Polyphemus the Shepherd

Polyphemus from The Odyssey tending part of his flock.  Prior to the eye impaling of course.  

I read once that the Greeks came up with cyclopes after finding an elephant skull, so I wanted to base my design off of the pachyderms.  

Yahweh and the Buddha

Yahweh/Allah/God and the Buddha sharing a spaghetti dinner with the Flying Spaghetti Monster. 

This was one of those ideas that popped into my head the moment before I fell asleep, and it took me ages to remember the next morning.

I was playing with the halftone effect in this one a bit.  Going for more of the look you would find in a magazine comic out of the New Yorker or something.

Banjo Hero Pig

My submission to the Dueling Banjo Pigs blog; a website dedicated to illustrations of banjo pluckin' swine.

Anna and I were discussing possible concepts for the duel a while ago, so I'm sure this was her idea.  But I stole it fair and square.  ha HA!

IguanoFonz

The IguanoFonz

My submission to Illustration Friday.  The topic this week was "Prehistoric".  What better than a picture of an Iguanodon and Henry Winkler?  I did this illustration about a year and a half ago, but haven't uploaded it on to my new blog yet.  This is as good of an excuse as any.

The final illustration was done entirely with cut out stock card, foam core, and lots of glue.  

RIP Leslie Nielsen

Leslie Nielsen: 1926-2010

When I was in middle school the Naked Gun movies were my absolute favorites.  Even though I didn't even understand half of the innuendo in the movie ("Niiiice beaver") I freakin' loved the series.  It was a real bummer to hear about Nielsen's recent death, so I thought it would be nice to do a tribute to him.

I originally did this for a caricature contest that I found online, but realized that this is more of a cartoon than a caricature.  Not to mention there were set dimensions for the drawing (which I wasn't even close to).  I'm glad I did the illustration anyway though, because I was always a big fan of Nielsen's work.

This is what the pencil drawing originally looked like of his face.  It gives a nice idea of the amount of tweaking that I do once I've scanned the sketches into the computer.

Emma’s ABCs

For about the last two months I’ve been working on an ABC book for my niece for Christmas.  She’s only about 13 months old but she’s already well past the traditional ABC animals, so I wanted to create some more challenging critters for her.  For a while I considered naming it the, “My Uncle Is A Biologist ABC Book”.  I think this title is a little less narcissistic.

Click on any images to see them larger.

Sneaky

The enigmatic Bigfoot.  Why is it that Bigfoot still continues to elude us?  Could it be that Bigfoot is trained in some sort of Japanese art of stealth?  Could it be that Bigfoot is actually a ninja!?

Now, finally, the world has proof.

This is for a contest over at Illustration Friday.  The topic for this week was "Sneaky".

Seinfeld Cast

Playing catch-up with some of my older illustrations.

For this drawing I wanted to do caricatures by slightly abstracting full figures, and not just faces.  I figured the cast of Seinfeld would give me an interesting assortment of body shapes and character traits.  That and I couldn't resist drawing Elaine doing the little kicks dance.

Hillbilly Swamp Monster

I had to take a little brake from the ABC book I have been working on for my niece, and decided to do a quick monster sketch, which turned into a much larger project.

I haven't shaded a drawing with pencils in ages. I always do everything digitally.  So I figured it would be fun to break out the old blending stumps and really render a drawing traditionally.  

The first version I sketched out didn't exactly look right, so I redid the design a bit, and did some pencil shading.

After that I added some colors, and called it good.

Name Ambigram

At first I didn’t know what to call this.  I didn’t think it was an ambigram, but I guess they don’t have to spell the same thing both ways.
If you look at it one way it spells my name/Anna’s name, and if you turn it 180 degrees it spells Anna’s name/my name.  Just playing around to see if I could do it.  I know it seems awfully mushy, so I was thinking we should get them engraved on brass knuckles.

Tiki Monsters

Earlier this spring Anna and I were chatting about possible illustrations and came up with the idea of doing tiki interpretations of figures in popular culture.  While chatting about candidates for tiki-ification I drew up a quick sketch of Slimer that I later decided to add color to.
I used the Slimer design as an excuse to experiment with Illustrator, which I had never used before.  And to think that I thought Photoshop was confusing!  Poor Anna had to hear me screaming and cursing through the whole process.  I do really like that vector images can be exported from Illustrator into Photoshop while retaining the layers though, which was absolutely necessary for this project.

                       

I drew every shape in Illustrator, then exported them to Photoshop where I did the shading, overlaid a woodgrain texture, and threw in a drop shadow to add a bit more layering (and because drop shadows are sooo in this year).

I followed the same process for a series of nostalgic latex monstrosities from the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Stripe from Gremlins

 

The Xenomorph from Alien and Predator from Predator

Edit (2014): I created papercraft versions of these designs which I hung a ribbon on (so they can be used as an ornament) and then laced that ribbon through a card (so it can also be used a greeting card). They are currently on sale at our Etsy store. Here's a sample of them -

Follow the link to our store to see more!

Dan and Anna's Cardboard Palace

A collaboration between myself and Anna Lee.  We were originally going to do a No Such Luck website for our projects together (drawing ourselves as homeless people), but scrapped the idea when we realized that it probably wasn't the most positive way to promote ourselves.  Because we had already done so much of the groundwork we decided to finish the project anyway.  

Anna did an entry in her blog with some progress pictures. It can be found here.