animals, dogs, horses, cats, Illustrations, Pen and Ink Drawing

2 cats are “best buds”, version 1

feline-buddies-web

My lovely friend Marta took a picture of 2 cats at the cat shelter here in Mexico, where she volunteers.  They have a lot of kittens, and cats and sr. citizen cats.  I drew these two and got carried away with the stripes and lines.   I fell in love with them and this is the first of a few treatments of these two sweethearts.  I drew them freehand in pen and ink and played a little bit in photoshop.  I will do another few paintings of them and let’s see how they will turn out.

What I love is their little body language.   Here they are on a big zipper pouch.

dogs, horses, cats, fantasy illustration, Illustrations, kids, simple photoshop, step by step, how to, thoughts behind the work

My Orchid Kitty

cat-orchid-web

This kitty is covered in orchids.  I had orchids sitting in front of me from my patio garden  and I drew the simple outline of kitty, added wings, a little bird and some fun and not so ordinary color palette.  Then I drew abstract fragments of the flowers on his body.  The little bird ended up having one of his wings looking like another bird facing in the opposite direction. a perk from heaven.

The font is Gigi.  I got the color just by going down a few shades darker than the orchid flower on the color wheel.  The whole drawing was done in photoshop with a few simple brushes.  lots of layers: orig. scanned art, outline, coloring, text, and a white layer in there to be able to see what it finally                                                                                            would look like.

I love getting comments.  Let me know what you think: either about this revision series or any comments on the art are appreciated.

cat-orchid-web

 

alphabet, dogs, horses, cats, fonts, Illustrations, kids, simple photoshop, step by step, how to, thoughts behind the work

You’re On a Roll

youre-on-a-roll-web

When it comes to humor, everybody has an opinion.  The world revolves around people putting opinions of  other people’s creative work into a niche.  Critics enjoy this because they can sit outside and look at it and not be threatened as they are only observers and not the creators.   The truth is, corny or not, people laugh at puns and somebody always will–so let’s move on.  What’s the fuss about all this?

Well, this was an idea I had and was reluctant to proceed because it is a classic “pun” or “play on words”.    My thought was to put a baby in the hot dog bun and draw that.  I got cold feet.  So I did this instead.  Call me a coward but I’m trying to put fonts and images together as a self-motivated interest and I’m trying to stay true to my goal.  That’s my newest M O, so for the sake of being a little more traditional and not wanting to offend anybody, here’s the newest drawing.
I sketched the hot dog in the bun with a ball point pen and scanned it in greyscale. Then opened it in photoshop and painted it in with a few semi-transparent shades of various colors, making a layer for each major item: hot dog, bun, and of course the text.  Did the same for the little dog.  For me, drawing simply like this in photoshop is super easy and very rewarding.  When it was completed, I saved it as a psd file and then removed the background and saved it as a png. Then I combined all the artwork layers.  I am sure this is not the preferred method, but I just plow ahead and do whatever works.  When I grow up, I want to be able to use AI and know what I’m doing.  After years of PSD, I just keep trying and keep learning.  I hope to learn one new thing every day.

When I studied graphic design in college, I drew in AI all the time and was never intimidated. I remembered putting images on to a thumb drive and then bringing them to a professional printer and staring in awe and these gorgeous glossy huge prints spit out my artwork.  I was in love.  Now after all these years, the program is scaring me.  But Adobe is  making improvements that certainly make it more intuitive.  I will continue to plow ahead in the hopes my memory comes back and I can learn new things.

The wonderful font is Hansel  Texture and I think it’s great.  I will be using it more I hope but this is the first time.  I am keeping all these images super simple and super big.  I like seeing them big on t-shirts and I like seeing them on kids’ onesies too.  That’s where I’m at and wow, how fun would it be to see this on adult onesies, if there were such a thing.

Here’s the art on some stuff.

animals, dogs, horses, cats, fantasy illustration, Illustrations, simple photoshop, thoughts behind the work

Dude…2 cats in a love conversation

Dude-web

A Big cat and little cat are having a love conversation. The big cat has camouflage artwork on his body and the little cat is making big body language. Who is talking to who? Who loves who?   It could go either way, so have fun with this.
Since I seem to be in my retro mood for the past few weeks, this was a small sketch in one of my many sketchbooks.  I always refer to my sketchbooks, whether the sketches are good or not.  The important thing is that you get the information down. Usually, the first sketch is the best one because that carries the message across in the strongest and most immediate way.  You can always tweet the drawing a little bit and get it to fit into what you want now.  This drawing was a little different because I kept it very raw and did not polish it up at all.

I scanned it and made sure I put it on a large white background leaving a lot of space to make room for a big text area.  I just made a mask and gave it a transparent background and then painted the cats some and with the direct selection tool, filled areas with different shades of black, greys and whites. I know there are artifacts all over the place but I am moving ahead and will repair the image later.  I hope this does not bother people too much.

this is how it looks on products: Dude-web