Star Wars Clone Wars Sketch Cards

Here are a handful of the sketch cards that I recently sketched for the Topps 2009 Clone Wars Widevision card set. Sketch cards are little pieces of hand-produced original art that Topps randomly inserts into the packs of photo cards. So, if you bought a pack of these, you might just get one of my cards! Now, with that being said, don't let that deter you from buying a pack or two. They are in stores now.

For better or worse, I like my images on these sketch cards to be just that...sketches. I like to see stray pencil lines and the way that the image was built up from a simple framework of lines.

Courage

I recently illustrated a series of posters for Propaganda Games. Propaganda Games is a division of Disney that produces videogames for consoles like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Propaganda was looking for illustrations for posters to promote the company's core values. This particular poster promotes the idea of having the courage to stand up for beliefs and to succeed.

The initial sketch for the poster is presented below.

Painting Sketch

This is a sketch for a small painting I'm working on. It's nothing special but thought I'd post it since I haven't been able to post in a little while. I'll try to do better...

I've been busy working on a series of posters for Disney/Propaganda Games. I finished about a week ago or so. I hope to be able to show some work from this series in the future.

Kids these days...

Here are a couple of drawings that were drawn by two talented young artists.

The Batman art was drawn by my son, Paul.  Great job, Paul!

The Hulk was drawn by Paul's buddy, Eli.  Eli presented this great drawing to me at a school talent show.  Great drawing, Eli!  Thanks very much!! 

Mini-Me

This is one of my favorite things.  Some good friends made this for me when I was leaving a job 10 years ago to begin a large freelance project.  We had a tradition of making an action figure for any person that was leaving our department... complete with accessories that reflected the person's interests and that, also, represented "inside" jokes.

Here's the one they made for me...of me.  It's complete with custom packaging and most of the accessories are handmade and painted.  I was blown away when I received it and am constantly amazed at this little work of art whenever I see it.

Complete with:

Bat Sketch book - everyone needs one of these, especially a Bat fan like myself. (Thanks, Mark)

A Bat T-shirt that was a parody of one of my t-shirt designs I produced for the company. (That little sucker is a complete hand sewn t-shirt...and so is the shirt the figure is wearing.  Nancy, you're a genius.)

A mini Art Request form

A Pizza (without onions, I might add, compliments of Jenyva) because... I like pizza.  Don't we all?

Can of Mountain Dew...you can't have pizza without Mountain Dew.  Right?

An art book on the Artist Gustav Von Steiger.  Never heard of him?  We hadn't either but it didn't stop us from talking incessantly about him as if we had.  His most famous painting?  "Windmills in the Abyss," of course.

A Jar of Clay... because I must have been listening to a lot of Jars of Clay...the band. (Thanks, Heather!)

A sewing machine ...because someone (looking at you, Mark) thought it was pretty hilarious that I was sewing some costume pieces for a model that I was going to use for photo reference on a project.  Hey, sewing can be manly.  Right?  Anyone?

Toaster (not seen, fallen in package) and popcorn.  My friend, Mark, and I had a constant feud over whether it was possible or not to pop popcorn in a toaster.  Mark = anti-Toaster.  Me = It's gonna happen someday one way or another.

The Warm Glow of Nostalgia

Here's a post that's somewhat unrelated to art.  I may do some non-art posts more often.  Why?  Because I think they are fun.

I've been archiving all of my parents' old photographs and slides over the past few weeks when I've had a little spare time.  While going through slides, I discovered a batch of photos that I've never seen before.  The slides were very dark and needed some photoshop work to "pull out" the images to a viewable state.  I was blown away by what I found.  Until now, I've only had memories of this time just before my family moved away from Aberdeen, South Dakota in 1974.  

The bottom two photos show my buddies and myself goofing around in some old costumes.  I was wearing the Ben Cooper Batman costume (you other "old-timers" remember these), Pat Fauth is wearing the Superman costume, my brother Mike is wearing the clown costume.  That's Chris Eslinger tormenting the poor snake.

The photo on top is Pat and I unmasked (I'm on the left wearing the sweet white belt) with little Todd in the middle.  Good times.  Wow, I'm getting old.

...and, yes, Virginia, the grass really was that green and the sky that blue.  Everything was perfect in 1974...or maybe that's just the under exposed slides talkin.'