Underwater Creatures

These unfinished drawings were for a website I was working on.

Germano Reale Duck

While at a team offsite meeting, I was inspired by the meeting center's adopted mascot.

Josh St. Nick

A sketch of my friend Josh as ol' St. Nick.

Early Fat Baby Sketches

Here are some of the first attempts at finding Fat Baby's drawing style.

Fat Baby Inked and Colored Artwork

Well, I had said I would post some of the more finished artwork from Fat Baby. Below is a more finished version from one of the first few pages. The pencils were inked by hand, then scanned into the computer. Once in the computer I traced the bitmap with CorelTrace and then used a combination of CorelDraw and CorelPhotoPaint to color it. Enjoy.

Art & Fear

So I have laid aside the book I have been reading, Animating Culture. It is a bit too academic, but I will finish it eventually. I think it was actually written as a textbook so the academic part is understandable. That's not why I put it down for now though. I got as a gift this week a book I have been wanting for about a year. It is called "Art & Fear". I read an interview with Glen Keane, a disney animator whom I admire greatly in the field of art. Glen had suggested that every artist should read this book, and I am already starting to understand why.

Here are a couple of excerpts:

"Operating Manual For Not Quitting...

A. Make friends with others who make art, and share your in-progress work with each other frequently.

B. Learn to think of [A], rather than the Museum of Modern Art, as the destination of your work. (Look at it this way: If all goes well, MOMA will eventually come to you.)"

"Art is a high calling - fears are coincidental. Coincidental, sneaky and disruptive, we might add, disguising themselves variously as laziness, resistance to deadlines, irritation with materials or surroundings, distraction over the achievement of others - indeed as anything that keeps you from giving your work your best shot. What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears, continue; those who don't quit."

And then this great excerpt about vision...

"After a few months' practice, David (Bayles) lamented to his teacher, "But I can hear the music so much better in my head than I can get out of my fingers." To which the Master replied, "What makes you think that ever changes?" That's why they're called Masters....Lesson for the day: vision is always ahead of execution - and it should be."

It is all great stuff, which I think applies to other realms of expertise, such as missions, home-making, leadership, etc.....

I look forward to finishing it, but don't want to for fear of it being the end of the material. I guess if it is that good, I can just read it once more.

Route 66 Photo Book

Well, the Route 66 photo book is finished. I didn't have time to do any original artwork. It includes only the photography that Angie and I took while taking our two trips down the old path. In a future edition I will add some original artwork based on Route 66 highlights, as well as add more shots from the front half of the trip (Chicago to Claremoore, Oklahoma). If you are interested it is available at Lulu.com by clicking here (http://stores.lulu.com/mcrosser).