Greg Hardin's Art & Sketch Blog

"Phonics" icons book

2011-11-27T18:59:00.003-06:00

Finished another book for sale in Target stores, this time with the focus on phonics. This book didn't have as many characters to design; it was focused more on objects like trains and flags and fire and tree stumps and such. 120 icons in all, and here are some character-based favorites. As always somebody else will color the book as I move on to the next to draw.

"Sound" icons book

2011-10-04T22:08:00.004-05:00

I'm back at the freelance again after an insane amount of change in my life over the last three months. New wife, new city, new job--no sleep!

This art is from another book in the series that are being sold at Target stores across the country. There's 116 icons in this book; above are 16 of the animals and below are 16 of the other icons. The theme of this book is "Sound," so I guess maybe it's supposed to reference how you say the words of these subjects? Anyway, just like the other books in the series, I've drawn the book and somebody else is coloring it.

This is the 10th book in the series I've done for them, and I'm about to start another. Someday I'll sleep again!

November 2011 calendar

2011-07-15T00:05:00.003-05:00

One more project to finish in the next few days and then no more freelance for 6 weeks or so!

StinkyKids & other

2011-06-21T17:04:00.005-05:00

I've been in the midst of a ton of huge life changes lately, but the work has still been getting done somehow. I finished the second StinkyKids book, and that's the cover above. I only pencilled & inked the book, while another artist colored it. According to Amazon.com, the book should be available September 16.

Also below are some simple illustrations, where there were supposed to be two to an 8 1/2 x 11" sheet of paper.

4 books

2011-05-26T10:13:00.007-05:00

Last night waiting on my doorstep was a box with my artist copies of four children's books I worked on last year! They turned out great--I couldn't be happier. Looks like the nieces and nephews have presents coming! A note in the box said they'd be available at Target stores nationwide starting in July.

Here and here's the original blog posts for the ABC book seen above.

Here's the original blog post for the Bee book above.

Here's the original blog post for the Bunny book above.

Here's the original blog post for the Same and Different book above.

2012 Directory ad

2011-05-02T16:51:00.005-05:00

Here's what I'll be putting in the 2012 Directory of Illustration.

Surf Heaven

2011-05-02T16:00:00.004-05:00

Here's a self-promotion piece I did for my 2012 Directory of Illustration page. I wanted to do another piece in the lineless style I was doing for the Rudolph art, and one that complemented the Santa piece I did for Christmas this past year.

More Rudolph art

2011-04-20T21:40:00.009-05:00

I'm loving doing this lineless art style like they do in Golden Books. I'm going to do more work like this on some upcoming personal stuff.

Baby icons

2011-04-20T21:39:00.000-05:00

August 2011 calendar

2011-04-03T14:36:00.005-05:00

August is grilling time!

Rudolph art

2011-03-24T15:45:00.006-05:00

This was a fun project-I got to try a new illustration style and it gave me some more variety to add to the other licensing art I've done.

Magazine covers

2011-03-07T14:38:00.008-06:00

Both of these covers were for the same tween-focused magazine; they were printed one on each side like a flip book.

The sketching process on this project was interesting since originally there were two totally different designs, seen below. After these the company decided to have me go in a different direction, and the result of that is seen in the covers above.

For the boy cover, I did the initial sketch and then was asked to age the boys up a bit, which you'll see in the second sketch.

For the girl cover, the sketches went through four phases of aging the girls upward. Pretty interesting exercise in taking the same characters and trying to make them older while retaining their same design and identity.

Vector dog

2011-03-07T14:38:00.002-06:00

StinkyKids on TV

2011-02-25T16:53:00.002-06:00

Yesterday CBS Atlanta did a story on Britt Menzies, the StinkyKids creator. I drew the first StinkyKids children's book for her, and am about to start on the second. Check it out HERE. (Can't embed the file on this site, sadly.)

