My Annual Good Friday Post

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Today is Good Friday. As a Christian this is one of the most important days of the year for me, the day we pause to commemorate the torture, crucifixion, and death of Jesus Christ. You may wonder, why would a day like that be called “good?”

Because even though it was a terrible day for Jesus it was a very good day for you and me. How’s that, you ask? Over the course of my career I’ve had the privilege to work on several projects that help explain:

Are You A Good Person? Cartoon

First, here’s an 8-page cartoon Gospel tract I illustrated a few years ago for the ministry of Living Waters. Several million copies have been printed in English and it has been translated into over twenty languages. You can download it for free or purchase printed copies from Living Waters.

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Based on the tract’s success, Living Waters also hired me to produce an animated version, which I supervised with the help of two terrific animators (Michael Foster and Chance Dodd). If you like it you can download a free HD version to use however you’d like.

Finally, VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer recently completed a DVD series called “What’s In The Bible?”. I had the privilege of doing some animation and character design work on a few episodes.

Here’s a clip from the episode explaining the meaning of Easter:

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I don’t make any money or royalties off of these items. I just believe in them and want to share. Thanks for indulging me. Here’s wishing you a very happy Easter filled with smiles and jelly beans!

Sketchbook Throwback: St. Patrick’s Day

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Here’s a re-post from 2014. Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone!…

St Patrick's Day illustration by Cedric Hohnstadt

Today’s sketch is a combination of three things:

First, I’ve been having a blast following @sketch_dailies on Twitter. At the moment it’s a very popular feed with over 15,000 followers. Each day a new character is suggested and hundreds of artists from all over the web draw their version. The best ones are retweeted and they are amazing! Today’s theme, naturally, was “leprechaun”.

Second, I’ve been trying to add a sense of story to my practice sketches. I wanted to try something original with the end-of-the-rainbow idea. It seems to me that if there really was a pot of gold out there on a hill somewhere it would be foolish to leave it out in the open with only a small, unarmed man guarding it.

Third, I like to try and tie each sketch into the Pose Drawing Sparkbook somehow. At the back of the book is a bonus list of 100 Moods and Emotions to draw. This might be a good fit for “Dumbfounded”.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone!

 

T-shirt Art For My Parent’s Anniversary

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My parent’s celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary on March 14, which also happens to be “Pie Day”. Math nerds will recognize Pi as a number famous for going on forever. It literally has no end but the first five digits are “3.1415”. Hence, the date 3/14/15 is “Pi (or Pie) Day”.

My parents asked me to get them a “Pi Day” t-shirt for the occasion. If you do a Google image search for “pi day” you see lots of apple pies cut in the shape of a Pi symbol, that sort of thing. That seemed a little too on-the-nose for me. Besides, this wasn’t just Pi day. It was also their 45th anniversary, which is quite a milestone. So I wanted to do something special just for them.

I pondered for a while…how could I combine pi, pie, and a wedding anniversary into one design?

This is what I came up with. My dad loves lemon pie, and the classic pie-in-the-face gag seemed like a fun way to illustrate the ups and downs of marriage. My only regret is that I didn’t do a better job of capturing their likenesses. These cartoon people only bare a vague resemblance to my parents. Caricature was never my strong suit.

For the record, my mom and dad actually get along pretty well. Like any couple they have their disagreements but my mom is actually a pretty calm person and my dad is not the type of guy to deserve such treatment. But the image was fun to draw and, I hope, gets across the point that marriage is hard but it’s worth hanging in there for.

No Substitute

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This is something I need to remind myself of regularly. I figured I’m probably not the only one so I created this meme to spread around. Feel free to share. You can download or link to the original HD image here.

 

Links I Like 12-22-14

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A few interesting tidbits from around the interweb:

Video: Weird Al Yankovich Teaches You A Magic Trick

VeggieTales Has Been Rebooted and Redesigned As A Netflix Series

Upcoming New Book on Disney’s Nine Old Men

6 Comedy Lessons Chuck Jones Learned From Tex Avery

I’m On Gumroad! Name Your Price On “Sketchercise”

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'Sketchercise' Samples

Like a lot of other artists I’ve decided to jump on the Gumroad bandwagon. It’s a bit of an experiment for me. I already have my own website store and people seem to be happy with it, but I’m very impressed with Gumroad’s slick-and-simple website. Just create a Gumroad account and have easy, “forever” access to any files you purchase from various Gumroad sellers. Also, Gumroad only takes a small sliver of commission which makes them an attractive place to sell.

As an experiment I’ve put together a PDF sketchbook called “Sketchercise!” (45 pages with over 120 drawings) and I’m offering it as a “name-your-price” purchase. For the time being you can have it for whatever you think is a fair price, no questions asked and no strings attached. Other artists such as Will Terrell advocate this model for selling some of their content so I thought I’d try it and see what happens.

You can also get the Pose Drawing Sparkbook (both versions) and my drawing webinar on my Gumroad page, at full price.