Crappy Saturday.

A few months back my wife left for the weekend to attend a womens retreat so I played Mr. Mom with my two daughters. Saturday is normally the only day I ever sleep in so when my youngest woke me up at 7:30 am it was a bit difficult.

I promised them the night before I'd take them to the pancake house so we got dressed and headed off. During breakfast my daughters asked me to tell them a story about myself growing up, my oldest said "You know those funny stories where something happens to you. They make us laugh."

Well I thought to myself "It's been a while since something funny happened to me." Ok, that was a big mistake. I guess that was God's cue to add another one into my hopper because when we got home, opened the garage door and proceeded to walk inside we couldn't. Walk inside that is, the door was locked. We keep the key in a small utility drawer in the garage so I went to retrieve it and it wasn't there? Then I remembered my wife saying last week "I lost the key to the garage."

At this point I said "Uh oh. No key." and my daughter started whining how she was going to miss the birthday party she was invited too later that day and how the presents were inside the house. I decided to use my cell phone and call a friend and realized I didn't have it. And like one of those bad dreams where no one is around to help you, all our neighbors were gone for the weekend. Great. I then noticed my second story window open and considered climbing up but the pitch of our roof is such that I knew it would quickly go from humorous to dangerous so I axed that out. I then asked my daughter if she wanted to try and she said "No way!"

My youngest daughter said "We could goto our friends down the street and call." I shook my head and said "Ok lets go." Well it's about this time that a particular aspect to this story kicks in which could not have come at a worse time. My bowels chime in and say "I need to take a crap. Now!"

I walked about four steps and said "I can't go, I think I have diarrhea?" and then proceeded to grimace and dance around like I was standing on a hot plate. I told my daughter "Hurry go tell your friend to call a locksmith." She took off on her scooter. My other daughter is now pointing at me and laughing "You dance funny." "I am not dancing!" I said a little too sharply.

About 2 minutes go by and my bowels speak up again "Sorry but we aren't waiting. Open flood gate 3!" Panic sets in instantly and I look towards a shelf in our garage that contains cleaning supplies and toilet paper and hop over rip open the pack and grab a roll. I then take off as fast as I can run without allowing my butt cheeks to seperate and yell back at my daughter "Stay in the garage I am going to the backyard. Do not follow me!"

I make it 3/4 of the way and then experience what I can only assume is the same feeling a Depends user has and realize I didn't make it. So now I am hunched over behind our porch in the backyard in shock thinking "I hope my wife is having fun at the coast." I am hunched because if I stand up all the way neighbors can see me. So I proceed to take care of business. (Who said camping doesn't come in handy)

I come back around to the front of the house successfully purged, undies and all buried in a shallow unmarked grave in our back yard flower bed and hoping my daughter was a success in calling for help. She was and about ten minutes later the locksmith showed up opened our door in about 20 seconds and I paid him $45.



So now my daughters have a fun story about their goofy dad they can laugh about from now and for the rest of their lives. Sometimes I wonder why crap like this happens? Pardon the pun.

UPDATE TO STORY
Since posted this side order of my life, we have moved to a new house. So the obvious question is "Did you dig up the shorts?" Well, no I left them buried in the backyard for the new home owner to discover some day when he's doing yard work. I figure by that time it'll just resemble a very large dirty rubber band. The undies part will be long gone by then. Why are you making a funny looking face?

Scorpio Illo.

This is the latest incarnation for a series of '7' mascot characters I am doing for 'Tactix Creative' in Arizona. This specific mascot is the 'SanTan Scorpions'. Scorpions are one of those creatures I look at and immediately think "God has the best portfolio."

A scorpion is a member of the Arachnid family, but it's body shape resembles a Lobster more then a spider and it has claws and a wicked looking stinger. The whole design of a scorpion is cool. Very scary and intimidating looking and that is the feeling I wanted to capture in my mascot art.

Mascot for 'SanTan Scorpions' - Middle School


Larger Preview - Alternate coloring

What does it mean?

I titled this doodle 'Self'. Not sure why? Didn't really think about it, but it seemed like a good fit at the time. The more I stare at this doodle the more it makes me wonder. "Why did I draw this? What does it mean?"



Diagnose me psychosis. This is a doodle I did about 2 years ago. One of my favorites. I have no idea what it means or why I drew it. Many times these doodles just come out like 'Brain Droppings'. No real sense to them just dark morsels from the recesses of my mind that spill out onto paper.

