Wanting some new T-shirts, I set out to find some creative options. I have been a fan of Threadless for a while, but I wanted to see what else was out there. After some looking around I found many great options and these are 12 of my favorites. Many of these places also allow artists to sell their designs. Bonus!
(more…)

After getting an iPad, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Brushes and Sketchbook Pro. Both of these apps are really nice on the iPod and iPhone, but I had not taken to them like I had hoped. I found that the screen size was crippling for me and this was too great a hurdle for me to overcome. The iPad is a much better tool for drawing since the size is closer to the size of a sketch book. The iPad also has more room to include app menus and options.

(more…)

With the construction of my personal studio space nearing completion, I am looking for ways to sell art to fund adding new tools to my collection.  I am a metalsmithing guy and tools for my discipline do not come cheap.  In my search I have found many great sites and thought it would be cool to share some of these.  My search was focusing on marketplaces that allowed selling original artwork, but I also included some of the print specific sites that I found.

(more…)

Looking for a new sketchbook, I decided to venture out from the normal black hard cover acid free books that I usually buy.  I spent some time looking and reading about various sketchbooks and found many great choices.  I realize that there are many more options than I have listed here, so if you know of an awesome one that I missed, please let me know in the comments below.
(more…)

With the year drawing to a close we naturally reflect on the past year. 2009 has been kind to this little blog and I look forward to what 2010 may bring. I aggregated a list of the 20 most visited posts from 2009 from the stats and this is what I found. Oddly enough, some were pretty recent, and some were from last year. I decided to include the ones from last year as well since I have many new readers.

Number 20

Barack Obama – by Shawn Barber

(more…)

Wire Drawing Exercise

Example from save-janos.net – this example has been placed on a painted acrylic background
With this exercise you are not going to be drawing at all. All you need is some wire and a pair of pliers with cutters. My favorite wire for this exercise is tie wire and you can get it almost any hardware store. The idea is to explore shapes and lines that you create by bending the wire. This exercise will force you to focus more on the line and less on the “drawing.” The nature of the wire also makes it more difficult to create tight corners. Don’t fight this and allow the properties of the wire to influence your piece.

(more…)

I am getting pretty excited about the tools being developed for the iPhone / iPod and have been looking into which of these tools are the best for artists.  As I am looking are, I found the apps that I listed here.  These are apps that I have seen people using and praising the most.

(more…)

With Christmas right around the corner, everyone is trying to find that perfect gift.  Here are 25 T-shirts for you or an artist in your life.   (more…)

So, after I finished yesterdays post I started adding the new icons to my design and found the were too clean for my look.  Here are the dirtier, grungy social media icons.  This is basically the same file as the previous with a grungy set of layers applied. Oh, and FYI there are 10 in the PSD, (Google). Enjoy

icons02.psd.zip (5.8 mb)

I know that I have some web designers that read the site, so this post is targeted toward them.  I needed some social media icons for a site that I am working on.  Everywhere I looked all I saw were glass icons. Yes I realize I have a glassy icon in the top right corner of this site, but there will be no glass on the new site (coming soon).  Needing a clean set of social media icons that were not glassy, I created these.  The link includes a .PSD download and sorry they are not all in vector.  I hope these are useful to someone.

icons.psd.zip (276 kb)