Featured on Standard Deluxe Site

The invitations I designed for our wedding in 2004, and a few tee shirts I designed are featured on the Standard Deluxe website. Check it out! Link here: Standard Deluxe.

2008 Cartoon Network Calendar Page Sneak Peek

This is from the annual CN calendar that our design group puts out. Our group developed this self-initiated/self-directed project back in 2000 I think and we've been doing one every year since. Unfortunately this never sees consumers, so only a select few outside Cartoon Network actually get them. The upshot, though is that we're our own client so we get to take liberties we normally wouldn't be afforded on other projects. We each get a month and get to interpret it more or less how we want. This is my contribution for June, it's for the upcoming show Secret Saturdays by Jay Stephens (of Tutenstein, Oddville & Jetcat, Chick and Dee, and Land of Nod fame). This was concepted by me and Clint Carruth our Sr. Writer, pencilled by Juan Ortiz, inked by Mark Prudeaux, and colored, typeset, layout and P'shop effects by me. I'm really thrilled with how it came out, Juan and Mark did a fantastic job. They made it incredibly easy, thanks guys!

Digital Monoprint #2 Eureka?

HUGE Thanks to Jon for sending some Monoprint Photoshop brush textures he found. This actually is a tremendous help towards getting a more realistic texture. I created this bg with the brushes, copied it into the gnome file and then used the Difference filter at an opacity of 60%. The result is kinda spooky... Then I tweaked the contrast/brightness of the original image and added some more highlights back in.

I'm trying to shoehorn it after the fact here, so I think if I were to start over with the new bg, more fun things would happen. I'll keep messing around and post the results.

Thanks, Jon!

In progress Digital Monoprint 2

Another whack at the digital monoprint, albeit less successful. I tried adding some textures on top, but it really messed with the contrast and midtones, so I opted to keep it as it was. I'm considering this still in process, so I'll keep refining and adding to it.

Real Monoprint

As mentioned in my last post, here's the real McCoy. It wouldn't all fit on the scanner bed, but you get the idea. Since the ink is oil based, there's a bit of viscosity so neat things can happen and it can hold the textures of objects. You can also ink over top of your original wipeouts and add more colors. I think this was a 3 color experiment. This was probably circa 2000-2002.

Digital Monoprint

Awhile back I visited a monoprint class that Mr. Mofongo was attending at the former Atlanta College of Art. The teacher was gracious enough to let me do a plate and try it out. Look for that in the next post. Fast forward to last year: I had the idea to try the same technique of extracting an image out of a solid dark color with varying photoshop brushes and the eraser tool. I finally had the time to sit down and try it out. I think it turned out ok for a first attempt. The undo feature is a great tool here to test out different tones and mark making, but unfortunately this method doesn't allow for the spontaneous effects and things that are inherent in pulling ink off a plexiglass plate. Still, it's a pretty neat effect and I'm sure lots can be simulated with the right brushes and texture overlays. Definitely something to keep trying and experimenting with...

Sketchbook Harvest #2

This was done with Watercolor & Gouache on natural kraft paper.