Great Awakening Caricatures

I created these caricatures of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield for a woman in my Bible study.  Edwards and Whitefield helped lead the 18th-century Great Awakening revival movement.

Most of the Jonathan Edwards reference pictures showed the same facial characteristics, making picking reference pictures easy.  Many of the George Whitefield pictures looked like different people.  I collected the most common depictions and hope I captured Whitefield's actual likeness.

I downloaded the free Inkscape vector illustration program a couple months ago.  Adobe won't re-authorize the programs I already own, and I don't want to rent my programs from the Cloud.  I have over 20 years of Adobe Illustrator ingrained in my head, and Inkscape shares almost nothing similar to Illustrator.  I'm getting it down though.  I created these in Inkscape.

1 Corinthians 10:31- So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

Ephesians 5:14- ...Therefore it says, "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Commissioned Stylized Caricatures

"The Bad-Joke Guys"

    A friend commissioned me to illustrate his idea of him and his two buddies, all in Christian ministry coming from different walks of life.

    I should have made this a vector illustration in Illustrator instead of a bitmap illustration in Photoshop with a Wacom.  Fixing mistakes or making changes took forever.  I used the Brush tool for most of the project.  I used the default black foreground and white background; I drew with the black, then pressed x to 'erase' with white.

    I used the Pen Tool to create the patches on the vest:

1. In the Brush Tool options, I set the Brush Master Diameter to two points
2. I used the Pen Tool to draw a path in the shape of the patch on the vest.
3. I right-clicked over the path to bring up the Stroke Path option
4. Clicking the Stroke Path option brings up the Stroke Path / Tool: option dropdown menu
5. From the dropdown menu, I selected Brush, and a 2 point brush line stroked the path

    I made the chains on the front of the vest in Illustrator with the Art Brush tool.  I imported the chains into Photoshop as Smart Objects, so I could resize them without losing resolution.  I made the background in Illustrator also.

    My friend liked the finished product.  He surprised his buddies with copies for each of them, and they liked it also.

Sweating the Small Stuff

I did this piece as a flyer for a Sunday morning Bible study I led. Unfortunately, I didn't get it to the printer fast enough (Yet another lame attempt to fit the Illustration Friday meme. This week it's Fast).
Adobe Illustrator CS2
I really enjoy the look of super-tight comic book inking, say, along the lines of The Art of Comic Book Inking volumes 1 and 2 by Gary Martin. Some of the examples in those books stagger my mind as far as tightness, getting the perfect balance of light and dark, and making all the lines work so the image comes alive, not just putting down lines however you feel like it. Another awesome book about inking is Rendering in Pen and Ink by Arthur L. Guptill; a big tome of a book that's worth every hour to read it.

The figure came first; the background and text came later. First I sketched the figure in pencil, scanned it into Illustrator, then traced it with the pen tool. I did all the blacks first, working out shadows and forms until it stood alone as a solid black and white illustration. I then started applying flat colors: 4 shades for the armor, 3 shades for the gold-lighted glass (I didn't know how many layers of color I would use originally, that's just how it worked out).

All the little tapered lines are, for the most part, blended triangles, shaped to fit whatever form I needed. I'm not a big fan of outlines. I do wind up using them here and there, but I'm trying to get out of the habit. I try to think more in terms of light, shadow, and dimension, trying to figure out how to make 2D pop out like 3D. :)

Freelance t-shirt designs

Here are a few ideas I put together for a t-shirt for our church.

Close-up of t-shirt back design
There's a big sign out in front of the church which (as far as I can reckon) uses Times New Roman for the "Glenshaw" and Arial for the "Alliance Church", which I used for my version. I then used a few different offset path thicknesses to achieve the 3D effect for the logo.
I appropriated the photo of the church from their website and traced it in Illustrator.
The background came via the scribble stylize effect. Front and back
Church name logo ideas
The logo with all the symbols is the Christian and Missionary Alliance logo, which I found a big version on the web and traced.
Adobe Illustrator CS2