Mount Pleasant Horses

Purchase a print of this at my art store

Title: Mount Pleasant Horses Touching the Sky

Dimensions: 18x22.2 inches at 300 DPI

Tools: Krita, Custom-made RGBa brushes that mimic the feel of oil paint.

Previsualizing the concept

During the Mount Pleasant Independence Day parade I snapped this photo of these horses mounted by local beauties:

After deliberating on whether to use this as is, for my reference image, I decided I didn't want to include the women as part of this piece. I liked the horse, but I also wanted to include clouds. In order to do this, I engaged in some photo compositing. Using another photo which included some puffy clouds and another photo that included a horizon and some far-off clouds with some mid-ground landscape. 

Hard lesson learned about using AI as a reference tool

At one point I utilized Photoshops AI image generation tools to produce the lower portion of the horses. I fully rendered that generation into the painting. After reviewing other reference photos, I came to the full realization that the AI generation was completely flawed. I felt like a fool for taking as long as I did to come to this realization. Lesson learned, and I plan to never again us AI as a tool, except in the most minor cases. So, I finally did what I should have done in the beginning, and I used other references from horses in the same parade to produce the final rendering. I feel I ended up with a much more realistic and pleasing result. You can see the contrast in the progression video or animated GIF I produced, along with the painting. (See at the end of this post).

Haitian Woman and newborn

Early illustration from my newspaper days

I had been working at the Deseret News for about one year when I decided to try my hand at creating an artistic illustration using a pressure sensitive device. This wasn't entirely new to me, I had already owned a Logitech pen tablet for several years already and had produced several personal works with it. For this I decided to take an image which had already been published, draw a sketch on paper, scan the sketch into the computer, then render out a digital painting from the original reference.

Ultimately this was an attempt to show the management at Deseret News (In late 2010, right after a major layoff of a huge portion of the staff) that I had the chops to do illustration work. After creating this and showing it around, no one seemed too interested in the more traditional look. Which is fine. In the years that followed the Deseret News, like every other surviving Newspaper publication, would water down everything with their physical content. Currently you can subscribe to the, vastly reduced newspaper, and have it delivered in your mailbox. But about 99% of us just hit the internet on our mobile devices.

Maddy

Stats: 

Canvas size: 4200x3300 pixels

Brush: Custom-made paint brush (Krita RGBa)

Program: Krita 

Reference: Multiple

Earlier in the summer one of my cousin's daughters (Maddy) tragically sought to take her own life. Doctors fought to keep her with us. Many prayers were raised to the God of the universe. After all of this, God took her home and she passed out of this life. I would describe what led up to this, but her mother gives a far better description of Maddy's life and some of the struggles she endured that led to the series of events that resulted in her passing. You can read about that on her blog here.

I will only say this much about the passing of Maddy: As is the case with all of Heavenly Father's children, she was subject to all the vicissitudes of this life. That included her DNA, her circumstances and the choices she made. She was an incredibly complex beautiful soul. I am in no way qualified to judge her. Nor do I judge God as to why she was taken from us so young. His will be done in all things, and I have no doubt Maddy is safe and loved beyond anything we can comprehend in this life. When it comes down to it that is core reason for my attempt to illustrate Maddy in the arms of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer. His love and power are infinite. God the Father, His Son and the Holy Spirit have never let me down; they will take care of her and be there with her on her eternal journey.

The following is a glimpse into the process and struggles I experienced in digitally painting this illustration. Read on if you would like to know more

Vanilla Sky, a Digital Painting

Finished digital painting.

Stats: 

Canvas size: 4200x3300 pixels

Brush: Custom-made paint brush (Krita RGBa)

Program: Krita 

Reference: Photo taken by me

I snapped the reference photo for one of my wife's pet geckos in March of this year. I loved the look, lighting and pose so much, I decided to paint this as an exercise. As I progressed I decided to execute a fully rendered digital painting

Reference Photo of Vanilla Sky

As always using Krita and the custom brushes within the program are amazing. The interactive feel, that balances smudging and applying paint all within the same stroke, feels so natural and intuitive.

Below are a few detail images at 100% zoom.

Detail at 100% zoom

Detail at 100% zoom

Christmas Card 2017

3D rendering of the card

Hello everyone! Merry Christmas. I decided to create a Christmas Card that I ended up printing and also used as a digital card.

The sketch

Out of the recesses of my mind I sketched then scanned the below drawing into the computer.

Colorizing in Gimp

In Gimp 2.8 I created a gradated texture surrounding the figures. I did this by creating a circular gradient, Cubism filter, emboss, and changing the layer mode to Grain Extract. Then on another layer I painted the figures, achieving what you see below

Laid out in InDesign

I finished laying this out in InDesign. On the cover I placed my image with some text at the top. Inside I found some text in the Holy Bible and used a version of the figures without the textured background.

Front of card

Inside of card

'51 Ford illustration

This is not a photo

What you see here is the result of many many sessions, over a 3 month period, of creating shape after shape in Adobe Illustrator. The image source for this is a photo I took at a small car show years ago.

Also decided to take some of the slogans, used in an original Ford ad (See below), to create an original ad. I used illustrator to outline the '51 Ford logo, so I could have a vectorized version to resize to whatever I choose.

You can find the original illustration (Not this ad) for sale at my fine art store on Imagekind.

Final illustration, with vintage Ford slogans and logo added. Copy right 2017

Vintage Ford ad. NOT CREATED BY ME

Why did I do this?

I did this because of U-haul. For years I had seen some really nice illustrations on the side of U-haul trucks. Then I saw this one:

Uhaul ad, NOT created by me. Very cool

These impressed me for their quality and unique style. I find these incredibly eye catching. Whoever is over marketing at U-haul – two huge thumbs up! Having an artist to utilize Illustrator (Assuming) to create illustrations with a unique style and look, is smart in my opinion.

After seeing this, and others, I decided I wanted to create my own high quality illustration using vectors. After much deliberation I decided I wanted my first professional illustration to be based on a photo I've personally taken, and I wanted chrome, lots of shiny chrome. (Not the browser)

Several years ago I went to a small car show behind the Litza's Pizza restaurant in West Valley City. Took a ton of photos. Years later I came across this photo and knew this was the one.

Details

Below are some detail shots of the illustration.

Fake money holder for cub scouts

Highlighted in this post is a money holder for my wife's scout store. Anyone familiar who with 8-year-old boy's behavior, know they can be precocious and unruly. This is especially true when trying to teach them things they deem less than interesting. As a means of reigning in their behavior, during the 1-hour den meeting, Bronny created a scout store. She shops and finds bargains on items she thinks the boys will be interested in; Then sells them to the boys using fake scout money. They earn the money based on good behavior during the den meeting. Needless to say, the store has been a huge success, for the most part (Some boys have no price).

I have already highlighted in a previous post the money I designed for the store.



The problem has arisen, that some of these boys insist on saving much of their money. This makes using flat paper sleeves unsuited for the task. So Bronny asked me to design a paper money holder of sorts. Below you can see the design and the final result. It turned out rather well.

Resources if you want to try

If you're interested in printing these for your own scout store the pdf for this can be downloaded from this link.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxeybFoTNkf2V244TGRQdjRoUVk

If you are interested in printing the money for the above holder download from this link:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxeybFoTNkf2ZlZJYnVFRlVnUU0

Design for the money holder. Was able to fit 2 to a 8.5 x 11 page

Process and construction

As is the case with any custom-made paper box, measurements had to be taken of the money. Design was executed using Adobe InDesign. Several versions of the holder were printed and tested to make sure they would work as intended. Duct tape or masking tape work well to bind them together.

Here is the Money holder. Notice we use flat tacks to pin it to the board

Here is the Money holder with money.

Money holders as they appear on the Cork board. Notice the older flat sleeves at the bottom

Grandma and child illustration

I've picked up a little more illustration work with my job at Deseret News. This one ended up being for online only. If you would like to read the story, written by Daphne Chen, associated with this illustration, here is a link. The story revolves around our nation and state's ever-growing population problem stemming from low birth rates. Here comes the demographic winter.

About this illustration

The writer provided me with a stock image. I took this into Illustrator and created many many vector shapes. It is a paint-by-numbers approach, but I like the simplified results derived from it. Obviously there is some creativity in making decisions about placement and color of shapes. For example, there is always additional creative judgement that needs to be made with human faces. Shapes and shadows on faces are almost never cut and dry. In the case of the grandma, especially, I had to alter some shapes and colors to make her look less creepy.

Below you can see the result before taking it into Photoshop.

The emotional payoff

Below is a detail showing in greater detail the shapes of the figures. All in all the work in illustrator represents between 2 and 3 hours.

My feelings as I go through this meticulous work could be comparable to coloring in an adult coloring page, with all its hundreds if not thousands of cells. For some reason it is relaxing, calming and rewarding on some fundamental emotional level.

Finishing in Photoshop

It should be noted that I don't just do a straight copy and paste to Photoshop of the entire illustration. I organize in Illustrator using layers, based on background, midground, foreground and the central figures of this rendering. Then I copy and paste one by one into photoshop so as to create layers which can be edited separately.

Below is the final result after applying some creative texturing and blurring, in photoshop. I deliberately left the central figures alone, in the hope that their increased simplicity will draw attention to them. I think it does just that in a very pleasant way.

What do you think? Let me know. Have a good day, and God bless.

Logo for Solid Point Engineering

Over the past couple weeks I had the opportunity to do up a logo for my Brother-in-law Taran and his wife Lauren. I wont bore you with the details. Suffice to say all these were finalized in Illustrator. I used Photoshop to assist in the beveled look of the lettering.

 Below are all the several incarnations of the logo, with the last being the one they selected.

First draft

2nd Draft

3rd Draft

 Final logo design

How do you think I did? Do you like the final logo better than the others?

Fun sketching at Draw Night

Spent a couple hours with my Illustrator brother and some friends talking about sketching landscapes and the importance of doing thumbnails before engaging in a larger image.

I have always known the importance of thumbnails in the design process. But honestly I never really understood how they can be a launching pad for doing a landscape. Special thanks goes out to Michael Buhler for showing us how thumbnails can quickly get your creative juices flowing in a quick easy way.

