A Shoe, or something vaguely shoe-like?

Okay, so I know nothing about shoes, but I did a sketch and threw some loose color on it. By the time I was done, I'd wished I never started. It looked, well, just wrong. I flattened a bunch of layers together and got to work with the perspective, distort, and scale tools to try to make it look like something resembling a shoe. This is as good as it got. . .

Lesson, make sure you have a decent sketch before spending alot of time trying to put lipstick on a pig. I guess the other lesson is to not just abandon something that isn't right if it can be fixed. I leave it up to you as to which this particular shoe like object is an example of! Let me know. . .

So I was thinking of modifying a perfectly good. . .

Suzuki DR650 dual-sport bike. I sold one motorcycle (1998 Honda VTR1000 Superhawk) and was thinking of getting a replacement as a project bike. I threw together some concepts before deciding that I couldn't really get the thing low enough without compromising the steering head geometry. Result - project cancelled. This is the sort of thing I waste my spare time on!

The top one is a minimalist city bike, the bottom one more of a flat-track style bike. I love the look of the huge 21" front wheel, even if it doesn't make sense for the kind of bike I was trying to make. On the other hand, the wheels are sort of a mess as I didn't have any circle templates big enough and I made a mess of it with a ridiculously flimsy compass.

These are just verithin and marker on A3 Letraset. It had been a while since I had done anything this involved on paper and I just wanted to dust off the old art bin full of tools. I was even too lazy to go and replace my dried out white guasche, so the highlights are white-out specials.

Okay, I'll admit it, I'm sort of a photoshop junky these days, but when they give you a big Wacom Cintiq at work it is hard to ignore the benefits of the digital age!

This was going to be a Christmas card but. . . .

I never got my act together. And it isn't very topical anyway, so no major loss. Yes, I know, it's old (late last year), but I'm trying to build a body of work to get this blog started, so lay off!

Is motion blur the new lens flare? I like it for backgrounds sometimes because it can make the focal object stand off the surroundings, I don't like it because it is a little gimmicky. Thoughts?

How about some more Products?

Okay, so I studied Transportation design but I'm employed as a product designer. You can expect to see a bunch of Trans. stuff here just because I think it is fun to do. Anyway, here are some sunglasses. The gold frames took about 4 hours, the blue ones took closer to 10-15 minutes. Wow right! Even a quick look up close reveals where the time went, but the first read of both is pretty similar. Just goes to show you, work smart!

Oh, and a toaster with low self-esteem issues. . .

Something LOOSE. . .

An example of something super loose. Part of why I'm starting this blog is because I think my quick sketch technique is getting pretty shabby (too much photo-real photoshop stuff at work these days)!

Monochrome Ferrari Dino

My take on a smaller Ferrari. I know, I know, there is probably too much Sant'Agata Bolognese and not enough Maranello in this, but it was quick and it is done so too late now! Just some digital Canson fun. . . I use this technique quite a bit these days. It's fast, easy, and looks decent.

A few watches

Just a few watches. Most are pretty derivative, but hey, we've got to start somewhere!