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.

Anniversary Illustration

Eva and Shadow

     For an anniversary present for his wife, my friend commissioned me to illustrate a picture of his wife and their recently deceased kitty.  For reference he sent me a phone cam pic he just happened to catch when the moment happened.
     I opened the jpg in Adobe Photoshop, and YIKES!  Very small and pixelated! (He warned me of the pic quality ahead of time).  Pretty much a small, dark, fuzzy 72 ppi jpg.  I forget the original dimensions, but my friend had asked for an 8.5" x 11" illustration.  Using Photoshop's Image Size functions (Alt-Ctrl-i) I increased the dimensions as far as I could without losing too much detail so I could work on top of the photo.  I could only increase it to about 8" x 10".
     Since I would print the final result, I set the Image Mode to CMYK (Alt-i-m-c).
     Dark rooms and phone cam pics without a flash don't mix, and so the photo had muddy colors and hard-to-see details.  Adding new Adjustment Layers (Alt-l-a) I adjusted the Levels and Hue/Saturation until I had a brighter, clearer photo.
     I created four layers:
--a background layer which I filled with white (Alt-Delete fills the layer with the foreground color, Ctrl-Delete  fills the layer with the background color),
--the photo layer,
--a color layer I would use to paint under the inks,
--and the inks layer.
     The inks layer: switching between my Wacom Intuos 4 and the mouse, I went for a kind of pen and ink graphic design stylization that kind of comes naturally to me, .  Using lines, dots, simplified shapes, and some Franklin Booth-inspired hatching, I drew over the photo.  I made some of the contours more geometric, and worked to capture the essence of the details with minimal shapes and strokes.  With the white background layer I could make the photo layer invisible (clicking the eye graphic next to the photo layer in the Layer Window) to see just the ink layer and check my work.

Inks Layer

 

     Painting in the color layer underneath the inks layer, I used the Eyedropper tool to pick colors from the photo layer.  I continued rendering with geometric shapes.  I kept the curtains, pillow, and shirt colors flat to keep the focus on the cat and woman's face.

 Color Layer

Detail

 
     I printed the illustration at the local Fedex/Kinko's and sent it off so it would get to my friend in time for their anniversary.  Afterward they both told me they like it and will get it framed and hung as soon as possible. :)

Adobe Photoshop CS2

CMI Promotional Video Art

Content Marketing Institute commissioned me to do some Star Wars-esque art for a promotional video for CEO Joe Pulizzi's new book. Here's the link to the video:
youtube CMI promotional vid
Here's CMI's website:
contentmarketinginstitute.com/

 The effects of bad content marketing

Jedi Joe to the rescue!

Jedi Joe confronts bad content marketing

Jedi Joe defeats bad content marketing

  

Is this the end of bad content marketing???

"Hmm..."

 Group reading

Sound advice

Adobe Illustrator CS2

Freelance Art for CMI

The Creative Director for Content Marketing Institute contacted me to do a number of customized illustrations to use for an e-book, their blog, and a book written by their CEO.  I'll post the art for the book after I receive payment for the art.  Until then...
The art direction for these four e-book illustrations had me imitating the art style of this video  --a sort of slick cartoony marker rendering.  They also asked for a sort of "everyman" to appear in various circumstances, to which we now refer to as "The Dude".

 

I submitted freehand sketches first for approval, then opened the sketches in Illustrator and traced/streamlined them.  These illustrations will go into an e-book.

These next illustrations went into a number of CMI's blogs.  The first batch they considered too "stock"...

These next illustrations they asked to do in "The Dude" style, so back to the cartoony style--

 

The direction for this suggested something like a dragon with "Lead Gen" on it somewhere, and someone with a sword.  I thought a biker beast with "Lead Gen" graffitied on a leather jacket versus a sci-fi ninja chick with an energy sword would be less generic. 

They asked me to do a color version of this toolbox to go with a presentation--

Community Passages Logo Part Deux

As it turns out, I won the company logo contest (WooHoo!).  My unit director decided to go in a different direction than my previous entry and showed me an example of what he had in mind.  I came up with these logos next and apparently I'd nailed his idea.
The top part represents a path, just a simplified abstract icon.  I created a couple dozen different shapes along the same lines and these two captured the correct "path" feel I'd wanted. :)
Adobe Illustrator CS2

Final Approved Blaze Logo

T-shirt front and back designs.

Mock-up of t-shirt application:
Adobe Illustrator CS2

DJ Spooks freelance illustration

Adobe Illustrator

I created this for a lady from Kuwait I met on Flickr. She posted a photo for me to use as reference.

When I first saw the photo, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the glasses.
I initially traced the head and facial shapes, which looked rather random and helter-skelter when I finished. I then manipulated the shapes --straightening, rounding, simplifying... trying to unify them, creating a flow with the shapes for a more graphic feel.
I used two different halftone screen sizes for the face and the cap. The sharp, detailed, and close-up photo revealed the man's pores, suggesting to me the halftone screen as how to imitate the effect. The cap was knit, and I thought the bigger halftone screen captured the feel of it well. :)