Pinewood story test

2011-02-21T17:20:00.000-06:00

Video last updated 2/21/11 5:20 pm

I've started working on a second story test with humans to balance out the previous Dipsy Dunkaroo one which was all animals. I got a lot of great notes from some buddies in the industry on the Dipsy test, which I'll go back and tweak according to their notes when I finish this Pinewood test. I've got a lot of work to do on this still, but I wanted to go ahead and post online this first little bit.

Again: I have no intention on becoming an editor. It's just easier to show a story rell that's all put together than posting still drawings.

Anyways, just wanted to get the little I've got done up to show!

Dipsy Dunkaroo storyboard test

2011-01-26T15:10:00.009-06:00

Here's a project I've been wanting to do for a long time: a storyboard test. I finally found some time, so I wrote it, designed the characters, and drew the whole thing. I wrote material for a full 7-minute short, but I only boarded the first minute of it or so. If I were to finish this, the gags would build and get wilder until the very end.

I also created a story reel (movie) of the storyboards, which you can watch HERE. I have no desire to be an editor, but I thought it would be fun to see the boards in motion with music and some limited animation.

Below are the preliminary character turnarounds I made before starting on the test.

Interstate Battery banner ads

2011-01-20T19:08:00.009-06:00

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In late October/early November I created all of the illustrated assets for a series of Interstate Battery animated banner ads. I created all of the art in Photoshop and then handed it off to a coding company to animate in Flash. The ads are currently live and should be in use for 6 months, I think. Check out some of the sites the ads are being placed on:

About.com, ABCnews.com, Billboard.com, Businessweek.com, Cbs.com, E! Online, ESPN, Fox Entertainment, Fox News, Hotwire.com, Oprah.com, Orbitz.com, Pandora, Ticketmaster.com, Time.com, Travelocity, USA Today sites, Verizon.com, Weather.com, Comedycentral.com, Foodnetwork.com, MLB.com, NBCsports.com, SI.com amongst others.

Above is a closer look at the art I made for this banner (click to embiggen). I probably put more detail into it than necessary, but I think it all turned out great!

Scroll down through the next 3 posts for the other 8 banner ads. By the time you get to them, they may have already cycled through, so I posted individual links below each one so you can watch them in a new window.

Battery Grab

2011-01-20T19:03:00.003-06:00

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Thumbs Up

2011-01-20T18:54:00.007-06:00

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Above is a closer look at the art (click to embiggen).

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Batteries Everywhere

2011-01-20T17:51:00.005-06:00

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Above is a closer look at the original art (click to embiggen).

Jaybird turnarounds

2011-01-12T11:34:00.001-06:00

Finally took advantage of the bright sunlight today and took turnaround pictures of Jay.

Jaybird is here!

2010-12-22T18:10:00.011-06:00

I got a UPS package at my door from China--the final production plush of our melancholy Jaybird! These are going to be sold with the patent-pending pajamas by EscaPeeJays and should be available in a couple of months. It turned out better than I could have expected! I've done tons and tons of plush design in the past for VeggieTales, and sometimes it would turn out okay and many times not. However, the Jaybird looks outstanding.

Better pictures soon!

Ant/Beetle/Bee book

2010-12-22T17:37:00.006-06:00

Just finished my final project of 2010, and the 9th book this year for the A+ Guides books that are sold at Target. This book has an insect theme, and here are some of the final inked pages.

Jaybird plush

2010-12-11T12:05:00.000-06:00

This has been a long time in the works, but it looks like the plush we've been creating for EscaPeeJays is almost done. I designed the character last November, and did the turnaround drawings for the plush (below) in January of this year. I'm supposed to be getting final samples in the mail soon, but it looks like they're already advertising Jay on the EscaPeeJays website. It really turned out great--very exciting!

2010 Santa Rocks Christmas card

2010-12-09T23:34:00.018-06:00

This is the Christmas card I made this year to send to my existing and potential clients, as well as for DrawerGeeks.com (first DG topic for our group since January!)

