I have used several. I used the Apple2 in the summer of 1986 at a school program. I used several Macintosh computers in the computer labs during art school between the years of 1993-1997. One of my college roommates owned one during that time and I played Myst on it. I played around on a friends iMac in the early 2000s. I used one at a client’s site in 2006. I’ve played with a few friends’ iPods. I’ve played with a few friends’ iPhones.

I’ve always wanted to own an Apple product.

Just like buying a Volkswagon, I’ve always felt that owning an Apple product was like joining a club. My artistic side is drawn to the amazing design of the product from case to interface. My outsider side likes that they aren’t Microsoft. My snobby side sees their expense as the entry fee into the club.

But, I’ve never owned an Apple product.

When buying computers, I’ve always gone with Windows based machines. Initially, my wife and I bought a Gateway because we could afford it. When it was time to upgrade, we bought another Windows machine because my work required it. After that, each computer purchase has been based around my Windows-centric workplaces.

When buying phones, I’ve always gone with what I could afford on the best plan I could find. We would wring every possible second out of that hardware until the phones were falling apart. A couple of months ago, my wife and I finally got new phones: Android-based Samsung Galaxy smart phones, which look and act pretty much like iPhones.

I may never own an Apple product. I’ve always benefited from Apple products.

Windows is better because of Apple. Android is better because of Apple. Digital music is better because of Apple. The internet is better because of Apple. Designers of interfaces, hardware and software owe a huge debt to Apple.

I know Steve Jobs is not Apple. Apple is much bigger than Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was a large part of Apple, however and I think his impact on life as we knew it yet to be realized. So, goodbye Steve. And thanks for all the cool stuff.

I know, I know. What wonderful jargon I use. This is a pencil drawing that I did back in 1996. My friend Corey Miller and I were at a coffee house in Indianapolis. I sketched him while he was reading. I added the color tonight in photoshop.

See what you think!

Lithography is the process where a prepared limestone is drawn or painted on with water resistant media (grease pencils, etc.) before being coated in a water based seal. The seal didn’t cover the grease pencil. The pencil marks were then cleaned off with an oil based solvent. The seal remained. Then an etching solution was applied to the stone. The pencil marks were etched into the stone. Then the entire surface was cleaned. The seal and etching solution were removed. Finally, ink was applied to the stone and the stone was cleaned. Ink stayed in the areas where the stone was etched. The stone was then ran through a press. The ink was transferred to paper.

Seems like a lot of work, eh? Well the advantage was that you could print many copies of the same highly detailed drawing using archival inks and papers. You could then sell the prints as an edition.

Modern lithographic printing works the same way except that they use zinc plates and etch images on using photo-transfer techniques instead of hand drawing on stones. Goodbye romance, hello profits! So I only took one semester of lithography. I could never have afforded to purchase a litho press and stones.

Here is my favorite print from that era. This is Rudy.

The Theory of Rudy is a 1/1 print. This means there is only one like it. The reason The Theory of Rudy is unique is that I hand colored the blackand white print using watercolors.

Rudy has some additional history. When I first was married, my wife and I loaned a bunch of artwork to her father so that he could spruce up his hip new condo/workspace in the historic Chateau Thomas Winery Building just south of downtown Indianapolis. He hung them on the wall of his workspace. One night he heard a loud crash and found that one of his windows had broken. The next day he found a bullet lodged in the wall behind Rudy. Rudy took a bullet for my father-in-law. It seems an argument in the Slippery Noodle Inn spilled into the street and someone threw down. Fortunately, their aim was not true and the only bullet fired was stopped by the wall behind Rudy.

My project was a mural. We really like the Japanese woodcut “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by the master Hokusai. So I decided to replicate it as a 10 foot by 8 foot painting.

I did my best to do it justice, but this woodcut is incredible. Zeke seems very pleased.

In addition to the woodcut, Dawn did a lot of decorating. She sewed curtains, bought hanging lamps, sewed pillows, and painted several pictures for the room.

Here are the fruits of our labor.

Dawn painted these three panels. The center one is stencils. The text spells out “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the…”. That is part of Philippians 1. We are memorizing that chapter as a family this year. The other two panels were done using sponges cut int the shapes of fish. They were then glued to cardboard. Dawn painted the sponges and then printed them onto the canvas.

Here are the star lamps, curtains, and pillows. Unfortunately, the shot only shows the top portion of the curtain. Dawn used a bright orange material on the bottoms that give the room some additional zing. Also, our pillow-to-human ratio is at an all time high right now.

Did you notice the yellow block on Zeke’s chest of drawers? That is a Lego clock that his grandma Vicki gave him. Those Lego people have a racket going.

