Your work made me want to be a hero and an artist. Excelsior!
Author: SJD
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Inktober 2018: Week 3
Happy Halloween! Even as October comes to a close, I still have plenty of Inktober illustrations to share. Here are a couple of favorites from week 3. You can check out the rest in my Inktober 2018 gallery.
Dad can’t stop himself from eating all his child’s Halloween candy. -
Inktober 2018: Week 2
So here I am with another week down in this year’s Inktober challenge. I felt like I got into a nice groove with these. It helps that I have been keeping to my Halloween theme for all the official word prompts. My first hang-up so far with that was for the prompt on day 12, “whale.” I have to admit I was completely stumped as to how to stick to my Halloween theme for whale. In the end, I decided to go for a bit of a Charles Addams approach. (You can see my solution for that one here.) So maybe not directly Halloween-themed, but certainly odd (if not potentially quite horror-filled!).
Below are a few of my personal favorites for Inktober 2018: Week 2. Visit my Inktober 2018 gallery to see them all!
Exhausted | Inktober Day 7. Out-of-shape zombie has a hard time getting a fresh meal. Flowing | Inktober Day 10. Electricity and life flowing into Dr. Frankenstein’s monster! 
Cruel | Inktober Day 11. The unholy terror of the man who gave out broccoli on Halloween! -
Inktober 2018: Week 1
Here are a couple of my favorites from Inktober 2018: Week 1. This marks my first time participating in the yearly Inktober drawing challenge, and so far I am having a real blast! I am sticking with a standard, kid-friendly Halloween theme, working from the daily word prompts compiled for this years’ challenge. You can learn more about the challenge and its originator, Jake Parker, at inktober.com. Be sure to check out all of my Inktober illustrations in my Inktober 2018 gallery.
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Burning Sean | Client: Utah Adventure Journal
My latest illustration fro UAJ, Burning Sean, required a bit of extra care. It’s for an article about a perfectly innocent yearly pre-ski season ritual/party gone wrong. It also involves a bunch of drunken white dudes with tiki torches burning an effigy of their soon-to-be-married friend, Sean. As a long-time resident of Charlottesville, Virginia, I have to say I had some apprehension about depicting white guys with tiki torches burning something that could easily be mistaken for a cross (Which is where all of the humor of the article come from). Part of my solution was to make sure the effigy clearly had a pair of legs. This would ensure that it had more of a star-shape. The next was to give the effigy some ski poles. The last was to make sure the white dudes looked as drunkenly cheerful as possible. In the end, I think it all worked out pretty well.
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Read Local Bookmark | Client: SCBWI
Here is a bookmark I created for the Read Local Challenge, hosted by the SCBWI MD/DE/WV/VA. It’s one of several that were created by illustrators whose books are part of the reading challenge. The bookmarks are all black and white so that kids can color them in, but I figured “why should they have all the fun?” and colored one myself.
If you live in Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, or Virginia, and are interested in your kids or their school participating, you can learn all about it at the SCBWI MD/DE/WV/VA Read Local Challenge webpage. They have a great selection of fantastic children’s books that range from picture books (Like my very own Short Pump Bump!) to middle grade to young adult.
If you want to download a printable version of my bookmark or any of the other awesome bookmarks so you can color it yourself, go here.
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Camping Compromise | Client: Utah Adventure Journal
Editorial illustration for an article about the type of compromises that need to be made by rugged outdoorsmen when they become a parent. No matter how much you might hate RV’s, babies can’t really sleep on the ground.
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Blissful Bumblebee
Here’s a chubby, little, blissful bumblebee wallowing in a bed of fresh pollen. I wanted the bee to look like a fat cat getting its head scratched. My dad used to say that every living thing just wants its head scratched. One day a bumblebee landed in front of him while he was gardening and looked, to my dad at least, like it wanted its head scratched. So he reached out with a finger and scratched the bee’s head. Rather than sting my dad, it just sat there and happily got its head scratched. I like to imagine that this is what that bee looked like. Just a fat, cute, blissful bumblebee.
Below are a few images of my work in progress. I usually start with a digital sketch and once I’m happy with it, I’ll print it out. From there I’ll trace it, refining the drawing as I go. Next, I ink the drawing using a crow quill pen. Lastly, I scan the finished drawing into Photoshop and add the color digitally.
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Cute Cactus Desert Bloom
Here’s a pair of cute cacti enjoying their time to bloom in the desert. When I was growing up, my dad always had at least one cute little cactus as a houseplant. They were usually round and hairy and had funny names like ‘Herbert’ or ‘Cousin It.’ It wasn’t until we moved to Texas, where we had a little cactus garden, that I learned that they also can produce amazingly beautiful flowers.
Scroll down to see some of my drawing process.
While I was working on this, my wife fell in love with these two characters so much that I decided to surprise her with a framed print for her birthday. Here it is sitting in her office:
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Isometric Illustration | Client: DoodyCalls
I had an opportunity to delve into the wonky world of isometric illustration recently when a client approached me to design an illustrated instruction manual. While I’ve utilized isometric perspective before, I’ve never used it quite this extensively or with this level of precision. I would say it was a very demanding, but also very rewarding assignment.