Being in Nashville, I see a lot of Hatch Show Print concert posters, and I wanted to do something like that for Christmas this year. Plus, I'm a huge Brian Setzer Orchestra fan, so putting the two together sounded like a plan. Below is my working sketch:

I thought I'd try selling the final design on Zazzle as well--you can buy regular greeting cards for $2.95 each and postcards for 83¢ each (while on sale). This is the first time I've ever done any print-on-demand services or online stores, so I'm curious to see how it goes.

April 2011 calendar

2010-12-05T14:27:00.005-06:00

Got a couple of other projects to post from last month, which I'll get up as soon as I get approval to do so (one is a series of 4 animated banner ads, the other is two magazine covers).

Below is the initial sketch for the April calendar.

Birthday gift

2010-11-05T10:38:00.010-05:00

My buddy Chris turned 30 the other day, and for his birthday dinner his fiancée Chrystal asked us to make him something that had 30 in it. It could be 30 pencils, a list of 30 books he should read, whatever you wanted. Fortunately I had a break in my projects while waiting on approvals, so I thought I'd make him a nice keepsake.

Facebook is great, because you can do stealth caricatures of somebody without having to ask for reference photos. I snagged these photos off of Chris' page and his brother Jeff's and Chrystal's as well. Chris is in the band Graylit and so they take lots of artsy pictures where they don't look into the camera, so that gave me some great photos to work from.

I initally drew the sketch in the computer (above)--it was just easier that way. But I didn't want to give him a lame printout as a gift, that's no good. So I printed it out, put it on the light table and then hand-inked the final. Finally, I put it in a hard-to-find 4x5" black frame, and it was finished.

Chris with his gift at Bosco's in Hillsboro Village.

StinkyKids in Publisher's Weekly

2010-10-29T23:38:00.003-05:00

StinkyKids creator Britt Menzies has been doing a fantastic job of promoting her property. The first StinkyKids book (which I pencilled) is due to arrive in stores on November 1 and Publisher's Weekly did an overview of the StinkyKids property to celebrate the occasion. Check it out here.

Little Legends logo

2010-10-07T23:45:00.010-05:00

Here's a new logo I did, based upon the "ZBabies" logo I did last year (shown below) . My client ran into copyright issues with "ZBabies" and had to come up with a new name for his property. I used the same base font as ZBabies and fortunately still had an "i" in "Little Legends" so I still could organically keep the star in the logo, which is great since the property is based on the Zodiac constellations.

Bear in a Bubble Bath-color

2010-10-01T17:10:00.006-05:00

Raccoons Romping on a Rug-color

2010-09-30T17:25:00.009-05:00

Girl Waiting for School Bus-color

2010-09-29T16:56:00.007-05:00

Color & Shape book

2010-09-21T00:10:00.001-05:00

First image of the girl at the bus stop is for the color yellow--it's supposed to have 7 yellow things in it.

The mice and grandfather clock is about circles.

The king is for the color purple.

This chipmunk-rabbit-squirrel combo is to show 5 brown things. Kids will draw acorns in the blank space left for them.

This corner store illustration is for the color red, and 4 things are supposed to be red here. There's also space left for kids to draw a car on the street.

The farmer's market is for the color orange, and there's supposed to be 4 orange things in it. Kids will also draw more flowers in that empty bucket.

The train is to show what rectangles are.

This bird's nest is to show what ovals are.

The chicken coop is also to illustrate ovals.

The clown in the circus ring is to show diamonds, ovals and triangles.

This is my last book out of 8 total books to be sold at Target stores. There's 30 illustrations in this book, all of which will be colored by another artist. However, I'll get around to coloring a few of these for my portfolio at some point!

If you're looking for the books, they're called "A+ Workbooks," and they are as follows: Subtraction (Fish theme), Addition (Owl theme), Divison (Circus theme), Multiplication (Space theme), Counting (Bunny theme), Same and Different (Similar shaped icons), Alphabet (Animals theme), and now Color & Shape (no specific topic).

