Jim Carrey as ‘The Grinch’ (Colored Pencil)

I started this colored pencil drawing of Jim Carrey as The Grinch (2000) during my last semester of college at Northampton Community College in 2000. I remember often just sitting in the school’s cafeteria working on it. I found it a challenge to try to capture the color of the real image from the movie using just colored pencils. I’d done some realistic drawings with colored pencil before – mainly for college – but nothing like this. I’d finished most of the drawing by the end of the year or in early 2001, but I never finished the background. It wasn’t until I relocated it in early 2004 that I actually took a couple pencils to the background, finished it, and cropped the image. So, although this should have made it to this site much sooner than it did, here’s The Grinch…

Colored pencil was a fun medium to use here, but certainly much more challenging than regular pencil. I like the outcome here a lot, too. I started a drawing in colored pencil of Scrat from the movie “Ice Age” years ago that I just simply never finished.

Kate Winslet… and Lloyd

This used to be one of my all-time favorite portrait drawings — mainly because it’s something different than anything I’d done before and I liked the outcome (which is rare). I just love the fact that Lloyd is just hanging out in the same “world” as us. By the way, that isn’t wine he’s holding. If you look closely, the bottle in his right hand is actually a 2 liter of Mountain Dew (only the best for Lloyd). I drew this picture of Kate Winslet in the Fall of 1998 riding off the Titanic phase that everyone, including myself, went through. I mainly just drew it for fun and for the uniqueness of it. As many of the others, I drew this one using Ebony pencil and various other weights of pencils.

I still kinda get a kick out of this drawing. I’ve never blended realism and cartoons quite like this again (should I?), but it was fun to do. I did, however, do a sketch of my wife Amy while we were dating, where she was kissing Lloyd on the cheek. It wasn’t quite a caricature of her, but it wasn’t as detailed as Kate is here either. Hmm…. maybe I should experiment with this more just for fun…

Surrealism Project

In my spring semester of my Freshman year of community college, in Drawing II class, we were instructed to draw a “surrealism” drawing as our final project. Surrealism is basically a partially realistic rendering of a dream-like fantasy world. Examples of professional surrealism is Salvador Dahli‘s famous melting clock painting. (The final product was 18 x 20, and due to its large size, I couldn’t just scan it. Because of that, I had to use a cheap digital computer camera and the result is the low resolution picture you see above.) About the drawing, I wanted to do a portrait in here somewhere with semi-hidden meanings. But I basically kind of tossed random elements in. The girl is none other than Rebecca St. James and the hand is her’s as well. The rose is drawn from a plastic rose. The water drop and ripple are from the cover of Between Thieves‘ “Water” album. The globe is from an atlas, and the ship and water is from dc Talk‘s “Supernatural” promotional photos. This was one of my favorite pieces that year and has remained so throughout college.

Non-Traditional Self-Portrait

In my spring semester of my Freshman year of community college, in Drawing II class, we were instructed to draw a “non-traditional self-portrait” of ourselves for an assignment. The final product was 18 x 20, and due to its large size, I couldn’t just scan it. Because of that, I had to use a cheap digital computer camera and the result is the low resolution picture you see above. About the drawing itself, we had to incorporate things that symbolize us, as well as part of us in it somewhere. So, the Garfield eating the book stood for how much i like Garfield, plus how much I didn’t like academics. The green object is actually an empty Mountain Dew bottle because I love to drink it. The pencil is obviously for drawing, and the CD player is for my love for music. This was actually the project that brought about the death of that CD player, as well. It’s many hours under a light must have fried its circuits. The CD inside it is actually dc Talk‘s “Jesus Freak” album. That was one of the only CDs that I could use the top of to reflect my eye, plus it symbolized how I am, myself, a “Jesus freak.”

Time Magazine Cover Project

In my spring semester of my Sophomore year of community college, in Illustration class, we had to make a caricature of ourselves as if we were to be on the cover of Time Magazine. I decided to draw Lloyd, my chipmunk character who is part of the Radical Rodents comic book series I have, and include him as if I were his “famous” creator (which I am far from famous).

Ghostbusters Parody

I started my own personal comic book series in 1994 about 4 chipmunks and a guinea pig in a Christian band called Radical Rodents. Since then I’ve done several parodies and spoofs as issues and lately, I’ve just spent the time and have done merely the covers. This was the second one– a spoof on one of my favorite movies, Ghostbusters. It was done in all colored pencil, recreating the movie poster as exact as I could while placing Lloyd, Troy, and Daryl the chipmunks in replace of Dan Akroyd, Bill Murray, and Harold Ramis.

Back to the Future Parody

I started my own personal comic book series in 1994 about 4 chipmunks and a guinea pig in a Christian band called Radical Rodents. Since then I’ve done several parodies and spoofs as issues and lately, I’ve just spent the time and have done merely the covers. This was the first– a spoof on one of my favorite movies, Back to the Future. It was done in all colored pencil, recreating the movie poster as exact as I could while placing Lloyd the chipmunk in replace of Michael J. Fox.