Bite, experiments with fonts, torn paper and tape

I've been experimenting with various things on the computer lately, using Adobe Illustrator & Adobe Photoshop. For starters, there and hundreds of fonts out there just waiting to be played with. This site rocks for finding cool fonts: http://www.dafont.com. It's really fun to take fonts apart and create something new. It's also fun to create tape in Photoshop. I know, how easily amused can you be, but it's TRUE. Making realistic looking tape is exciting. I tried this the other day for a project at work. My tape turned out awesomely real looking, if I do say so myself, so of course I really liked that experiment. Also, playing with found bits of imagery, like an old map you may see here if you look closely enough and torn bits of paper is great. I thought that I'd put all of these things together. I found a great font that has skulls biting and looking scary. I took one letter apart and adjusted it and made the skull heads bite each other, added tape, a bit of a map, some ripped paper and some really enlarged type for texture, here is the result. Fun and messy, nice. I like it.

Illustration of Fox Mulder

What can I say. Fox Mulder, aka David Duchovny, rocks. That's it. So I had to draw him.

We're working out way through the series ("The X-Files") at home, we're in the middle of season 4, and it's a completely enthralling show. We often have "X-Files" mini-marathons. It's a blast.

I have been a bit slow getting this drawing done as my hands have been hurting a bit lately which sucks. What am I going to be like when I'm even older than I am now. Grrrr. Damn double damn. C'est la vie. Anyway, I like how this turned out fairly well. I debated back and forth on color in certain spots and think I'm happy with what I ended up with. I fluctuated between hardly any color and rich colors. It was so hard to choose. This drawing did show Mulder from back further than you see here but I cropped it to give a move intimate feel, which I think works. I don't know about you other X-Files fans out there, but as time goes on I feel closer and closer to the characters on the show, scary but true. Cropping this picture so Mulder feels closer, gives it that sort of feeling, like Mulder may just be a bit more real than only lights and motion on a screen.

Illustration of Ed Gorman

In the world there are some people who are just plain nice.

One of those people is Ed Gorman. He is one of my husband's favorite
authors, because of that I have read several novels by him too. He is
a fantastic writer who has been featured from time to time on the blog
my husband, Ben, runs -- gravetapping.blogspot.com. Gravetapping is
primarily a book review site; because of this, Ben has had on occasion
the opportunity to communicate with Ed and every time, I am so
impressed at how genuinely kind he seems. Besides being one of the
world's nicest people, I think Ed is also one of the most neat
looking. So, I thought I'd draw him. Sometimes I really want a picture
to turn out especially fantastic, this makes drawing difficult. This
was one of those times. I like how this turned out but it was hard won.

To Mr. Gorman, thank you for writing such wonderful books and for
being the sort of person who is kind to everyone. You are a fantastic
example of how we should all be in that regard.

If you'd like more information about Ed Gorman, click here to visit
his blog.
To read reviews of his work on Gravetapping, click here and type his
name into the search engine at the top.