studiohowell sketchbook

"It's not a doll, It's an ACTION FIGURE" Show

2010-06-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

I was asked to participate in the upcoming show, "It's not a doll, It's an ACTION FIGURE", by our good friend and show curator A. Pants. It's starting tomorrow! Here's the skinny...

"Artwork and photography focusing on the love of the action figure!" At the Bear and Bird Gallery, in sunny Lauderhill, Florida! Running June 19 through July 31, 2010.

Here's my contribution...

The One Case
Digital Print and Water Color, Hand Colored
June 2010

"One Case to Rule Them All. One Case to Find Them.
One Case to Bring Them All and In The Darkness Bind Them."

Read more about it at nerdsquared and make sure to visit the gallery and flickr pool.

It's the Batman!

2010-01-22T14:30:00.000-08:00

Just posted this at the pop project for Artist's Choice.

Lazy Artist

2009-07-29T07:52:00.000-07:00

I admit I have been an extremely lazy artist when it comes to my Sketch Blog. It has been a year since I posted anything. In my defense I've been busy with work (doing art) and my studio at home is a wreck, overran with toys.

To further the point I had started a mural on the wall of my work office during my lunch breaks. It was meant to be just a line drawing, as you can see it still needs to be completed. I even had people here that would come in and try to follow my pencils on the wall and help paint during their lunch break, but they gave up as I was taking lunch to work on work.

I always meant for this blog to be a sketch book online of things that were going through my head, drawings that I just wanted to do for fun. So hang in there as I get the sketches organized and make some time to do some more.

Gears Plush

2007-08-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

Well the logo went over so well, that the company decided that Gears would get his own amusement family. This is one of the "natural" prototypes, the actual line (released 2007) was all in neon colors.

How many people can say they have a toy of their puppy?

Gears!

2007-07-27T08:07:00.000-07:00

Gears is a mascot that I came up with for Toy Factory. He is based on one of our Bassets named Squee.

Click here to see an image of Squee!

Aquaman

2007-06-27T12:55:00.000-07:00

As a thank you to a friend for a really generous act, I came up with a colored sketch of his favorite character. I knew I had a limited time to get this done, so I took it straight from my really, really rough thumbnails straight to Illustrator. I then did all my adjustments and tweaks in the computer, instead of flushing out more "finished" sketches by hand.

I thought it would be nice to show the thumbnails next to the finished piece. To see more of Aquaman visit the Aquaman Shrine here, and to see what spurred this sketch visit here.

Playing with Colors

2007-06-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

This one is taking a little bit of time, I have been working on it when I need a break, 5 minutes here and there, maybe over lunch. Gives me some time to think about options since it's not a deadline piece, more of a fun one.

Progress with Basset

2007-05-31T14:57:00.000-07:00

Here's a progress shot showing the buildup of the illustration.

Pose with Basset

2007-05-17T05:58:00.000-07:00

Your standard Justice League heroine pose with a basset. I will be cleaning this up soon, maybe trying a no black outline approach.

Little Green Guy

2007-05-16T08:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a little illustration I originally did for a wallpaper for my computer at work. I really enjoyed trying this character in this style, and the wallpaper was a huge success. In all the time I illustrated for Star Wars Kids Magazine I had never really strayed to far from my hand drawn style, so this was a nice break.

Star Wars and Yoda are copyright Lucasfilm.

Spaceboy!

2007-05-15T07:59:00.000-07:00

A cleaned up version originally produced in Macromedia Freehand.

International Space Walk

2007-05-13T20:27:00.000-07:00

This is a doodle I did several years ago. It is of my son and apparently former Soviet President Gorbachev on a joint space walk. I'm not sure why.

Part of this was later used for a graphic for a CD label.

Ameri-Girl Color

2007-05-11T08:40:00.000-07:00

A cleaned up version, produced in Illustrator.

Ameri-Girl Sketch

2007-05-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

A little sketch to try out a few things. It's based on a character called American Dream from Marvel Comics. I always thought it would be nice to take the "Batgirl" treatment and apply to other characters.