Holiday Card - Kramps, Gramps n Lamps

Wishing You Kramps, Gramps and Fragile Lamps Toasting in a Motel Landscape, from zillustration.com

Happy Holidays, Everyone. I didn't print a card this year, but hope you'll enjoy the e-Card I've made for this year's holiday wishes. All the best to you and yours, and a wonderful 2014!

Characters shown above are the Krampus, Burl Ives' Snowman from Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, and the Prize Lamp from Gene Shepherd's A Christmas Story.

The background is an Alpine forest in snow, typically seen in your local Motel 6 or Holiday Inn.

The characters are drawn in my sketchbook, then imported into Photoshop CS6 where I paint, apply textures and muss about with a Wacom Cintiq.

Tante Marta's Dog

The Tantes had a mongrel they named "Baron von Sputnik", hybridizing their ever present German heritage and the Soviet threat hovering high overhead. The poor mutt was a collarless pup that never saw a bathtub, other than the occasional Spring rain. Since my great aunts survived on canned sardines and Quaker Oatmeal, I don't think the dog had a diet of anything else.

These pieces are character studies for an upcoming pub with the D.C. Conspiracy's
Magic Bullet #5 free commuter comics newspaper.

Capable

I Learned to Climb Rope with My Toes
Acrylic on Canvas - 24 inches high by 18 inches wide

My Illustration Friday entry... yes, that's me. yes... those are my toes.

Sing Sing

Sing Sing: A One Act Opera, cover


The SPACE Small Publishers Expo in Columbus Ohio has nominated my mini-comic Sing Sing for the 2011 SPACE Prize in Minicomics / Short Story. Page samples are on my blog: zillustration.blogspot.com

If you have pull with the voting body... Throw some love my way. Click the image to see the cover at twice the size... mmmm... bigger...

Retro-Banner

Cow Plus Boy Equals Cowboy
I have three banners being created for the local town's brick paved walking mall. It's a nice venue, well shaded with the banners hung for two wide city blocks from Victorian posts. The pieces will be hanging through the fall of 2012, so my work should be well viewed. I love to do pieces that will make a young family have to stop and chat about the contents. I chose to do this particular banner in the mid-Century feel of the old Dick and Jane Elementary books.
Drawn with my Palomino Blackwing 602 on Strathmore, scanned and worked at high resolution (720ppi) in Adobe Photoshop with my Wacom Intuos3.