Illustration

Copyright © Cedric Hohnstadt. All rights reserved. I would have posted this on Friday but I wanted Ask Mr. Artist Guy to be front-and-center all weekend. A big "thank you" to everyone who's submitted questions so far. Illustration Friday is a fun website for artists. Each week a topic is posted, and any artist who wants to (regardless of skill level)...

Some freelance projects have tight deadlines. Others move at a slower pace. Way back in Spring of 2005 I was contacted by a publisher to illustrate a series of children's books designed to help kids understand various Christian concepts. Since there was no real rush our understanding was that I could set it aside to work on other more urgent projects...

For the most recent episode of 3-2-1 Penguins! (titled "Pratical Hoax" and directed by Tom Bancroft), the script called for photographs to appear in various scenes. Since the show is built and animated in 3D, and since each photo would only be seen on screen for a few seconds, and since television deadlines are so brutal, rather than to build...

On Saturday morning NBC aired another episode of "3-2-1 Penguins!" which I was fortunate enough to work on. For much of the series my job was to design various aliens which the Penguins would encounter as they hopped from planet to planet. If the script called for a prop or gag that would change a character's appearance, it was also...

After viewing my last post, artist Robert Miller wrote me and asked:
What do you use to ink your art? These are cool rabbit illos!
I thought his question would make a good blog post, so here goes. Earlier this year I bought a Cintiq and started inking everything digitally (more on that below), but for many years I experimented with various inking methods on paper. Pen and Ink. I first learned how to ink by using a dip pen with Hunt 102 nibs and a bottle of good-old India Ink, and inked my drawings on smooth bristol board. This was back in the late 80's, before computers, when cartoonists were still using rubber cement and x-acto knives to create layouts, and inkers used white-out to fix their goofs. I used the Hunt pen tips for many years, and with them I was able to get a clean, cartoony line.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I recently illustrated the new book Chasing Skinny Rabbits by John Trent. Here's a few of the final illustrations for the book. Each illustration required a different rabbit character, but they let me use the original rabbit design to add some humor to a chapter on marriage: Chasing Skinny Rabbits can be purchased here....