Color Tiger and Zebra

2010-09-01T22:42:00.005-05:00

Colored a couple of these today.

More ABC book

2010-08-29T16:28:00.005-05:00

Z-Zebra at the zoo

Y-Yak in the yard

T-Tiger talking to a turtle

P-Penguins and a puffin

O-Octopus eating oranges

On to the next book!

ABC book

2010-08-27T09:57:00.007-05:00

Been working on an ABC book about animals. I'm not quite done with it, but I'll post a few final inks on here. They're not in color because another artist will be handling that so I can keep moving. First up is the above B-Bear in a bubble bath. Below is E-Elephant at water's edge.

I-Iguanas visiting India (can you find the hidden iguanas?)

J-Jaguars sleeping in the jungle (kids will draw in the jaguars' spots)

K-Kangaroo flying a kite

R-Raccoons romping on a rug

I'll post a few more when the book is done.

"Same And Different" book

2010-07-27T21:26:00.003-05:00

This book has 86 icons, or 43 pairs of objects that look similar but are totally different. Here's 24 of them.

Once again another artist will be coloring the book while I move on to another one to pencil & ink.

Genie revised

2010-07-21T13:04:00.004-05:00

Took an old piece of DrawerGeeks art and finished out the coloring. I've been wanting to do that for a while.

14 icons

2010-07-19T17:39:00.001-05:00

Each icon meant to be 2" square max. when printed.

Bunny activity book

2010-07-17T16:13:00.013-05:00

Just finished a really fun activity book about "counting." I got to design 12 individual rabbits/bunnies (seen above), with one rabbit being used twice as a twin bunny. There's 25 total illustrations in the book; here's a few below. Another artist will be coloring the book so I can move on to pencilling and inking another.

November Calendar

2010-07-08T17:48:00.004-05:00

Finished inks

Original rough sketch

JellyTelly

2010-06-17T12:14:00.002-05:00

Some vector licensing art I created for my friends at JellyTelly, Phil Vischer's post-VeggieTales project.

Portfolio site updated

2010-05-06T18:09:00.003-05:00

Just FYI--most of the new art I put on there is stuff from this blog, so if you've gone through these posts then you've seen most of the changes to the portfolio site (www.greghardin.net). Thx

Directory of Illustration ad

2010-05-05T12:20:00.003-05:00

I decided to advertise in the 2011 Directory of Illustration, and this is the ad I created for it. Basically, I already had the Ant piece, and I liked the way it bled off the page, and so I wanted the rest of the art I was going to put on it to do the same thing. that's why I created the Superhero Family piece and the Animal Basketball piece, to fit on this page.

The Directory is this really heavy hardcover book with glossy pages and around 600 illustrators participate each year. The book gets sent to ad agencies and other places all over the world. There used to be competing directory companies but I think the DOI is the last man standing at this point. I'm excited for the clients I hope this ad will bring!

Fish book color

2010-05-05T12:10:00.002-05:00

Had some time so I colored this piece. Original post for this is here.

Animal Basketball

2010-05-01T12:50:00.003-05:00

Another self-promotion piece. I thought it would be funny to see the small animals have to take on the giant ones.

17 Icons

2010-04-28T23:58:00.001-05:00

Superhero family

2010-04-20T17:21:00.008-05:00

Here's a self-promotion piece I just finished. I wanted to do a "superhero" piece that wasn't exactly a piece of fanboy art, but something that could have a subtext of sorts. I also wanted to do a man, woman, teen, child, and dog. In the end it seems to be about a superdad's irritation/expectations of his family, I think. But my only reason I did this was to have a superhero piece with a fully drawn city in the background.

Anyways, below is the uncropped version of the art.

Then the city by itself. I had to create it separately and then put the characters over top. If I hadn't built the piece this way I would have gotten lost figuring out where everything was--too many details to keep track of.

Last, the original inks.

