SFG: Ad boy

Here's a little ad/illo I did tonight based on the theme "Vintage Advertising Characters" over at Sugar Frosted Goodness. This was a lot of fun and I can't wait to play ultimate frisbee tomorrow!! Hooray for flying discs!

Hot Dawg!

What would a dog diner serve if ever there was a dog diner? Hot dogs, of course :)

Happy Mother's Day!

To all you mama's out there, Happy Mother's Day! I hope you are showered with hugs and kisses. And chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate. And to MY wonderful mother... You = the best. I love you!

Owls are Wise

I have 10 stories for first and second graders to illustrate this weekend. 1 down, 9 to go!

Happy Bday Dad

This post goes out to my amazing father... it's his birthday today!! Have a great one daddio, I love you :)

recent sketches

These are a couple of sketches from a project I'm working on :) Looking forward to coloring them!

lernin me some Fotosherp

I've been taking some time these past couple of weeks in Photoshop to work on my painting/coloring skilz and add to my portfolio. It took me a while, but I've finally decided to focus on digital painting as opposed to traditional painting. I LOVE watercolor, but I'm very slow at it. The benefits of digitally painting are too important at this stage in my career, I think. I value 'true' paintings so much and intend to keep up with it, but for the sake of speed, revisions and cntrl+z, I'm goint to focus on my compy generated work. I mean, who wants to spend 10-15 hours on coloring an illo and an AD to come back and say, "Love it, but we'd actually like the kid to be older." or "Um, could the dog be a cat instead?" And then you have to repaint the whole thing! I sure as heck don't want that. No sirree Bob. And besides, I like the effects/look of digital paintings. So it's all good!

Here are a couple of spot illustrations from a set of 4 I did recently (I haven't colored the remaining 2 sketches yet). Hope you like :)

Update

I finally did it! I've been meaning to buy a listing on childrenillustrators.com for a while now but couldn't find the time... UNTIL NOW! Hurray! Sure is exciting to have another place to showcase my work. Formatting all the images and thumbnails took quite a while and showed me some things I need to work on to make my portfolio stronger. I'm feeling all motivated and energized to make that port of mine more shiney :) It's on like Donkey Kong! That portfolio doesn't know what's coming. Oooo doggey.

PS: The link to my profile on childrensillustrators.com is right there --> on the right side bar. See it? You can click it if you'd like... go on, you know you want to! :P

Topps- Star Wars!!!

Yay! I can finally show you these! Drawing some of my favorite movie characters of all time was so much fun. I only did 106 Star Wars cards (unlike the 258 for Indiana Jones) because I was short on time. I wish I had done more, but oh well. Now if only Topps would ask me to do Lord of the Rings... My life would be complete! haha... I hope you enjoy these, I certainly did!

V-day

Happy Valentines Day everybodies! Seeing as how I'm gonna be helping my friend move all day tomorrow, I'm not gonna have time to post this on the real Heart day, so it's going up today. Woohoo!

Today I had a lot of fun playing with the 'live trace' tool in Adobe Illustrator. Believe it or not, I'd never used it before. Shock! Dismay! Drool! I know, I don't know how I've gone on this long without it. Fun!

Dino Time

I just found out that a few of the board games I designed last year are available for purchase on Lakeshore Learning's website (item #s LL691-LL694)! So that means I can finally show y'all, Yay! These games are targeted toward teaching kiddsies how to tell time. It was SO MUCH fun to work on this project! Dinosaurs? Atlantis? Space? Aztecs? I mean, really? Who could ask for more?

Oh, and just in case anyone was wondering about the Star Wars sketch cards... you probably weren't but since I said in a previous post I'd be posting them today I figured I should update... Topps has pushed the release date to Wed, the 18th next week. If they actually keep with that date, you'll be able to find them RIGHT HERE. Ok, well not right here, cuz here is where this post is, but... um... yeah.

Bunnies!

Just finished this illo for the folks at MHoponHop. They're a non-sports trading card dealer on ebay and this illo will be used on a "thank you" card sent out with their orders. It was such a fun painting to do, thanks for asking me guys!

Topps- Indiana Jones Masterpieces... Last Crusade

And lastly, the Last Crusade. Thanks for the comments guys, I really appreciate them. I had a great time drawing these (though it took far longer than I anticipated, haha) and I'm glad you like them! I'm really looking forward to showing you my Star Wars cards, but that'll have to wait till their release date on Feb. 11. ttfn!