Dawn whipped these little numbers up toward the end to give that wall a little balance. I don’t always know what she is talking about, but the end product is always magical. I’m a lucky fella.

Here are a couple of shots of the finished mural. I used a string and chalk grid of sorts to keep the mural as close as possible to the same proportions and shapes as the original.

After 9 hours of painting on an angle, I’m going to go take an ibuprofen/tylenol cocktail and hit the hay.

The creator of the game that Earthworm Jim was based upon was none other than Doug TenNapel. Well, that same exact Doug TenNapel has recently started a web comic titled “Ratfist“. As much as I enjoyed Earthworm Jim, I am enjoying  Ratfist even more (partially due to being able to do all of the voices on my own) even in the earliest stages.

So far, Ratfist is cleverly written, loosely drawn, and beautifully colored by the talented Katherine Garner. The story isn’t too far along, so I recommend catching up now. Then you can add it to your RSS feed and enjoy it delivered to your desktop.

To the date of this review, Ratfist’s humor is aimed at adults although the language has been refreshingly all-ages. Some of the subject matter (mutations, fighting, tail-dismemberment) cause the illustrations to be a bit on the graphic side. Use discretion accordingly.

But oil paint is a huge mess, it is expensive, and you have to have room for it to dry. That is why I did this quick oil sketch using the ArtRage digital painting tool. Satisfying on all levels except smell.

I hope you like it!

The Client

Uncommon Childhood is a new endeavor by veteran publishers Jennifer and Tony Miller. Jennifer has been editor and publisher of the Institute for Reform in Education and Living Instruction for the Young for a decade or more. The two of them partnered to produce the content at the Edventure Project. Recently Jennifer has also contributed to Location Independent. Estimates of quality content on the internet show roughly 14% was created by a Miller. Uncommon Childhood just formally launched on January 1st, but there is already a backlog of quality articles to browse. A few months ago, they approached me to see if I would create an illustration for their new site’s header.

The Design Process

Every illustrator uses their own particular design process, but it is usually based on a cycle of talking with the client, thinking, artwork and then repeat until finished. While I love to talk to clients, I like to keep the number of cycles on the low side to avoid client frustration and keep my margins tight. I find that doing a large amount of communication up front saves cycles later on. This is the design process I like to use.

1. The Design Brief – Work with the client to get an understanding of their needs and desires. Create a Statement of Work detailing costs and deliverables.

Jenn contacted me and asked if I could work on a logo for the new Uncommon Childhood website. Se wanted a very clean, modern looking header with a sans serif font. She added the following:

“The ‘i’ in Childhood is going to be the puff end of a dandelion gone to seed and flying off of the dandelion will be one seed kite with a child (churched up stick figure?) hanging onto the base of the seed and flying off. I’m attaching a couple of dandelion pics that I like a lot to give you an idea of what I’m looking for.

What do you think? I’m open for color palette, but I’m concerned about getting the branding for this site right, the first time. I’m thinking earth tones… greens and yellows, perhaps? greens and browns?”

Additionally, she sent the following pictures as examples of what  she was thinking.

We sent messages back and forth for a while and I ended up proposing the following based on her needs.

• Website header graphic
• Logo in industry standard format files
• Set of web graphics (up to 5) based on the logo to be used as internet links, watermarks, etc. per client specifications

2. Research & Brainstorming - After listening to the client, I like to look at the peers, competitors and vendors that will effect my client’s business. The end result should stand out from the competition and complement peers and vendors without compromising originality. From there I think about what the end product might look like.

3. Sketching – Thumbnail sketches until I find a few that I like. Then I develop them into full size sketches. This is still not very well formed, but just to give an idea to the client of the direction I am considering.

For Uncommon Childhood, I ended up with this pencil sketch on graph paper.

I scanned it into GIMP (an open source program similar to Photoshop) and whipped up this color sketch.

Finally, I used the GIMP to give the sketch a less vibrant color scheme to give Jennifer a few options to look at.

I was careful to communicate that these were rough versions and were intended to see if I was headed in the right direction.

4. Prototyping & Conceptualizing – At this point I am doing full blown illustrations. They may or may not be the final product, but the quality should be finished work.

After getting the go-ahead from Jennifer, I started to gather source materials. I like to look at other artwork to inspire me and these pieces of art were all very exciting.
I like to work from photographs when I’m doing figures. People look more natural when they are proportioned accurately instead of how my brain remembers them. Fortunately, I have access to a wonderful model. She put up with my directions.

It is important to note a design decision at this point. I knew that the little girl in the illustration would be silhouetted for the logo. Because of this, I wanted the silhouette to be dynamic. An illustration of a girl with her feet together and arms locked would look fine, but the resulting silhouette would not. These model shots do not need to be well lit and the background doesn’t need to be carefully picked because they are for reference. Since my model has not yet learned to fly, we posed this on the kitchen floor and I stood on a chair.

