The Shivering Guy by Joe Williams
This is a drawing I banged out for a propane ad a while back. I had forgotten all about it, but recently somebody emailed me regarding my cartoon and illustration work. It’s hard to see in this version,but I had snuck my website on one of this fellow’s left shoe. An eagle-eyed admirer spied it and was good enough to email me. I have to remember to sneak my website into everything I do!
I was recently asked to do some sketches of Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero for a project this guy was trying to pitch. He needed them in a hurry, so I made some doodles and sent them off. I went to high school with the guy and thought he was all right, but I never heard from him again. I called. I e-mailed. I hired a psychic. Maybe I should file a missing persons report.
I’m not sweating it – it’s not like I’m giving away Bugs Bunny, and they didn’t take that long to do. They are just Fred Flinstoney sketchbook sketches done in front of the television. Oh, well.
by Tina Garceau
This is one of Tina’s brilliant, digital collages combining vintage clip-art, colors and textures.
by Joe Williams
Monkey & Bird deal badly with back-to-back blizzards. ‘Nuff said!
Here’s a card I did back in the late-’80s/early ’90s that crams together three holidays. Seems I had slacked off somewhat and was in need of catching up on my holiday correspondence!
This one was done in technical pens probably on bristol board.
Being that Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, Tina and I thought we’d rummage around and dig out some of our own cards we’ve made for that holiday.
RoboCupid by Joe Williams
RoboCop came out in 1987, and, at the time, it was my favorite movie. It was a mash-up of comic book superheroes, science fiction, black comedy and ultra-violence. I remembered getting really charged up when I saw the costume design on the movie poster. Sure there was Star Wars and The Terminator before that, but this looked like a comic book brought to three-dimensional reality. I loved the movie.
…and than they had to water it down with two awful sequels, a worst television series, made-for-TV movies and a cartoon series. Oh, well.
I made this card back in 1988 before all of the sequels and other nonsense. All analog, baby! No digital work was involved in this one. Brushes, ink, technical pens and press type which I had screened back using a stat camera. I traced the logo from a copy of Cinefantastique on to heavy tracing paper. I created the additional letters based on the existing letters. That was fun because I pulled out all of my mechanical drawing tools to do it. I pasted all of the work together, shot a stat for photocopying and sent it out to friends.
This was my Christmas card from 1995 when the airwaves were filled with the likes of Jerry, Sally, Leeza, Maurie, etc. and their carnival of guests who would gleefully bare their wretched souls to hooting and hollering audiences.
This was done with brush and ink on paper. I think this piece represents the last time I ever used shading film. The lettering was done in CorelDraw on a Packard Bell 386 PC that I got from a mail-order catalog. I printed the type out on a laser printer and pasted it into the illustration. The illo was then copied in RED on cardstock. I worked at a place with terrific copiers. It was an awful place to work, but the copiers were great! Perks of the job!
Sketches seem to be fairly popular (well, I like them) so I’m putting a couple more up today. These are from a series of dating disaster illustrations I did for Boulder Magazine. I wish I got assignments like this every day. I love drawing uncomfortable situations and fat people. I think if I could draw angst ridden chubbies every day I would be in Hog Heaven!
See the finish here, and I blogged about it earlier here.
I did the first drawing on some tracing paper. I was probably refining a sketchbook sketch. The drawing of the woman was done separately with a roller ball pen in a sketchbook. I scanned them and married them together and printed them on bristol in light blue. Then I used markers for the finished ink. I used to turn my nose up at markers, but the brush markers and Micron pens are terrific nowadays. It’s also getting hard finding decent bottled ink and brushes.
Finally, the image was colored in Photoshop.
Here’s a little Halloween fun with a few digital photos and a little time with Photoshop.
I haven’t been down to South Street in ages, and stores seem to come and go every 5 minutes down there, but I was stunned to find out that the TLA Video that started on South Street and moved to 4th just off of South is closing its doors. It used to be the greatest video store with a library second to none, but it’s a victim of the time and technology. I remembered when they opened. The same folks owned the TLA Theatre which was a terrific revival house, and they thought they would give this crazy home video business a try. They did more than try! They knew movies and they tried to carry every thing!
Back in 1997, they seemed unstoppable. They actually opened a location in Manhattan. Imagine that – lowly Philly business invades the Big Apple. That’s when I was hired to provide this image of everybody’s favorite Japanese atomic reptile smashing the competition up there. It was used in a two-color version on ads, flyers and leaflets.
