Drawing in CorelDraw X5 (Video)

Here's a six minute video of me drawing in CorelDraw X5. The drawing actually took me about thirty minutes to make, but I sped it up to six minutes. See how quickly you can guess what it is!!

Artist Notes - Done in CorelDraw X5 on my Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop with Windows 7 OS.

November 2011 - Day 02 - Samoset

Day 02 - Samoset.

Artist Notes - Done completely in CorelDraw X5 on a Windows 7 Dell Laptop.

October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 31 - Jack O

 Day 31 - Jack O.

Here's the pumpkin I carved tonight. Happy Halloween! This year's Monster Madness has come to an end. But that's not all, as Frosty says...I'll come back again some day. Wait.....Frosty? Christmas? Hmmm..... To be continued....

Artist Notes - Carved the pumpkin. Took a picture of it with my Motorola Xoom. Used Sketchbook Mobile Pro to erase everything else that was in the picture. Exported it to DropBox. On my Dell Windows 7 Laptop, I used CorelDraw X5 to fit it to the size I wanted. Added a background and signature. Then topped it off with the words "Happy Halloween" using the font "Dock".

October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 30 - Vampire Bat

Day 30 - Vampire Bat.

It's the penultimate day for monsters in the month of October. I will be closing out this year's October Monster Madness tomorrow. I've been uploading these to my Sketchblog and Facebook. Not sure what the stats on Facebook, but on my blog I've had a considerable increase in foot traffic. On my Sketchblog, the previous four months have had an average of about 500 pageviews per month. This month there has been almost 1,300 visits! Thanks for coming by and checking the sketches out.

Artist Notes - This one was done completely in CorelDraw X5 on my Windows 7 Dell Laptop.

October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 28 - House Ghost

Day 28 - House Ghost.

And the house guest that you can't get rid of, the House Ghost!

Artist Notes - This one was a mix of mediums. First the background of the room/house was done in CorelDraw X5 on a Dell Laptop running Windows 7, as well as the picture frame. In Sketchbook Mobile Pro on my Motorola Xoom I created the man in the portrait and the man in the top hat. The portrait was merely exported as a png and imported into CorelDraw. The man in the top hat was exported as a psd file, which retains the transparency around the edges, then imported into CorelDraw X5. I inserted the man in the portrait into the frame then placed the man in the top hat in front of the scene and made him transparent. I converted it to a bmp and used the image adjustment lab to lower the saturation and made the temperature warmer. This gave the image more of an aged look. And then I exported the whole piece as a png.

Unleashed for the Unreached Manual Artwork

These are some illustrations I did for the book compilation and rebranding I have done recently. I created this little guy and I ended up being really happy with his simple design.

Artist Notes - Done completely in CorelDraw X5 on a Windows 7 Dell Inspiron.

JUMP VBS character - Science Kids Team





(from left to right) Dr. Y, Mattie, Spike and Nick

  
Here's Dr. Y with his smart team of science kids.  They help Doctor Youngenstein do all kinds of research and tests.  All three love learning about God and the cool things He created!

JUMP VBS character - Doctor Y

Here's one of the characters from the new Team Expansion JUMP VBS curriculum that I have been developing.  His name is Doctor Youngenstein or Dr. Y for short. He heads up a small science team of kid helpers finding answers to perplexing questions.  He loves God and loves science.  Dr. Y believes that science supports the existence of God.  And he's old and can't see very well.

JUMP VBS character - Cosmo the Globe.

Here's the main character from the new Team Expansion JUMP VBS curriculum that I have been developing.  His name is Cosmo the Globe.  He's passionate and loves showing kids where God is working all over the world!

Fall Fun Fest Scarecrow

For our annual Fall Fun Fest offered by our church as a community outreach, I was part of the signage team that designed signs for directing traffic.  I made a scarecrow to put on each sign.  Here he is.

Magazine Artwork - Emerald Hills

Here's an illustrated version of Emerald Hills in Louisville, Kentucky where our headquarters are located for Team Expansion.  I made this using CorelDraw X5 for possible use in our organization's magazing coming out this autumn called, Tell.

Rainy, Warm and Drowsy

This is a illustration I did as a result of a challenge from a friend.  His challenge was "rainy, warm and drowsy" in reference to today's weather in Tulsa.  The rain is obviously from the cloud, yet implicitly coming from the cloud's tears.  The warm comes from the music that is playing which is prompting the tears.  The drowsy is the sleepy melody that is playing as the rain drip drops on the ground. 


