Guess Who Poisoned the Water Hole?

Jon Favreau's latest action flick--Cowboys & Aliens--has been getting a lot of attention at the box office this weekend. And even with a less-than-fresh Rotten Tomatoes score, it seems that a lot of audiences just can't get over the ingenious idea of a straight Western that just happens to feature aliens in one of its title roles.

Nevertheless, amidst all the hubbub for Favreau's film, I thought it only proper to pay homage to the original blockbuster that thought to combine Western wranglers and extra terrestrials on the same screen. Yep, Toy Story.

Here's a quick snap-shot of the process below:

The Adventure Begins!

Ahoy there, friends! Welcome to the first post of my new art blog--the place where I'll be posting artwork, iPad illustrations, sketches, and just about anything creative I can come up with on a (fingers-crossed) semi-regular basis.

Figured I'd use this first post to talk about the process behind my banner image.

Once I had decided on a title, I drew up a quick thumbnail at work, then developed it into a full sketch at home.

The face in the first sketch wasn't quite emotive enough for my tastes, so I went for a second pass and then combined the two sketches in Photoshop. 

After that, I brought the sketch into  Illustrator for some digital vector-inking.

From there, I took the lineart into Photoshop, added a torn paper texture behind it, and did a quick digital inkwash. Then it was just a matter of finding some adventurous lettering to lay over of the image. 

And with that, voila! One illustration from concept to finished product.