SFG Summer "Challenge" Series No. 1

Greetings SFG Members!

To spice up these long, hot, monotonous summer days, I've decided to initiate a series of week-long summer challenges, in an effort to stimulate your creative minds, push you in new and daring directions and hopefully offer up alot of fun for you in the process! Think Illustration Friday! I'd love to see full member participation as a great way to spark the creative fires and, like I said, challenge yourselves. During the summer months I'm going to pick completely random subject matter, and challenge you to illustrate it in your own unique style, and then post it to SFG.

That said, let's embark on the first week's challenge....

SFG Summer "Challenge" No. 1:

Design and illustrate, in your own style, a "pulp magazine" cover featuring one of the greatest pulp fiction characters of the past century, The Shadow.

Here are some examples:







Enjoy!

-Jeff

music festival poster

Here is a poster for a Music festival in Cleveland. The illustration was also used on T-shirts, postcards, envelopes and the cover of the local weekly.

stumptown octopus

Some artwork I did for the upcoming Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland, Oregon. I'll be a special guest, along with Paul Chadwick, Colleen Coover, Kazu Kibuishi and Keith Knight. Not to mention all the other indie artists showing off their stuff and selling you pretty things to read and look at.

- steverolston

music

irisz

Illustration Friday: Clean

-Vern

Manual MFA Thesis Exhibition

I'm amazingly busy right now preparing for my upcoming MFA exhibition entitled Manual. The exhibition opens Friday August 4 at the Moss-Thorns Gallery of Art on the Fort Hays State University Campus in Hays, Kansas (a small town in western Kansas). There is an opening reception on the 4th from 7-9pm. If by some chance you are in the area please stop by and check out the show!

The concept for the show is based around the idea of graphic design forming a layer of instructions for society. Here are a few crops from several of the posters in the exhibition. Hopefully I can post more soon. Thanks-benben

International Cheese-man

clean

clean
Originally uploaded by stuartimmonen.

For Illustration Friday.

reminder

Just a reminder that I am also a painter. This one is fairly large, about three feet by four feet. You can alwys see some of my paintings on my website. This is mainly for people who are new to my site. Check out my website. I'm working on a new painting. It's six feet by four feet. I'll post a photo when I'm done. It's quite something. I've been so immersed in my drawing that it has been hard to get back to my paints. So little time to get everything done.

Pet Monster

My friend Bret St.Amour and I have started a new business venture we are calling 'Ornery Frog Productions'. We'll offer character development to ad agencies and creative firms. Bret is a very talented Maya guru and long time friend I've known since art school days.

The following character images show it in progress so far. This character will also be part of the 'Keyboard Characters' I am currently developing.

Front View


Back View


The coloring we'll do on this will stay true to my initial style. It's a bit tricky but is looking cool so far. I can't wait to animate it.

smallheart

irisz

nighties

rottentuna

getting permission

This is how the whole marriage thing started: My girlfriend (now my wife) and I drove to Maryland one weekend in May to see the Sheep and Wool Festival. My girl loves knitting so we took her knitting teachers with us to this festival. The real reason we were going though was for me to ask her dad for permission to marry her. We had lunch with her parents, brother and sister-in-law at Gertrude's Cafe at the Baltimore Museum of Art. I told everyone I had an announcement to make. I announced that I love their daughter very much and that I always felt very welcomed by their family. I then requested permission from the father and the mother to marry their baby. Silence. No answer. I should say the dude doesn't speak English too well. So I tried again. Once again silence. Now her mom chimes in and says it's O.K. but I still want to know what the dad thinks. Finally he speaks up and he says "thank you." I think, thank you for what? Is he thankful that I've stopped asking for his daughter's hand in marrige? Is he thankful that I finally shut up and now he can order food? This is all quite humiliating. My girlfriend is laughing because she is happy that everyone is humiliated, especially me. He suddenly seemed pleased for no real reason and at this point says I can marry his nutty daughter. All in all I give it a six on a scale of one to ten. It probably could have gone much worse. In the end, everyone got what they wanted. I got permission to marry his little girl, he got the crab cakes with a small salad and rasberry sorbet.

just a little insight to the monsters in my head...really notso bad once you get used to all the mayhem.

http://katzdontbark.blogspot.com

Temporal Infestation

John Harrison of 'Start a Story' has a new illustrative project in the works called 'Cube'. It's not fully launched yet but should be fun.

The name of mine is 'Temporal Infestation'. The above image shows how it'll be used inside the 'Cube'. Below shows how I imagined it fully with the drool and all breaking out from the framed image.

Poster

Good morning!