From this photograph, I drew and watercolored this girl.
And based on the mock up sketches I drew and watercolored this background.
Both paintings were done with watercolors from a tube and both were detailed with watercolor pencils. Once again, I scanned both paintings in at different DPI (dots per inch) settings to create the resulting images as close to end size as possible. In the GIMP, I combined the two. One of the wonderful things about the digital age is the ability to endlessly adjust, tweak, and change images. I was able to change the intensity of the colors, the darkness of the colors, highlight some areas, lowlight others and add layers of fluff and glow for the dandelions. Finally, I made a copy of the resulting image and used layer masks to lighten and darken the text to show through the image. This is what I presented to Uncommon Childhood.
5. Send To Client For Review - If I nail it, we’re almost done. If not, then this is usually the hardest part for the client. If it isn’t what they want it can be hard to communicate the difference, but with patience and perseverance and conversations that include “blue-ish-er” or “more like a flame” we arrive at a consensus.

In this case, Jennifer wanted something slightly cleaner. She said:

…we’d like it to have cleaner lines. Not so much a chalk drawing (or pastels) but instead more solid colors, more “posterized” maybe. I’d like the dandelion puff to be more iconic. I was thinking to use the one strand of puff with the trailing child as one of the “logo” type images and I’d envisioned it more stylized…”

From that feedback, I created this rough color mock up.

6. Revise & Add Finishing Touches – Any changes are made at this point. Sizing, color correction, and any cleanup of edges is performed.

Since Jennifer liked the layout but was looking for a more stylized and less painterly look, I decided to take what I already had and make a vector graphic from it. I imported the images I had already scanned into Adobe Illustrator and began to work. I started by making this vector drawing on top of the little girl illustration.

Afterwards, I designed a dandelion puff and background. Because the puffs were vector drawings, I was able to copy, scale, and rotate them to create the dandelion and additional floating fluffs. I also created the background in illustrator. Once I was finished I exported it to file and then opened the file in GIMP. Using GIMP I did the same trick with layer masks to highlight the text. I decided to go with a different font in this case as the “C” in the other font was a little wonky. This font had a cleaner overall look.
7. Supply Files To Client and Give Customer Service – Deliverables outlined in the statement of work are packaged up and given to the client. Any additional related work is finalized.

Uncommon Childhood was pleased with this effort. Using the vector image created in Adobe Illustrator, I was able to make a the silhouette and add the text quickly. This is a sample of the resulting logos.

Ultimately, we made a couple of tweaks to the header image to fit their website as they went along, but if you want to see the end product you will need to check out the amazing new website at Uncommon Childhood.

IF you want it, you MUST do the following:

1. Do the original craft.
2. Scan it or take a picture. Glue stick action shots appreciated!
3. E-mail the pictures to me (see the contact info at the top of this page) or upload it to Facebook and make certain I see it.

Once you do that, I will send you a super-secret link to my hidden Snowman Kid Craft Upgrade Pack!

I’ll post them here as I get them.

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UPDATE: 8:22 PM Tuesday 12/14

Amy’s son made this great version!

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UPDATE: 6:54 AM Friday 12/17

Shawn’s daughter made a dancing snowman!

First, download and print the craft sheet I created. You can get it by clicking this link: Snowman Kid Craft

Now cut out all the pieces. Take your time, I’ll wait. Great! Now grab a sheet of blue construction paper. You can substitute grey if you live in a depressing state.
Using glue dots, glue stick, double sided tape, or some other means of fastening paper together in a subtle way glue the snowbank on the bottom.
In traditional snowman fashion, put the largest ball of snow on bottom.
Again, following protocol, attach the second largest snow ball on top of that. Don’t glue the right hand side down completely yet.
Slip the right branch under the second snow ball and firmly press down. Attach the left branch on top.
Buttons or coal. You decide. But decide to put two or three on this middle section. I chose two. There is no right answer.
This is an important step. If you skip it the craft will be ruined. Voice of experience here. Carefully place the third and smallest snowball on top. This is know as the “head” of the snowman.
Scarf time! Arrange the scarf carefully for maximum impact.
Place the carrot nose next. It isn’t really a carrot and it will not taste good. Do not eat it.
Eye placement is important. If they aren’t properly placed your snowman will be made fun of at snowman school. Do your best!
The final touch: A tall silk hat! When I created this craft, I did not put any magic in that old silk hat. If you experience live, talking snowmen after making this craft Do Not attempt to collect any recompense.

All done! Merry Christmas!