Bullhead Days

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I’ve had some pretty fun projects lately.

I spent my my teenage years in the small town of Waterville, MN, the Bullhead Capital of the World. Every summer they celebrate with Bullhead Days, a town festival complete with a parade, carnival rides, a fried bullheads stand on the corner, and a Miss Bullhead competition (well, they call it “Miss Waterville” but I say why break with the theme?) This year is Waterville’s 150th anniversary. I was given the honor of designing a button and t-shirts to be sold as a fundraiser. It’s a pro bono project so I couldn’t spend a ton of time on it, but this is what I came up with. (I didn’t realize this was the 150th anniversary until after I had completed the design, but they told me not to worry about it since the celebration will be rather low-key).

And in case you are wondering, the bullhead’s name is Barney. Barney got his start as a go-cart dressed up to look like a bullhead. The owner drives Barney in the parade each year, complete with mechanical swishing tail.

Who says small town life is boring?

Rabbit Trail…

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These are some concept sketches I did for a character I am developing for a book publisher. I don’t want to say too much about the project yet, but since these particular sketches didn’t make the final cut I thought I’d post them. I was pretty happy with how they turned out. (Click for a larger image).

We Cows Ain’t Dumb

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I’ve recently been hired by a dairy producer to create a cow character that will be printed on kids’ milk cartons. The cow needed to look smart and scholarly, maybe a Socrates or Einstien cow. These are the sketches I’ve developed so far. Last I heard the project is “on hold”, but they are leaning towards Sketch C3.

(Click for a larger image).


Hardware Hank Redux

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(Click for a larger image.)

Recently I was contacted by a local ad agency looking to update the logo for Hardware Hank, a chain of small-town hardware stores sprinkled throughout the upper midwest. When I was a kid it seemed like every town had a Hardware Hank store, but in recent years they’ve been eclipsed by the “big box stores” (Home Depot, Lowe’s, etc.) and the remaining stores are pretty much mom-and-pop establishments. Anyway, I was told Hardware Hank was looking to update their “Hank” character and that several local ad agencies were competing for the job. I was hired by one agency to do a few sketches in the hopes that we would get the bid.

I have fond childhood memories of shopping at Hardware Hank with my dad, and their “Hank” character is looking rather dated, so I jumped at the chance. Besides, there is still a Hardware Hank in the town where I grew up, and I thought it would be neat for my parents to tell their friends that their son designed the new store logo.

The original Hank character is in the upper left. I was asked to do one version that stayed close to the original design (upper right), and then do 2-3 additional concepts (I did a few extra for good measure). Ironically, the current trend in cartoon art is to go for a 1950’s “retro” look, so I had that in mind with a couple of the designs.

I waited several weeks without hearing anything. Finally I was told that the Hardware Hank people had changed their minds and were going to stay with their original character. Oh well, that’s the freelance biz. At least I’ve got a few more pieces for my portfolio.

Long Overdue Art Update

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I’ve been super-duper-crazy busy lately with freelance work. I’ve had several large projects on my plate for a while now, and the deadlines are all converging within the next two weeks. With freelancing everything seems to happen at once. Illustrator Tom Richmond put it well on his blog:

“Part of the problem with freelancing is that you never know when the next phone call will be your last for a while. As a result, you tend to take on more work than is good for you, for fear of a possible dry spell just around the corner.”

I’m getting better at dealing with it though. In the last couple of weeks I’ve actually turned down a couple of projects, something I very rarely do.

Here’s a few of the many balls I have in the air…

First, some spot illustrations for a children’s book I am doing for Living Waters Publications:



Some character design concepts for a bumbling pig character:

Turn-around drawings for a rubber pig promotional toy:

Some character design concepts of a smart cow for a dairy company:

And finally, some character designs for the re-design of a hardware store mascot:

In addition, I’ve got three other projects in the works. Two are still in the very early stages and the third has a Non-Disclosure Agreement attached, so I can’t show you anything….yet.

Character Design Sketches

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I’ve been pretty swamped with freelance work, but here’s a peek into one of my current projects. It’s a children’s book for Scholastic. I was asked to totally re-design an existing character, a young boy shark. Here are a few of the exploratory sketches I did that led up to the final design on the right. This one is a bit of a challenge because the shark has to be able to stand upright like a person, but also swim horizontally like a real shark. Also, since the shark is a lemon shark, I thought it might be fun to give him lemon-ish colors. But ultimately the client asked me to use the same colors from the previous artist’s design.

I’ll be finishing up the book in a couple of weeks and will let you know when it is available for sale.