW, I think I colored this one just for myself. I’ll try to find it and post here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Hmmm. Today makes you think, you know?

We got a call from an Aunt in Iowa whose Dad ( she married into the family) just passed away unexpectedly yesterday.
We also got a call from an artist friend whose Mom is in terminal condition. They were surprised she made it till morning, up in the ICU of a Georgia hospital.
So, all this has me thinking today even more about how good my life is, and how blessed I am. Give thanks today to HE who gave it all to you, and hug your loved ones a few extra seconds today, okay?
Here’s hoping you and yours have a Happy Thanksgiving Day.

iPad 4.2 : Where the heck is my Screen Lock?

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I was ecstatic to download the iPad 4.2 operating system today. Mainly because I’ve been waiting to be able to create folders for my bookmarks. I now have my seven pages down to one and a half- Woo Hoo!


BUT…. ( insert imposing DUM DUM DUM music…)

They changed the screen lock button to a mute button! ARGGH! I was perfectly fine with toggling down the volume switch to mute. It was bad enough trying to read a website with the screen changing orientation on me, but I could only imagine how frustrated I was going to be trying to draw on this thing now.

So, I did some googling and found a solution, which I’ve shown in the screen capture above ( yes that is me and my beautiful girls and our dog on the screen). To lock the screen orientation, double-click the Home button on the iPad and slide the gray tray all the way to the right to reveal a lock, volume, and brightness controls and iPod playback controls. Yay! Crisis averted!




iPad toon

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I just returned from the ISCA convention in Vegas, and man, am I behind here in the studio! Lots of people wanting their caricatures drawn. Thank God, right?

Anyway, no time for much bloggery, but thought I’d throw this quick sketch up here that I did on the iPad the other day.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The King, Part 2

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I changed a few things before I colored this piece. Boomhauer’s can changed to a bottle, all of the cans are now the same size, I added the recycle bin, etc. More than in the opening of the show, I played with colors in my version. All of the blue pants contrast with my orange-y fence. The blue bands on the cans are right against that as well, “popping” them out. The recycle bin is orange, against the blue of the pants right next to him.There’s a lot of yellow in that fence, which butts up against a purple of the roof of the house. The red hat is against the green trees. All kinds of stuff going on.

If you haven’t tried “King of the Hill” before, do so. It’s running twice a night where I live ( Orlando, FL ).. And if you dont’ like the art, like I didn’t at first… well, do what I did, and redesign it!!!

The King….

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I don’t know why exactly, but during “The King of the Hill”s decade or so run on TV, I never really watched an episode. I didn’t have a real reason that I know of. Sure, the “shakey line” art style bothered me, but that didnt’ bother me too badly on “Beavis and Butthead”, also by Mike Judge several years prior. I think it was the early Sunday night timeslot it had.. I was never at home watching TV that time of night. On any night.

But I did notice something very early on about “The King”… Hank Hill, the father of the show, and it’s namesake, I suppose, bore an UNCANNY resemblance to my maternal grandfather. George Suttle, “Papa” to me, hung the moon. He lived long enough to get to know and love my incredible wife, Barbie, but passed on just before the birth of my oldest daughter, now twelve. I had him for 28 years or so, and after my Dad, he was the best man I’ve ever known. I need to dig up some photos of Papa to post here.. so you can see the resemblance between him and Hank Hill too.
Anyway… these past few months, I have become a HUGE fan of “King of the Hill” in reruns. Hank looks so much like Papa, and does have some of his qualities. But Hank is a great character all on his own. As are all the characters. The show is set in Texas, in the Bible Belt. I am from South Carolina, the virtual buckle of the Bible Belt. So, a lot of the conservative attitudes of the show are familiar to me. In fact, a lot of them I share. That’s one thing I like about the show… they are true, in their writing, to the characters, but don’t really talk “down” about their beliefs and attitudes too much. It’s not a show that makes fun of the small town, religious, conservative Americans it portrays. Well, not too much. Pretty remarkable these days, considering how liberal Hollywood is.
I was watching an episode of “King” tonight, and had a sketchbook in my hand. Every once in awhile, I like to do my own versions of cartoons and movies I like. The goal, rather than copying, is to pretend it’s a character design job, and put my own twist on the characters. Still keeping the basic character designs, but tweaking them to exist in “my world”. Next, I’ll show my color version….

Booster

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After watching some toons the other night with my girls, I decided to try my toony version of Booster Gold, a DC Superhero. Thought I’d let you see…

IPad stuff

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My location at this Vegas gig a couple of weeks ago left a lot to be desired.
I was in the hallway, which sounds great, but turned out to be a real detriment. If I was drawing someone, they kind of blocked the screen and that made me almost invisible. So most people passed right by, into the convention hall without seeing me. In fact, it wasn’t until the last day that I ever had much of a line for people waiting. And when I drew them, they said they hadn’t seen me for the past two days. Ugh. Oh well.

What I did find out on the last day, with people waiting, is that I was actually drawing pretty quickly, learning curve and all. It turns out I was drawing these , under sketch, shading, and all, in less than five minutes. That was good to know.

Oh yeah, one other weird thing about drawing and projecting… The iPad VGA adapter doesn’t fit really well on any VGA cord I could find. So a couple of times at the show, the cord separated from the adapter and I lost my signal on the monitor. Yikes. But I figured out how to work around it so it didn’t happen anymore.

I learned a ton at this gig, and am looking forward to my next iPad gig adventure.

PS… I lost my cool new iFaraday stylus at this show! Yep, the lack of a pen clip caught up with me. I vaguely remember putting the stylus behind my ear between drawings, and NOT clipping it back to the cool magnet it has. After that, I have no idea what happened. I had to finish the show with the Griffin stylus, which turned out okay. I hope whomever finds my stylus enjoys it!
But I do miss it. 😦

Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

iPad gig in Vegas

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I keep promising to talk about things I learned on the Vegas gig, but finding the time to do so has been a challenge. Sorry! Well, for one thing, I found that Running through the VGA cord slooooows down my iPad a bit. Not sure why, but everything just seemed to move slower. Curved lines even turned out straight until I slowed way down while drawing them. So that hurt my speed. Add to that the fact that trying to email by 3G took forever, and my power on my iPad drained really quickly. I would’ve been better with two iPads! I’m considering doing that, buying a second one for gigs. For a few hours I would’ve been fine, but for an all day trade show, well, I was sweating it. Add to that the fact that I was trying to send the pix to people via 3G ( Wifi was nonexistent here), and my power just got SUCKED away. One day I had to stop projecting for a bit and just hooked up to a power outlet to recharge while I continued drawing. With only one port on the iPad, drawing, recharging, AND projecting wasn’t an option.

To Be Continued…..

Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

iPad toons, Vegas gig pt2

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Back for another look into my recent iPad gig in Las Vegas. I found that doing full figure toons of people, with the faces so small, was quite challenging on the iPad. The brushes in ArtStudio and Sketchbook only go so small. So I was left with trying to capture likenesses with just a few lines and dots. I would’ve been much better off avoiding the faces all together , going for a more fashion illustration look, with just light indications of the faces. Boy, I look forward to doing a “real” caricature gig on the iPad again sometime soon, where I can use the entire image area for the face. These faces were too small for comfort!

But I did kinda dig the retro, “Mad Men” style I got with them. In places, a bit reminiscent of Ketcham, too, one of my favorite cartoonists ( whom you may notice I try to mention as much as possible on here). More tomorrow….

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad