Sometimes just cartooning is fun. I met a guy named Steve Silver at the National Caricature Network’s annual convention in Raliegh, NC last Nov. He does a lot of character development for animation. I sat in on his drawing seminar and got re-inspired to design characters and just plain draw more. I had fallen in to the habit of only drawing when I had a job. That just got me in a rut. I’ve been trying to pay attention to the gesture of my figures even in a more conservative composition. I’m even trying to get the gesture of a landscape or automobile.

This week’s Sports Illustrated Players article illustration.

This is a quick pencil doodle I dashed off after waking up late this morning after being up ’til 4:30am finishing my deadline for The Week Mag. This is actually my self image I have after most all-nighters…. I don’t know what is in the bottle. Coffee in  juice form?

Sports Illustrated asked for a more challenging illustration this last week. Peyton Manning seems to have a good sense of humor and SI wanted to convey this in a quick way.

They asked to have him in Groucho Marx make-up. So I watched a couple of Marx Brother clips on You Tube and put Peyton in the slouch walk. We got a late start on Sun. so I didn’t have much time to figure out a better poses etc.

CC Sabathia for the Players article. I turned it in early. Art directors have to know illustrators don’t like turning things in too early. When we do, changes always need to be made. The changes for this one I thought really improved the image. SI has a lot of attention to detail since sports fans know their stuff inside and out. This is CC Sabathia who will be a free agent next year. He’s a big reason people are talking about the Brewer’s chances of going to the World Series. Miller field apparently has this slide. The person who gets to go down the slide? Bernie Brewer. I like this image because of the scale difference. Plus CC has a fun face to paint.

I was thinking Bernie Fuches playing with the negative spaces and acid greens and brilliant blues.

I think I could have turned this in to a great composition if I had a little more time. I like it as it is enough though. Until 10AM Mon. this was the illo. they wanted. Fortunately I had already done most of the football image and only had another hour or so left  to do.

This was a few weeks ago. I love to mess with flattening out an image (like the white splotches here) and then rendering other parts more 3-D. This is a left-over from when I did comic books. One of my favorite artists was Bill Sienkiewicz. Because of him I discovered Baron Story. Their design sense just blows my mind! Fortunately I have a band-aid for that.

Sports Illustrated threw a curve at me this week. 2 illos. in one day…. and most of the night. I had to go in early for a cover meeting at The Week because of Labor Day, of course. Obviously SI and TW don’t talk with each other about my schedule! Such is the life of freelance. More often than not I can say yes to every job that calls. I try to watch for bottlenecks. I tend to drive on the highway like that as well, but every now and then you get stuck behind a dump truck with crap falling out. HA! Well, to be more accurate, a dump truck with money and espresso falling out of it.