Art notes: made in CorelDraw X5.  I designed the cloud from scratch and used a reference photo to create the violin.  The background is a photo I took of a cloudy day in Ancona, Italy from our old balcony.

Student Ministry Logo

Here's a new logo I made in my free time for a friend who is a Student Minister.  I took the word Reinvent (which he came up with) and used two different fonts for.  The front four letters are one font, and the back four letters are another.  That makes the word itself show the idea of reinventing or transforming.

Piggyback Curriculum - Exodus Kid's Series - Egyptian Woman

Here is another pic in the initial creative process of creating the new Exodus curriculum.  This is a try at a generic egyptian woman.  I didn't want the egyptian princess that we might first think of (ie Cleopatra, etc...), but went for a more normal average egyptian in her surroundings.  To do this, I have to do much study, biblical and historical.  Questions, I have to ask include: What kind of dress did they wear? What color fabrics did they have? Was there a rich, poor and middle class or just rich and poor? How did having the Jews as slaves impact the economic stature of the egyptians? What materials did they make their pots out of? Lamps out of oil, candles or what exactly?

Some might think that I just throw a drawing together, but I put much more into it than that.  What do you think of this and the other concept art?

Piggyback Curriculum - Exodus Kid's Series - Egyptian Man

Here's another image from the new Exodus Curriculum series that I am working on.  I was very happy with how this egyptian man turned out.  I will be working on several "characters" that will be throughout the Exodus series, such as Moses (baby to old man), Aaron (young to old), Pharaoh, generic Israetite man and woman, as well as generic Egyptian man and woman.

Piggyback Curriculum - Exodus Kid's Series

So, I just posted a picture of a camel that I made for the latest kids' curriculum that I am working on, Exodus.  It is going to be the first curriculum under the umbrella of Piggyback Curriculum.  I chose the name Piggyback Curriculum for several reasons.  First, we want this curriculum to "piggyback" onto whatever Team Expansion missionaries, churches and parents are already doing in teaching their kids.  Second, the idea of giving someone a piggyback ride, would be us giving a lift or boost to those same people and groups.  It's the idea of helping each other, help each other.  Does that make sense?  Well, here is a potential cover for the Exodus Curriculum pack which will include, weekly lessons (that will be made available to translate into any language that our missionaries are using), worksheets, color sheets, activities and some videos. 

Camel Work for Exodus Curriculum

Here's my first camel for the new curriculum series I'm working on.

Here's the reference photo that I used in making the camel.

Working on a new curriculum package for Team Expansion missionaries to use.  This will be a study of the book of Exodus.  Here is the first images from the new study.  As usual, I used CorelDraw, now on version 15. Not sure how many weeks the study will include.  That is one of the details that I have to hammer out.  As a general rule, I do at least one per chapter, and then add in additional weeks when a chapter is packed.  Probably for instance, each of the plagues will get their own study, even if there are multiple in a chapter.  Our church has been studying Exodus and it has given me many ideas to think about that could be used in a kids' curriculum.

Caricature for Newsletter - Doug Lucas

As we send out monthly newsletters, we include a note from the president of Team Expansion, Doug Lucas.  He shares from a big picture perspective about missions as a whole within our organization.  Since I had just reformated our entire newsletter design, I thought it only fitting that I "reformat" the image that I used for Doug's note.  See the original pic and the new stylized caricature to fit in with the rest of our newsletter design.

You can see the whole newsletter design and read it too if you want at http://bit.ly/crossersnews201007.  We hope you enjoy it!

Strata Via logo

Here is a logo I have been working on for Team Expansion.  It is program for college students to get experience cross culturally for a year while living in the states! Great step towards overseas missions.

You can read more about it at: http://teamexpansion.org/blogs/stratavia/

Gone Camping

Here is a background scene that I made.  Click on it to see the full picture, it is apparently too wide to view on the main blog page.  I saw something the other day with a similar scene, so later that day I sketched in my moleskin sketchbook then worked on it CorelDraw.  After I finished it, I thought it might make a good Father's Day card.  So I made it into one, converted that to a pdf and am including that here so that other's can print it out and use it.  If you use cardstock it will even look better.  Let me know if you use it!!

Get your printable Father's Day card version by following this link: http://www.thecrossers.com/projects/happy_fathers_day_card_2010.pdf