1027 - Skelly Returns

Skelly returns!  Costco sold out of plastic skeletons back in August, so once again he's a solo act.  Happy Hallowe'en.

See last year's Skelly pose by clicking here.

1026 - Brass Tacks

These are the exact brass tacks everyone talks about when they use that cliché.

I rendered them in Photoshop and Painter.  

1025 - The Chicken Who Saved The Pennant

It's World Series time, so that means chickens wear jerseys.  Since I already have a Hen Francisco Giants jersey (complete with panda hat), I made a new Kansas City Roasters jersey, since these guys haven't won Series since 1985.  

To see the chicken with the the panda hat, please click here.

1024 - Pocomaptica II

Here's a refined version of my area map.  I threw in a bunch of colourful custom textures via Photoshop's texture brush feature, an oldie but a goodie. Also, to please the peanut gallery, I went to the trouble of orienting the map so that the top edge is the north edge.  The previous map pointed more to the west. 

1023 - Making Earl Feel Better

Today's JSVB post isn't so much an artistic statement as it is a personal one.  My friend Earl has been going though a rough time, so I hope this little image makes him feel better.  Earl: we've got your back.

The rate my wife and I drink caffeinated soda pop, most if not all of this crate ought to still be here by the time Earl comes to visit.  However, now that I've posted this,  I'm sure there will be a few cans missing to intervening houseguests...

1022 - Pocomaptica

I drew a map of where I live.  Not for use in real-world navigation.  Also not for use in alternate-reality navigation, either. 

1021 - MCLAREN Back

Here is the back of my hand-made trading card.  The whole thing is one big simulation.  First, I used a cardboard texture to make the back of the card stock look as inferior as possible.  Then I used a transparent magenta ink, as that would be among the cheapest available to offset printing; there is normally a four colour gamut - Cyan Magenta, Yellow, and blacK (CMYK) - and of the darker inks, magenta would likely be the least used and therefore the one most available for something truly economical like the back of a sports card. 

Hopefully you'll recognize the little "Mac" character that I drew a few days ago especially for this card.  To see more on Mac, please check out JSVB Post #1016 by clicking here.

1020 - MCLAREN Front

This is the front of my custom-made sports card.  The original image can be seen by clicking here. The finished card can be seen by clicking here. 

In Photoshop, I used a half-tone pixellation filter to simulate the four-colour offset press technique that would have been used to print these cards back in the 1970's.  Then I applied a cardboard texture to make the card look like it was printed on cheap stock.  The neatest trick was using a pin-light blending mode on the picture layer to wash out the ink.  If you look at Empire Stadium, the ink looks terrible, but it makes the card look more authentic.  

Incidentally, working on JSVB Post #773 first put the idea in my head that I could make my own sports card (please click here to see it).

1019 - "MCLAREN - 44"

The BC Lions never made bubblegum trading cards for their 1977 team.  So, thirty-seven years later, I decided to fix that oversight.  I figured I could make my own trading card, and with the help of my trusted printer friends, I did exactly that.  Mind you, I only made one card so there won't be a lot of trading, but it looks authentic to the 1970's in as many details as I could muster.  

Front view.

Back view.

I started by creating a rotoscope of several different elements that I composited in Photoshop, including the head, body, helmet, grass, stadium, and background.  Then I painted over everything by hand in Corel Painter to unify the style.  You may have seen the final picture already when I posted the artwork in JSVB Post #1011, which you can see by clicking here.

I brought the poster-sized image back down to card size and created a frame typical for a 1970's era trading card.  Then I ran the image through some colour filters to make the ink look junky and the card stock look old.

The card stock was a problem, since it would have been prohibitively expensive to print one card on authentic stock.  So I used a modern card stock that was printed on two 12-point cards.  These cards were printed, cut, and glued back-to-back to make a card with a realistic 24-point thickness.  To the card on the back I digitally created the look of very cheap card stock and ink.  If you look at it with a magnifying glass, you can see that the effect is purely digital.  It's convincing from a couple of inches away or more, though.  I think my printer was a little puzzled why I would go through so much trouble to make his best inks look so shoddy.  The work speaks for itself, though.

Here, I presented the card to the real-life player from 1977, who happens to sit in my section, and who my wife and I have no doubt deafened as we shout and yell at the players during the game. 

1018 - Holy Perogie Icon

I took my wife to a Ukrainian dinner.  While waiting for the food, I doodled on the paper placemat in the style of an Orthodox icon.  In Orthodoxy, saints are depicted holding the one thing they are best identified with in the mortal world.  I can think of few things that make me happier than a plate of perogies!

The thirteenth of every month is traditionally Ungood  Art day on JSVB, so don't expect to see anything especially talented.  However, the thirtheenth of October is my wife's birthday: Happy Birthday Sweet Angel!  

1017 - Nativity II

Here is a close-up of the artwork for my Nativity icon as it progresses. I've painted the orange-ish form layer overtop the green sanquir layer.  These create the base colours under the skin tone.  The scanner shows all of my mistakes, though, ugh.

1016 - Running Mac

I kind of forgot about ol' JSVB there for a while, sorry about that.  Now I have a backlog of entries I have to process.

This one is a little college football running man.  Whoa, that's Pip-Boy, you geeks out there are saying.  I went one step farther, and based Mac here on what Pip-Boy was also based upon: the iconic Rich Uncle Pennybags from Parker Brothers' Monopoly game. 

Did you know that in the original Monopoly rules, after all the players but one went bankrupt, the losing players were forced to make another lap around the board to go farther into debt?  Apparently the original version of the game was intended as dark satire, a comment on the gap between the American poor and the wealthy.  The Parker Brothers cleaned up the rules and then cleaned house with their monster hit game.  

Last month, there were just over 2,575 versions of Monopoly available on the market.  That's a lot of play money right there. 

1015 - Nativity I

This is the first stage of my icon of the Nativity.  The board is too large for my scanner, so the edges are clipped.  There's some gilding, but the scanner registers the gold as an almost olive brown. 

1014 - Iterative Business Portrait

I have been plugging away at this business portrait.   It's not done - where's the hair?  I made an earlier attempt at this, but it went south; if I haven't destroyed the files, I should dig them up for Ungood Art Day.