5th LRS Military Patch

At the beginning of June a friend of mine, who is in the US Air Force, contacted me and asked if I could design a patch for the 5^th Logistics Readiness Squadron. His only request was for the design to include a knight on a horse and have it be a frontal or profile view. Immediately an idea for this patch came to mind.

I chose to base some of the design elements and colors off of a tapestry by artist Alexander Kishchenko, specifically his piece entitled ‘Chernobyl’ a tapestry currently hanging at the United Nations in New York. It should also be noted that I decided to go with a smoother style of shading (not as geometrically ridged as you can see in Mr. Kishchenko’s tapestry).

           When it came to picking colors I didn’t want to stray too far from the original 5^th LRS logo (blue and black) and I also wanted to include the reds, yellows and grays from the Chernobyl tapestry. In the end I am very satisfied with how this project turned out.

 

Human Figure Study #1

Proportions, human figures, shading, and perspective are all important art skills that I continually try to improve upon as an artist. I know that the only way to get better is to practice, practice, practice. So for the past three months I’ve spent approximately two hours each night drawing human figures. As I don’t have access to nude models I instead used a program call Poser 7. 

With Poser 7 you can create human models and then animate or photograph them in any position you want. You have 360 degrees of camera angles and various types of lighting. Due to my limited knowledge with the program, I am using pre-made models that came with the program.

Aside from practicing the skills I wanted to improve, I also wanted to try out different shading techniques and use tools, such as markers, which I haven’t used in a long time. I plan on doing more in the future so stay tuned!
 

Mother’s Day

For the past three years I’ve been making my own Mother’s Day cards. I started doing this after our local Hallmark stores went out of business. I also figured that a hand made card would be more personal than a store bought one. I’ve posted the covers of each card below.  

 2016

  

 2017

 2018

 

Military Patch

Approximately a month ago a friend of mine, who is in the US Air Force, contacted me and asked if I could design a patch for his squadron. A few things he requested for the design was to include a grim reaper, a B-52 Stratofortress and a few other details.  Almost immediately the idea for this design below came to mind.  I wanted to create something you might see on a heavy metal album cover.  This patch went through a number of changes before I achieved the final design.  Initially I had bombs dropping from the plane but decided that visually it was too busy, and the lightning enhances the impression of a heavy metal motif.  A few constraints I had were the final size of the physical patch, 4” round, and the level of detail the stitching machines can achieve.  Overall I am satisfied with how my first commission turned out.

Update: Well, it turns out my friend’s squadron never had the patches produced. However it’s not all bad news. My friend went to a store on the base and had them produce a single patch. The patch you see below is made by hand. The colors are different from the original design because the shop had limited color options. Honestly, I think it turned out really good all things considered.

Red Rose Conceptual Logos

When creating a logo I enjoy coming up with variations on ideas, and utilizing different historical art periods for inspiration. This time the subject of my new project was a local Italian restaurant. I posed myself the question, if they hired me to redesign or create a new logo what would it look like? For my first design (starting with the top row, far left) I wanted to create a logo in the style of a Victorian advertisement. I don’t often get the chance to make drawings that elaborate and I feel like it would work well with the current interior of the restaurant (wood trim and glass chandeliers). With the next logo I wanted to exude the look of classical roman art with a bit of art deco thrown in. It is a relief sculpture of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, which is offered at Red Rose. The last logo in the top row I wanted to relate to the physical look of the restaurant. In the front of Red Rose Pizzeria there are brick arches over each of the windows and I thought what if there was a stained glass sign inside one of the arches. Moving to the next logo on the bottom row (again viewing left to right) I wanted an imperfect look, the look of an ink stamp. It’s simple enough to be printed on employee shirts and pizza boxes. The next logo I wanted to tie into the new casino being built next door and emulate a 1960’s Las Vegas feel. Plus neon signs are pretty good at grabbing people’s attention. The last logo is supposed to be a simple graphic design; I imagined it possibly being turned into a sticker that could be put on pizza boxes or handed out. It’s a similar idea to the ink stamp logo.