Topps- Indiana Jones Masterpieces... DOOM

My favorite character from Temple of Doom is Short Round. For me, he saved the movie :) I wish I could say the same for Shia Labeouf. Oh well. Last Crusade cards will be up shortly and then... Star Wars!

feeling super

I've been sick for the last 2 weeks. That's right, for both holidays I sat on the couch looking not so pretty. Oh well, I must say it was pretty relaxing because it FORCED me to do nothing. And nothing is something I don't do very well. So I got to practice doing nothing, which I guess IS something. uhhh, yeah. So anyways, now I'm feeling much better and ready to accomplish all my 2009 goals! And because I'm feeling more super-duper, I thought I'd post some not-so-recent sketches of a boy with a towel-cape tied round his neck cuz he looks super-duper :)

Oh yes, I should note that these sketches were done for the legendary Mr. Jeff Andrews over at www.jeffandrewsdesign.com/

Go 2009! Let's DO this!

Merry Christmas!!

Dear people who visit this blog,

Katie asked us to wish you a very merry Christmas! She really appreciates you taking the time to swing by every so often to take a gander at her artwork and she hopes you have a fabulous holiday season filled with mistletoe, chocolate and that fresh pine smell! Here's to you and your family and New Year's resolutions!

Best Wishes,
The Clauses

Topps-Indiana Jones Masterpieces... RotLA

Hi guys! A few months ago I received an email from the AD at Topps inviting me to do original artist sketch cards for their new Indiana Jones trading card series. I was honored and stoked! Now that the series is available for purchase I can post scans. So here's a few from Raiders of the Lost Ark ...


I still have Temple of Doom and Last Crusade to show you... but I'll prolley wait a bit before I post those :) Gotta format them and such. Check back soon!

©©©

It's gonna be a bit tacky, and possibly a little annoying, but I think I'm going to start putting ©s on my images from now on. Not only do we have a possible Orphan Works bill to worry about, but I've been finding my images being used without my permission. So I apologize for my name being slapped on my images, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do :) Hope you had a great thanksgiving!!!

muskles

and she shoots ...

put put

Here's a new Flash assignment I just finished. If blogger had allowed me to post the flash .swf file you guys coulda clicked on the animated buttons. oh well. But I figure it's still kinda cute to watch him put-put through the countryside for a little while, (he's living my dream. I want a vespa desperately but can't get myself to spend the money or risk my limbs) Enjoy!

Nice

Here's a little illo I did for the theme over at Sugar Frosted Goodness. I've decided that while I love illustrator, I need to pump up my digital painting skills. I started out this one but outlining the strokes in illustrator and importing them into Photoshop. Then I used custom brushes and some textures to mimic my traditional watercolor technique. I think the experiment went pretty good ... I certainly learned a lot. I'm going to keep experimenting with digital painting and hopefully find a looser and quicker style. But for now, I'm just excited to have something other than work or flash class stuff to post, haha.

Happy Halloween Everybody!

I promise that one of these days I'll have something other that my Flash homework to post!

balanced breakfast

This boy's about to partake in a delicious new product ... Sugar Boogers! Kid tested, Mother disapproved. Okay, that was lame. sorry :)

I made this up for another one of my flash assignments ... it was a VERY short clip of the boy pouring milk. So short that I'm just showing you a screen shot and not the actual animation cuz it's really not worth it. My Flash midterm is coming up and I'll post that, (if it turns out). It's going to be Halloween themed!

It's a bit surreal taking a class again. I'm having a great time, but I kinda feel like I'm time-warping back 4 years. Workin on homework every week. Walking on campus with a backpack and a pop tart. Sweating in a trailer-like classroom with no air conditioning, (These hot and dry santa ana winds really need to blow away). But I must say that I'm loving it. I think I'll take a silkscreening class next semester! :)

Read About Me - Available now!

Back in January I got a call from the good folks at Lakeshore to illustrate a book called 'Read About Me'. It's a fun-to-create keepsake album sold through Toys To Grow On. (click here to see the product page). How much fun was this book to design??! My good friend Dave James and I slaved on it for 3-4 weeks from beginning to finish and it turned out beautiful. It's in a cut paper style, which was new for me at the time, and I really enjoyed it. Here are some of my favorite spreads :)