I quickly drew 3 thumbnails in row, shown below.

I liked the idea of the first one, a giant tortoise staring down a small character at the top of a cliff. I probably drew this from my first viewing of the Neverending story movie, in which the hero has a conversation with an ancient massive turtle.

I took this and expanded on the thumbnail below to create a larger more detailed sketch. I had great fun doing this. I may take this sketch to another level and create a digital painting. We'll see.

Leia Organa speed photo manipulation video

Thought I would post this little video I made showing (In fast forward) how I created the fan art of Leia last month. This was fun. Took a couple hours. Enjoy!

December 2015, Graphics in review

Here is the final month of Graphics for 2015. Busy, but good month

Festival of Trees Fire

Recently had the opportunity to create a cartoonesque fire as part of a mantle piece for the Festival of Trees at the South Town Expo Center. Had a great time designing and creating this for my Mother-in-law.

Below are some of images of the creative process I went through.

In the end it turned out well. Execution of the design was probably the most difficult part.

Initial thumb sketches

Design after conversion to vector format in Illustrator

Wanted to see what it would look like in a 3D environment, so I brought it into Blender and did a quick model of the mantle.

The Fire by itself shortly after completion. Used masonite wood for most of it. Had supporting boards at base and in center, into which was shot nails. Used spray paint for the colors. The log holders were printed and mounted to masonite wood of the same shape. Highlights on the log were pained with a brush. All in all it came together pretty good.

Fire as it would have appeared in the display at the Festival of Trees. There was an incident that dirtied the fire up and made it undispalyable. Used Gimp 2.8 to composite it into this image.

'The Nones' Illustration

Created this for the cover of Deseret News National Edition. The article, written by Chandra Johnson, focuses on what the reality is of people who are unaffiliated with any religion.Though their may be many of these, so called "Nones"; the fact that many of these people still have faith in a higher power should not be discounted.. In short the polling numbers are far from being simple in regard to people and their faith.

The process

So they wanted an illustration that showed a lot of graphical imagery combined with someone appearing to worship or pray. I selected 4 or 5 from our archives, opened them in Illustrator and changed all to white, with an outline appearance. Then I copied and pasted them one at a time into Photoshop.

Then, using an image mask I composited the graphics with the Shutterstock image. I used a gradient

March Deseret News graphics in review

Here, again, is my top 10 picks for graphics done for the Deseret News for the month of March. Enjoy!

1. Big business verses local business

This graphic shows starkly how local chains stack up against national chains in how much money is recycled back into local economies. Couldnt find this story online, which leads me to believe it was only published in print. Sorry 

2. Timeline on depictions of Christ in media

I found this interesting for how many different ways in which the Master is depicted in our culture. Obviously some more accurate than others. Her is link to the story by Deseret news writer Mark A. Kelner.

3. Orthodox Jews are stalwarts

This is one of those rare times in which I was able to incorporate a visual element of the story into a graphic in a practical and pleasing way. This is a great faith-promoting story by Kelsey Dallas for the Deseret News

4. We still want better and bigger things

This really shouldn't come as a surprise to any of us. Who doesn't want to improve their quality of life? I certainly do. But where does too much become too much, and too big become too big? This is a Great story on Money and happiness by Lane Anderson for the Deseret News

5. Print! Its Alive, Alive!

Had fun with this graphic. Though perhaps a little cluttered. This is perhaps proof that books, you know, those dead tree sheets you can hold in your hands and read from, might be around for a very long time.

6. Fun Layout

Yes, I know it promotes Disney, but I had fun doing a small cutout of this air surfing whelp from Disney's Treasure planet. This is still one of my favorite Disney films from the early 2000s. Overall I think the layout turned out quite well.

7. Low pay in Salt Lake for sitters

I am not terribly surprised by this. Freelance work in general, is lower in Utah than the national average. Is this a result of savvy business dealings or just plain cheapness? I have no idea. Here is the link to the story by Matthew Jelalian for the Deseret News.

8. Death for those who deserve it, still favored in America

This graphic was published in an article that focuses on the 6th commandment. This and other articles are part of a series on the Ten commandments and what they mean to us in modern society. This article was written by Eric Schulzke.

9. Single parenting

One of the greatest indicators, in my opinion, of a failing society is how many children grow up in a single-parent household. I have personally seen how much more difficult it was for children to grow up without a father in the home. At best many turned out OK, at worst many go off to prison or worse. While  father is no guarantee that a child will make all the right choices, fathers are an undeniable stabilizing force for boys and girls. This transfers into the greater society. This is the link to the story by Lois M. Collins

10. Making babies better through genetics

Is it morally right to genetically alter babies? As medical technology and processes advance this question will need to be answered. Being a Star Trek fan I can't help but wonder if genetic manipulation could be used to create super-humans (Star Trek II, Star Trek: Into Darkness). Would said super-humans seek to eliminate who they deem unsuitable to continue the human race. Who knows. Here is the article by Kelsey Dallas.

Here is the rest of March Graphics. Enjoy!