August calendar

2010-04-12T14:47:00.005-05:00

Calendar spread for a kids magazine. Sketch below.

Comic project

2010-03-30T10:29:00.008-05:00

This was a fun project, which was a fundraising pamphlet for an organization. Lots of detail in those "junk mountains" representing the '50s, '80s, '90s, and '00s! The layouts are still missing some logos and extra typography that their designers will add over top of my art.

EscaPeeJays site is live!

2010-03-30T10:05:00.001-05:00

This is the startup company I created the mascot and logo for, and we're working on some other fun stuff too. I got my brother involved too and he designed a really nice website for the company. Check it out! Link

Circus book

2010-02-17T23:30:00.001-06:00

The last book in the series is done! Whew...vector work doesn't go quickly. 20 illustrations in this book.

Wacom eNews 2/11/10

2010-02-11T14:21:00.005-06:00

This is really cool--after I posted below (Dec. 10) that I had drawn that Stinkykids book completely on my Cintiq tablet, I got contacted by Wacom and asked if they could write about us in their monthly eNews mailer that they send out to many thousands of people. So I gave them a new quote and some art, and waited for the eNews to show up this month. It came out today (minus the art, not sure why), and the section I appear in is in the .jpg below.

There's a web version of the e-mail blast on the Wacom site HERE.

Fish book

2010-02-09T10:55:00.003-06:00

Here's some of the art for the third book. There were 20 illustrations for this one. All art is vector, like the other books.

Owl book

2010-02-01T18:47:00.008-06:00

Just finished the second in a series of four activity books--the first being the astronaut/space-themed book I posted about a couple of weeks ago. This owl book has 19 individual poses and two big scenes. Colored art above is mine--it'll probably be colored a little differently by someone else for the book. Original vector art is below.

28 more icons

2010-01-24T16:36:00.006-06:00

Below is the vector art I made before I colored it.

EscaPeeJays logo

2010-01-11T13:50:00.006-06:00

Created for a startup company in Dallas. They've already got it up in their showroom booth!

Astronaut/Space book

2010-01-08T17:15:00.001-06:00

Here's a fun activity book I just finished for Target stores, which had an astronaut/space theme. There's about 11 astronaut illustrations, and like 15 space/rocket/planet illustrations, all created in vector. I had to move so fast to meet their deadline that they're coloring it for me--no time for me to do it!

Not sure what the book is ultimately going to be called, and I'm not sure when it will be on sale either.

"What Is God?" book

2010-01-05T11:01:00.001-06:00

This is a sequel to the book I did earlier in the year called, "What's Heaven Like?" (on sale now) for Harvest House Publishing. Drawings by me, colors by StudioFX, though on the sleeping children one I collaborated on the colors. I think this book might be due in stores in June 2010?

aMAZEing

2009-12-17T22:14:00.002-06:00

StinkyKids book

2009-12-10T18:01:00.012-06:00

Hello Wacom readers! Below is the post that caught Wacom's attention and had them include me in their February eNews blast. About the book: it's not published yet but people can send an email to Britt (the creator and author) if you're interested in purchasing the book she'll put you on a list to send out information when she has it. She also said when the time comes she'd send out autographed copies! The StinkyKids website is HERE.

Also, if you missed the Wacom eNews blast and would like to look at it online, click HERE.

Below is the original blog post. I hope you enjoyed what you've seen and will visit the rest of my blog and website!

----

I illustrated three books in 2009, "Stinkykids and the Runaway Scissors" being the second one. "Stinkykids" is a new property created by Britt Menzies, and I think she's got a hit on her hands! She's already been featured on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, and from what I hear she's got some pretty big promotional plans for next year as well. As for the book, it looks like it's going to be in bookstores nationwide in January.

The book was written by Britt, drawn by me and colored by John Trent. Of note for me personally was that this is the first book I ever illustrated without pencil touching paper--I drew the entire thing on my Wacom Cintiq tablet! Below are a couple of finished spreads, with my original sketches above the final art.

