The Hollywood Brown Derby

I think I drew this in 1995 while I worked at Walt Disney World and it was originally intended to be used as a poster for a cast member initiative.  I had done several Studios themed drawings and then the blank space was used for information on meetings and such (this has been cropped removing the blank space).

Roommates

From 1996, this picture of three roommates out on a cool winter's eve.

Brian, Kristen, and Al.

A Night At DV8 Volumes Twenty-nine & Thirty

I think I originally intended for Volume 30 (whose completion coincided with my 30th birthday) to be the end of this series of cds and so it was a double disc set with some of my favorite songs from the other 29 volumes.  Later I decided to continue the series and used Volume 31 as a starting point for switching from hand drawn covers to photo manipulated covers.  I believe Volume 30 was also the debut of my logo (strategically located on the front cover).

Original Frontierland Train Station

Demolished when Splash Mountain was constructed, I drew this in 1994 in its memory.

Scott Wolf

From 1996 in pencil.

A Night At DV8 Volumes Twenty-seven & Twenty-eight

50's Prime Time Cafe

From the Disney's Hollywood Studios.

Tiki in the Jungle

This is a mix of things.  The foreground and background is comprised of elements I digitally created for a couple of other projects.  The tiki is a digitally manipulated photo of a tiki from the gardens of the Mai Kai Restaurant in Fort Lauderdale.  I do not know the tiki's name.

A Night At DV8 Volumes Twenty-five & Twenty-six

Today's two covers reach the two extremes from tame to the most risque yet.

Lady Miss Kier

Former lead singer of Deee-Lite and groovilicious fashion diva, Lady Miss Kier makes an appearance today.

Space Mountain

Direct from my #2 pencil in 1994 comes this rendering of the old rocket on the Space Mountain sign.

A Night At DV8 Volumes Twenty-three & Twenty-four

Even sailors like to dance.

Chris O'Donnell

From the early 00's.

The Little Mousemaid

One of a number of drawings i did in the early to mid-nineties putting classic Disney characters into other movies' characters.  Others included Star Wars (long before they did it in the parks) and Dick Tracy (which I later found out had been done already but I didn't see it until years later).

A Night At DV8 Volumes Twenty-one & Twenty-two

Dean Cain & Teri Hatcher

I probably drew this about 2002 based on a photo of them together from their days on Lois & Clark.  I then used it on the cover of a 2003 Valentine's Day cd that I made.

Poohuailama - God of Partying

Poohuailama (from the Hawaiian "poʻo huaʻi lama" roughly meaning "hangover") has had a wild night out.  It's almost like a scene from "The Hangover".  He's lost some teeth, gotten his nose pierced and has terribly bloodshot eyes.  You'd think someone might have shaved off that unibrow for him but it's still there.  Hope he doesn't have to work today!

A Night At DV8 Volumes Nineteen & Twenty

Caution, bare ass alert.

Grecian Beauty

Today's drawing is from about 1991 and is of my friend Angelia.

Makaleho - God of Lust

A tiki god of my own creation, the lascivious Makaleho is on the prowl and ready for action.  He's actually panting for it!

Here the Makaleho mask hangs on a simple canvas backdrop.

Here an island native heads into the jungle in search of prey.

A Night At DV8 Volumes Seventeen & Eighteen

This one is probably one of my favorites.

A Night At DV8 Volumes Fifteen & Sixteen

The hand drawn covers continue with volumes 15 and 16.

Photoshop Rant

For the purposes of this rant, the term Photoshop refers to any image enhancement software program. 

I have to stop reading the comments after articles on the internet.  They rarely fail to take away any faith I may have had in the public (which wasn't much to begin with).  After reading a recent article, with photos, about the winning entry in a photography contest I was amazed at the amount of vitriol spewed at the artist for his use of photoshop (which for the record I did not find excessive).  The general consensus was that a real photographer doesn't need to use such programs.

My first thought upon reading these remarks was, "Do these people know anything about photography?"  I believe an image on a computer screen is the equivalent of a photographic print.  In the "olden days" the photographers equivalent to Photoshop was the printing and developing process where they could adjust color saturation or contrast by the use of exposure times and they could achieve other effects through development techniques.  A print never just happened.  It was a series of manipulations to the process to get the desired effect.  Photoshop is just the digital version of these processes.  It's still a process of trial and error.  One can certainly make too many adjustments leaving an image looking weird and alien (though sometimes that is the desired effect).  Besides, regardless of how much one might manipulate these aspects of  a photo, there are certain things that can't be "faked".  A photo either has that certain something or doesn't.  The rest is just gravy.

I guess the point is that photos have always been and will always be manipulated one way or another to achieve the desired result. 

Faye Dunaway

Here's another celebrity picture that was started a number of years ago that I finally completed last week.

A Night At DV8 Volumes Thirteen & Fourteen

Everything Old Is New Again

After my combination drawing/photography experiment the other day I thought I would play with that some more.  I took a couple of old drawings and photographs from the 90's and made two more pictures.  There were limitation working with these older drawings as there were places that had been shaded in and other things that I will avoid in making these kinds of pictures from scratch in the future.

This one is titled "I Vant To Be Alone" and the original elements date to about 1990.  Hollie tried to shield herself from the paparazzi by hiding behind her arm leaning against the lockers.

This untitled picture is from the mid-90's.  Heather sits and rests at Downtown Disney with the Empress Lilly in the background.

Anastacia

I love me some Anastacia.  I first bought her cd single I'm Outta Love when it came out in 1999 or 2000 and fell instantly in love.  She very much reminded me of Taylor Dayne from the eighties (who incidentally had a return about the same time).  Anastacia's biggest hit here in the US was One Day In Your Life which was quite the summer anthem for me when it came out in 2002 or so.  She continues to make music today.  I did the rough for this drawing back about that time as I believe this is based on the cover of her cd.  I finally got around to doing a finished version last week.

A Night At DV8 Volumes Eleven & Twelve

Saluting good music.

Good music is exciting.

Trying Something New

I've been using Microsoft Picture It! for all manner of photo manipulation and digital projects for 11 or 12 years.  There were so many things about it that I really liked.  Sadly it is no longer made and the version I have installed on my old desktop is not compatible with newer operating systems.  This has left me only able to work on certain projects when I'm tethered to the wall and then transfering them over to my new computer which I use for everything else.

A couple of weeks ago I downloaded Gimp, a free image manipulation software program.   I'd only fiddled with it slightly until Wednesday evening when I decided to dive in.  It's not quite as user friendly as I might like and it doesn't have all of the functionalities of Picture It! that I use regularly but after some trial and error I managed to complete the project below.  I was happily able to do a couple of things better than I could have in Picture It!

The project started with a drawing of me based on a photograph.  Then I scanned the drawing and imported into Gimp where I cut out just me.  I then layered that on top of the original photograph (which took a lot of work to line up) essentially replacing real me with cartoon me.  Then I painted myself (which would have worked a little better if I hadn't infilled some areas with pencil) and the image was complete.