I just finished a poster for a croquet tournament to benefit the Penfield Children's Center. The posters will be auctioned off to raise funds for the Center. I got freedom to do whatever I wanted and came up with this. I've been told that everyone looks sad. But for some reason I'm reminded of the old Tonka Trucks commercials. The image will be printed rather large around 40". Curious to see how it looks in print. My computer almost had a meltdown during this project. This guy did an okay one too!

Beauty and the Beast

Andrew "Druie" Chan

giraffe

irisz

Close your eyes and Dream

I just finished this one, I love drawing girls.


















www.image26.com

-heri

Band Art

The band stumbled on my blog and asked if they could an image for their myspace account. I told them they couldn't use the one in question, but since they were good enough to ask I could draw them an original piece. I did it in exchange for a tape, mainly because they could have easily just taken the image without me ever knowing. In the end I was happy that I did it because they are using the image, it looks kinda cool, and it didn't take me too long to get it down.

Blake

summer

rottentuna

Two dogs

irisz

Nocturne in the woods

-Alina-

The Widemans and the Narrowsmiths.

The Widemans lived in the narrowest house on the street. The Narrowsmiths lived in the widest house on the street.

To save bogging everyone down with the rest of the images, you can find out what happened next in this little story here

sandman

rottentuna

camel toes

I'm starting to get more comfortable with coloring in photoshop. You might be wondering why i'm always drawing animals. It's because it's easy to find pictures of them. I go online to a stock photography agency and then look through the animal sections until something hits me. I don't want to spend a lot of time thinking and searching so I just choose the first thing that sort of interests me. I'd rather spend my time drawing and practicing on photoshop. I distorted the camel to give it some personality. I'm fixated with putting numbers on my drawings. No real reason except I think it looks cool. More to come.

enchanted pig

irisz

opposites

opposites
Originally uploaded by stuartimmonen.

For Illustration Friday.

I guess they're not really opposites, but, well, they're different, anyway.

Illustration Friday: Opposites

-Vern

sad and happy clowns

For illustration friday

luggage tag, collage, watercolour and ink

Big Fish Little Fish

click to view bigger image - its a bit fuzzy small :D

Opposites

Just finished this up for this week's Illustration Friday.

Opposites

This one I made for this week Illustration Friday.
















-Heri

Portfolio Center

I get letters from kids in art school or kids coming out of ad schools. Ad schools are the worst creations on earth. Anyway most ad school kids want to know how I came up with such wacky visual ads. The reason is I never went to ad school. I always tell them to keep up with the latest cutting edge illustrators and photographers. Get a subscription to Juxtapoz magazine. Bookmark Artdorks.com. Try to find great artists who have never done advertising before. Most advertising people use the same 100 photographers, directors and illustrators. Clients are afraid to try anything new. This attitude starts to creep into the creatives at advertising agencies. Don't be afraid to be different. Last but not least never listen to agency creative directors, they are the most talentless people in the room. Seek out people who have wider interests than advertising. People who only have advertising as their creative outlet aren't really creative at all. When I first started out I learned to hire the best possible person for the job. There were times when I had very little money for a job but I would call the most expensive photographer. I'd somehow get them on the phone and after giving them my rap they'd usually agree to do it. This doesn't work for most people. I think what i'm trying to say is do whatever it takes to produce something cool for the old consumer. Don't make advertising your life, buy a sketch book or paints and an easel or a camera and do something for yourself.

Latex For fun Illustration

My illustration to go along with my balloon for the DIY designer toys project Latex for fun

Tit

irisz

Bakery Window

yet another illustration for a book idea which didn't quite make it, reallly want to break into kids books...http://katzdontbark.blogspot.com/

Something darker ...

-Alina-

Memory Worm

An artist by the name of John Harrison has been busy creating 'Start a Story'. Part of that is a collaborative art project called '5x5' and he invited me to participate in it.

Basically a good excuse to cut loose and do something FUNky.

Von

shy

rottentuna

A Walk in the Park

Hi everyone, glad to be a part of SFG! I look forward to posting with and meeting everyone here. This introductory image is a first run/test image for an illustrated book I'm in the midst of making. These days I work entirely in Photoshop, but my training comes from using acrylics and oils. My blog: http://bobmacneil.blogspot.com/ has examples of how I work. If anyone has the time to stop by and check it out, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks, Bob MacNeil

knifethrower's daughter

knifethrower's daughter
Originally uploaded by stuartimmonen.

This was for Illustration Friday's "sacrifice" although I expect it'll see re-use at some other point.

Also trying out Flickr's blogging template with SFG... hope it works.

hi there
it's great to be a new member on such a great blog...i've been keeping pretty busy (which is a good thing) so here's a page from my sketch book...for now...
http://katzdontbark.blogspot.com/