Catching a fish

2009-11-17T09:59:00.003-06:00

Here's an image from a children's book I just finished. I'm not sure when it will be out...June maybe?

Scuba kid

2009-09-28T10:32:00.002-05:00

Character designs

2009-09-06T21:33:00.000-05:00

Ideas for modern model-looking cavepeople, a test I did to see how well I could draw straight into my Cintiq.

ZBabies logo

2009-09-01T20:59:00.002-05:00

Last year I did the character designs for a property called "ZBabies," and recently I designed the logo as well, seen above.

Below are some of the initial concepts for the main logo idea.

Once the main idea was chosen, I did some variations, and the final logo was chosen from these.

Chef Brothers

2009-07-29T13:29:00.007-05:00

This is a logo for a private catering company. The owner wanted a logo that represented his two sons, and the graphic designer gave me a quick sketch to work from, seen below.

I then did my version of that, and the final vector version followed this sketch closely.

28 icons

2009-07-20T16:34:00.004-05:00

Easy, breezy fun!

Posable vector cowboy

2009-06-30T16:50:00.004-05:00

This guy was intended to be like those hanging cardboard skeletons you see at Halloween. He'll be 3-4 feet tall and his joints will have brads or joints so they can be moved around.

Mini-book

2009-06-29T22:25:00.010-05:00

This was a fun little mini-children's book. The little blonde boy had a different emotion for each page, and they'd stick out like a tab on the right. I got to do this fun new style where I fully painted the backgrounds, but kept the characters vector so it all looked kind of like a piece of animation.

I had to leave as much room as I could at the bottom of the left and right sides of the spread for the typography to come later, though from the start the graphic designer was planning on "ghosting" some boxes of light color over those areas so the text would be legible. Below is a typical template I worked from.

And then the finished interior spreads are below.

On this last one below, the client was going to put his own images in the posters on the wall, so I just flat-colored them for my own use.

Picnic Ants

2009-06-28T19:05:00.005-05:00

This project was a blast! Doing this in vector took a while, but I'm so happy with the result. I also had to do three little spot illustrations to complement the big scene...

...as well as one of a bee.

Horse stable

2009-06-28T19:00:00.002-05:00

This is a crazy one---this one is 3 feet wide in real life! Colored by Robert Vann.

Children's book

2009-06-28T18:55:00.003-05:00

This is a title page spot illustration from the new book I did that will be in stores in January 2010. I'd put up more illustrations but I think usually you're supposed to wait until something is published before you can do that!

Christmas art

2009-05-25T17:50:00.006-05:00

First up are some vector presents with subtle wrapping paper patterns so that type could be placed over top by the graphic designer and still be easily readable. Each individual present was created with the intent of filling a horizontally oriented 8.5 x 11" sheet of paper, and to be hung on the wall.

All of this art above and below is intended to be used in a classroom scenario.

Below is a vector Christmas tree that was specifically made to fit into a grid, which explains why it's so symmetrical and vertical. Also part of my goal was to make each sheet of paper in the grid interesting if I could, which explains some of the crazy branch shapes. Why did the Christmas tree need to fit in a rigid grid? So that each part of the tree could be printed on a sheet of 8.5 x 11" paper and then assembled on a wall into the whole tree. The garlands also needed to be fatter than I normally would make them and clean so that a teacher could write on them.

Andrew

2009-03-29T22:49:00.001-05:00

Tonight my brother put up some fun pictures of my nephew with a fauxhawk, and I needed a subject to practice some things on, so here we are.

DrawerGeek: Dragon

2009-03-29T22:46:00.003-05:00

I didn't quite get this one done for DrawerGeeks on Friday, but it was good enough to put up. I'll finish it later!

New art only blog

2009-03-29T22:42:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my new art-only blog! I put this together because my original blog became about pretty much everything except for being a place to show art. I'll keep the other blog going but this one is for art only!