New digital art

I have been working on new samples for my portfolio.
I am going to rework my portfolio site to be broken into specific sections.
Traditional art
Digital art
Hybrid art - combining traditional and digital methods
and
Product design

These are examples of the Hybrid style.
They were hand inked and digitally colored.

Business cards

March of the sketchbooks day 25

I don't know why I'm drawing skulls in March, but I don't question the sketchbook and it's motives.

I'm going to continue to work this up by adding a lot of black so they look like they are flaming.

March of the sketchbooks day 24

The Easter Bunny is trying to cultivate a new kind of carrot.
He's trying to mix carrots with jellybeans.

March of the sketchbooks day 23

I am beginning to figure out how to draw Toulouse Lautrec for my next artist in a series.
These are the first explorations.

Zombunnies and critter pirates.

I finished the color for the Zombunnie art last night.
Here's the process.

The rough drawn in my sketchbook.

The inked art in my sketchbook.

And finally the colored version. Digital.
I scanned it in to Photoshop and saved it, then put it on a layer in Illustrator.
I set the inked art to multiply and locked the layer.
The color was added on several layers below the inked layer.
Once I was done with the color in Illustrator I opened the file in Photoshop.
I created a noise layer over the top and reduced it to about 12%.




After constructive criticism I made some changes to the coloring of the image.

I brightened some of the color, and added a little more contrast.

March of the sketchbooks day 22

I filled in the rest of this page from yesterday.

I heard today that Cap'n Crunch cereal won't be advertised to children anymore and will probably stop being made.

March of the sketchbooks day 21

This page is only partially filled because I spent most of the day working on a chicken coup.
No I don't live on a farm. It's for 4H. My son is raising chickens as his project.

Nothing special. Just playing a bit with the puppet
theme and then the big hairy guy showed up.

March of the sketchbooks day 18

Another day of subbing and drawing Kermit the Frog without reference or concern of staying "on model."

I've always liked drawing puppets as animate objects with personalities so I'll probably continue in this vein for awhile, but you never know, sketchbooks are fickle and things change from day to day.

March of the sketchbooks day 17

The march goes on.

This is what you get when I grab a reptile magazine at the library to flip through.

I penciled most of these yesterday and inked them today while subbing at a local high school. 

Kermit just kind of slipped in there today.

I was still subbing when I sketched this one.

And this one also.
Kermit came back with a vengence on this page.

March of the sketchbooks day 16

I spent a good part of yesterday tightening up the pencil sketch and inking this page of my sketchbook
I used Micron pens with the intention of getting line work that looks like a linoleum block print.

When I started the sketch I knew I was going to use it for the Illustration Friday site this week.
The word of the week is "Stir."
So what you see is a group of animal pirates trying not to stir up the water as they sneak past the night guard of their enemies.
I'm going to add color today to create a moody night scene.

Van Gogh 300dpi

Please feel free to print this out for your reference files
or to pass on to anyone who might like to hire me as a freelancer.
If you'd like to discuss any freelance opportunities I can be contacted at...

Robert Snyder
219-465-3246
 what2wnt@jorsm.com
www.robertsnyderillustrates.com

March of the sketchbooks day 15

Beware the Tides of March.

Adventure Mouse has discovered that that nice soft landing spot has it's downside.
For some reason I decided to draw a zombie walking in nose deep water.

March of the sketchbooks day 14

This is my morning sketch for day 14 of March of the sketchbooks.

It's the rough sketch for Illustration Friday this week.
The word of the week is Stir.
The image is of a band of critter pirates trying not to stir up the water as they sneak past the guard on the shore.
It's going to be a night scene. Probably drawn to look like a linoleum block print.

March 2011 mailer

In doing my research for things going on in March besides the typical Holidays it came to my attention that March 30th is The birthday of my favorite artist Vincent van Gogh.

So I decided to make him the subject of this months promo mailer.

I'm open to comments on improving it.

If you see any typo's let me know.

I'm planning on doing a series of these on different artists.

I'd like to tweak it to be the kind of thing a middle school art teacher would hand out to students, or be in one of those magazines that they hand out in class.

That's the reason for the title.

I'm planning on sending this out around the 20th so there's time for comments and corrections.

March is Van Gogh month

Vincent van Gogh has always been one of my favorite artists.
While looking for a subject for my March promotional mailer
I realized that Vincent was born the 30th of March, 1853.
So I have decided to make Him the subject of my mailer this month.
In order to do that I took a trip to the library, two libraries actually, to
get the reference I was going to need.
So now I am going through the books to see what interesting things
I can find out about him and use them to inspire some art.
I don't intend to use his art in my mailer. It will contain original art
that is inspired by the reference materials. I will not attempt to learn/mimic
his approach to painting in less than a month.
So far I have spent the past two days doing sketches of the man in order to try an "see"
the him through the art he made.
Here are the sketches so far...

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Page 7

Page 8

I haven't decided yet if the art is going to be all digital or hand drawn and digitally colored yet.
As you can see by the last 2 pages I have settled on a basic head shape for him, and that I am working out different spot illustrations of him with his sun flowers, writing to his brother Theo, painting at night, ...  These will run along the bottom of the mailer and there will be a bigger image in the center section.
The mailer is the first in a series that I would like to work out that features a different  per page.
The 8 1/2 by 11 page would have art inspired by each artist, and information about the artist.
This van Gogh page will be titled "10 things you might not know about Vincent van Gogh."
Down the left hand side will be the list of ten things.

IF - Sweater

It's been awhile since I have been able to have fun with Illustration Friday.
Yesterday I was able to sit down and let my mind wander.
Thinking about the word Sweater led me to thinking about those bad sweaters people wear at christmas time and how very few people would love to receive one as a gift. Especially a 10 to 14 year old boy.
So this is what I came up with...

My thoughts were that the decoration of the sweater had to be big for impact so it needed to be a character.
The reindeer came to mind and took over once I figured out I could use the sleeves as his ears so that the whole torso could be the head. I liked the idea, but reindeer have antlers so I was thinking he might not be the best choice. I really liked him so I thought wouldn't it make the sweater that much worse if the antlers were on the shoulders and sticking up. Perfect!
I know that I would not be happy to be the recipient of a sweater like this one.
The dog and cat are hoping that they don't have matching sweaters.

Valentine's Day promo for February

I used this image as my newsletter for my February e-mail promo.

I took characters that I had created for a client project and changed them up a bit by changing details and colors, as well as, adding the hearts and messages.

They went out early today so now it's a wait and see if anyone responds.

Robert Snyder on the Behance Network

Robert Snyder on the Behance Network

Vespa Santa

He's done and on his way To Miami for a well deserved vacation.

Thanks to those who had suggestions for improvement.

As you can see I added the candy cane guard rail to the foreground to add a little bit of depth. 

And I drew up my own penguin to go along for the ride.