1370 - Iterative Podium People

I started working up this design that represents the three major candidates for my riding in the upcoming provincial election when I discovered that there's already a Facebook banner for this.  Well, mine will be better than that one, but it takes the wind out of my sails to have this other banner hanging around.  So, I am working at half speed.  I have lots of time, and I'll post my results on JSVB later. 

 

1369 - Blazing Fast Logo II

This is the second of two super-fast logo designs I created the other day.  It's really crummy, just clip-art and a little bit of play with typefaces.  But, I created it really, really quickly!  If it was for the City of Vancouver, I'd be eight thousand dollars richer by now (on account of that city paying for an official logo that was just a typeface with no other design).

1368 - Blazing Fast Logo I

Yesterday, I needed to create a fake stationery letterhead super-pronto so I ginned up this beaut.  Is it good?  No.  Did I just cobble together a bunch of clip art?  Yes.  At least it was fast. 

1367 - Grapes On Grapes

Art imitates life imitates sports imitates art again.  I snapped a photo of Don Cherry in Coach's Corner wearing the same outfit and holding the same pose as his Cold-FX bobblehead doll.  My wife, who is holding the doll, asks which one is the real bobblehead.  

 

1366 - Bucket Of Losers

Here is a bucket of the teams that failed to make the NHL playoffs this year, in chocolate form.  The playoff-bound teams are featured in my chocolate hockey bracket, sort of like an advent calendar for sports fans.  I include this photo in an effort to pad my JSVB post count. 

1365 - Chocolate Bracket

Canadian Tire, of all places (a home improvement and auto parts store), sold bags of Hershey's chocolates in the shape of hockey pucks, each chocolate labelled with an NHL hockey team.  So my wife and I bought all three bags since they were marked down to a dollar each: the chocolates' best-before date was last month. 

Then we made a chocolate hockey playoff bracket.  The winners advance and the losers get eaten, kind of like what the Aztecs used to do. 

I am hoping for Calgary, but I figure Washington versus Anaheim will be the final.  

1364 - Mr. Eyebrows

A marriage is a partnership.  When you have been married for a while, you and your partner will form a synergy of ideals:  two minds but one thought.  This doesn't occur all the time, naturally, but sometimes what will happen is that your partner will pull out of the universal ether something that you have been thinking about but have not yet formed the will to form the words.  

For instance: my wife says out of the blue "I wonder what Eugene Levy would look like without his eyebrows?"  

It turns out that there a number of fan websites where people use Photoshop to remove the eyebrows of the stars.   Even so, I figured I might as well flex my own digital redaction skills.

Eyebrows are a key visual identifier for facial recognition.  In character design, those at the top level all claim that the trick to achieving the best caricature is to a) render the crookedness of the smile, and b) get the eyebrows right.  Go and look at Shrek, for example.  Goofy big green ogre, but with Mike Myers' eyebrows and smile.   

1363 - Mayor TV Easter

Easter is this weekend.  I made a cute banner for Mayor TV to celebrate the holiday.  I was torn between making something religious and something secular.

I ended up ripping off the Trix Rabbit, if only because super-genius ad man and designer Joe Harris passed away a couple of days ago.  You'll know Joe Harris' art style since among other things he created the original Trix Rabbit (and the immortal "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!" tagline) as well as the famous counter-culture superhero Underdog.




 

1362 - "Destroy Planet"

Hello, and welcome to Ungood Art Day on JSVB.  Ungood Art Day is where I post some piece of my artwork that started out with Good intentions, but the final execution turned out to be Ungood. Every artist goes through phases where their art simply misses the mark, and on the thirteenth day of each month, I post mine on my blog. 

In this picture, which I am calling "Destroy Planet", the final outcome was what I wanted so this is one of those pieces where the theme ends up being the Ungood feature.  

Last month, for JSVB Post #I353 (click here to see it!) I was researching old-time computers.   There were many pictures of people dressed in lab coats tending to tabernacle-style banks of electronics the same way a priest or a rabbi would approach an altar.  One old photograph showed two Japanese technicians simply standing and watching what appears to be the main display board for a German-designed power plant out of the 1960's.  There are no furnishings or human comforts, just concrete and massive box-like computers.  The lighting looks artificial; there are no windows.  The lights appear to have been set close to the floor, casting eldritch shadows on the reinforced ceiling. 

In the negative space between the technicians and their computer, I sensed there needed to be something.  The past couple of weeks I've been getting less and less sleep and I have been in a foul mood.  So I saw Death in the empty space, and I decided to draw just that.   It's the least Ungood of the variant artworks I had planned for today, and I guess the least bleak as well.  Easter is around the corner, after all. 

 

1361 - Perspective Issues III

These are two exercises on how to formulate proper geometric perspective when you are presented with incomplete data.  You take what perspective you can from the plan and then fill in the missing details by using educated guesses.  It's been my experience that even beginner artists can estimate perspective to within ninety percent accuracy.  My trained eye normally achieves maybe up to ninety-five percent, but for true draftsmanship you need absolutely solid geometry, something that has eluded me ever since I started to draw.  So: exercises to gain proficiency.  Hockey players take drills, basketball player work on free throws, and artists fill sketchbooks.

1360 - Perspective Issues II

I'll grant you these perspective exercises are dull to look at, but they are fun to compile if you enjoy geometry.

 

1359 - Perspective Issues I

Good advice my wife has given me: try to put your problems into perspective.  When you are a visual artist, perspective is the problem.  So I had some time to wait for her while my wife attended an appointment, and I brought along my sketchbook to try my hand at solving how to properly render lines that converge on a point in the far distance using geometry.

 

1358 - Take The Clooney Challenge

Here is another April Fool's piece:

I am beginning to think that I am the only one who finds nearly impossible puzzles to be funny, but then seeing as I am the one who gets to draw them, I don't mind.

1357 - "Vote For Jeff"

April Fools come and April Fools go, but what endures is silly graphic design.  Apart from more pressing April Foolery, this year I decided to poke a little fun at my friend Mayor Greg Moore, who I have worked with on various projects for a few years now.  At least I know some of the things that bug him, so I put as many offenders I could into a pretend political flyer which I printed and delivered to his door just in time for election season.  It's a really gentle practical joke, but I had fun putting it together:

 

 

And below are the graphics files.  Note the egregious use of both Comic Sans and Papyrus typefaces.  Horrors!