I made a logo for a fictitious fast-food restaurant called Chuck’s Chickenburgers. I learned how to wrap lettering around a circle, how to use the eye-dropper tool to change the color of things quickly, and how to manipulate shapes and mold them into recognizable objects.
This is what I did on my first foray into Illustrator. You may be asking, as well you should, “Why a buck-toothed fish, Bob?” From what I can glean, so far, Illustrator appears to be all about shapes. So I made a shape and I looked at it and said to myself, “I can make a fish out of that.” Why buck teeth, you ask. Well, that mouth just looked like it was begging for buck teeth. Also, I bring your attention to the eyes. I don’t know what I did but they just appeared to the right of the “fish”. I thought they looked like eyes, so I gave the fish the eyes that destiny deemed I should.
Sometimes, when I draw a caricature of somebody, I get this slight twinge of guilt telling me that I am mocking or making fun of my subject. I have to remind myself that I am actually honoring the subject. As I am drawing, I am admiring certain physical characteristics unique to my subject that I find fascinating enough to take the time to draw.
This is a caricature of Owen Morgan. He has a YouTube program that I watch quite frequently. He exposes the hypocrisy of some televangelists, evangelists, religious figures, and, of course, politicians who pretend to be religious. Nowadays, it is very difficult to discern whether someone is a politician or an evangelist. The line between them has gotten very, very thin.
Here is my very first speed-drawing video!
Yes, there is a story to the above cartoon. And I will now tell you that story.
It begins when a friend of mine asks me to draw his logo. He wanted a lizard in a hammock strung up between two palm trees. There are times in my life where I have no creativity. I tried, but everything I did seemed wrong. Needless to say, I didn’t do the drawing.
Fast forward about eight years, I am moving to a new place, and as things get seen that haven’t been seen in quite awhile, I discover that I had the above drawing in my arsenal for years before my friend asked me to draw the lizard. If only I had remembered this drawing, I could have replaced the Gomer in the hammock with a lizard. Simple.
The moral of the story? Sometimes, I wish I had a smarter brain.
I mean, why can’t we harness the power of lightning? Or hurricanes and tornadoes? Just imagine the power generated by these natural phenomena. Let me emphasize NATURAL. Stuff that is going to happen anyways! Hey…we are already messing with solar, wind, and water power. This would just be one level up from that. If we can figure this out, eventually, we will also figure out how to make flying cars, probably.
I did a little more work on the AJ project. At first, I was just trying out different background colors. I was going to send this to Al and Gloria and let them decide which color they preferred. When I put them all together it looked quite charming. It reminded me of something Andy Warhol would have tried. I’ve decided to leave it as is. Art just happens, sometimes!
This is for my big brother, Albert, as he is recovering from a kidney transplant operation. This is a caricature of his dog, A.J. So listen to A.J. and get well soon!
This art was a simple pencil sketch of A.J.’s face and a very vague, unfinished outline of his body. I then scanned it into Photoshop and painted it.
Oddbox Comics 