So I figured it would be fun to see what you guys think. What do you think it might mean? Any insightful comments regarding my doodle? What say you Dr. Freud?

Soaring Vectors - Step by Step Tutorial

I teach a digital illustration class once a week at the local college here in Salem Oregon. Each week I show them how an illustrator goes about creating their artwork. These simple step by steps are provided by the illustrators featured and document their own creative process in an easy to view format. It allows my students and other industry peers to see how various artists work from concept to completion in a variety of styles.

This week I created one I am calling 'Soaring Vectors' which documents a recent sports mascot project I worked on. This weeks download includes '18' step by step images and commentary for each step is thoroughly provided in the Notes.rtf file included. This allows the viewer to print out the notes for future reference and read while viewing each step of the process. You can download the step by step tutorial here. (4.4mb).

I have created numerous step by steps on a variety of projects I've worked on over the past year. Eventually I'll have all available for download soon from a specific web site I am still fine tuning. This will also include all the shared creative processes by other artists too. If you'd like to be featured or share your creative process with my class shoot me an email and I'll tell you what I need. Full credit and links including a small bio is included with each artist featured. At this time approximately 600 creatives in our industry view the weekly content.

PS: Yes I bite my finger nails. Nasty habit I've never been able to break.

My art has gone to the birds!

Not sure why I've been commissioned to illustrate so many birds the past few months but here are two more. I am actually creating '7' school mascots for 'Tactix Creative' in Arizona. These specific mascots are for a school called 'Williams Field Black Hawks' (High School) and 'Higley Hawks' (Elementary School). These are tricky little buggers. You see you only get a maximum of '4' spot colors and two of those have to be 'Black' and 'White'. The schools colors are 'Red' and 'Grey' and 'Gold' and 'Grey' respectively.

This project is interesting in that all mascots have to be approved by the district and it brings up interesting opinions. Since one is for an Elementary school they don't want the mascot to be too aggressive or mean looking. But they want him cool enough that kids will still like it. Were as the High school prefers a more aggressive mascot and it's OK to have a furrowed brow. Either way who really wants to wear a weenie looking hawk on their school shirt? I can't help but think that soccer moms are influencing the art direction by not wanting Jr. to be scared by the mean looking hawk character? (OK, rant over)

The thing I like best about these type of projects is it's a good mix of illustration and design. I design my illustration more then normal on this type of work since it's being used in such a graphic format such as t-shirts, banners, floor decals etc.

Mascot for 'Williams Field Black Hawks' - High School


Mascot for 'Higley Hawks' - Elementary School

Devil in the Rough

Another doodle illustration using some brush textures.

Guardian Angel of Doodlers

Often referred to as 'St.Doodle'. This angelic creature is often wrongly labeled as a nefarious bi product of poor attention skills. Nothing could be further from the truth. In actuality this benevolent overseer watches over sketchers, scribblers, garden variety scawlers and any pee-chee loving doodlers with a penchant to draw on a whim.



PS: Played around with textures on this doodle.

Picasso Dog

One day a week I teach a digital illustration class at the local college. Each week I have my student do what I call 'Creative Thinking Exercise'. I told the students: "This weeks exercise is to draw the following three themes mimicking the 'Cubism Style' of Pablo Picasso. Get funky with it, play around with thick and thin lines and solid areas of black. This is a drawing exercise so no color. Keep it simple black and white."

Themes
- Dog
- Human (Full Figure or Bust)
- Bowl of Fruit

Here is the one I did for the dog theme.

Fat-Bot

A few weeks back the theme for 'Illustration Friday' was 'Robot'. At that time I didn't have the time to create one from scratch. This weeks theme is 'Fat'. Well when I started sketching out an idea out popped a robot image. I liked it. Seemed appropriate with the current climate regarding oil prices such.

Monkeys, Robots and Pirates oh my!

When a client calls me and asks "Can you illustrate a Monkey, a Robot and a Pirate?" you have to pinch yourself to make sure it's not a dream. These are a few of the characters I created as 1 color iconic avatars to use on some card promotions for Upper Deck Company.

It's tricky sometimes being limited to 1 flat color. (The style the client requested) And the turnaround time was a bit nuts too but these three were my personal favorites out the group of '7' I created.