Zomboy

This piece was commissioned for the trade paperback of the "Zomboy" comic book by Inferno Studios. Brady got a copy of the finished book as payment!

Ronald McDonald

Yep, we went to McDonald's again. This time Brady did her own version of Ronald McDonald as she finished her milkshake.

Pirates!

Brady and I went to McDonald's today. Health food, don't you know. We took our sketchbooks, to do some life drawing. If you don't have a child, you may not know that the latest Happy Meal toyline is for "Pirates of the Caribbean 2". They have a couple of cartoony plush figures of the main characters. Brady likes the Jack Sparrow one the best (cause the others are skulls and dark stuff). So, she decided to draw this scene with him in it, instead of actual people in the restaurant. I thought it turned out pretty cool:

Fun with Numbers

Brady did this sketch today, and I thought I'd share. She tells me it's of a line of people waiting at a movie theater concession stand. There's a lot going on here, and it takes a minute to look at, to appreciate it all. What impressed me was that there were people of varying heights, varying races, and varying clothing and hairstyles. Plus, there's some really good hands here. Not to mention that there's background! There's a checkered floor, a counter with a cash register on it, a movie marquee with times on it above their heads, and way in the back (perspective!), there's an arcade with a driving game in it. Good grief! I don't do backgrounds NOW half of the time. And she's not even EIGHT yet!
Keep reading, though, because this gets weirder.

David Cowles, a friend and huge inspiration of mine(www.davidcowles.net), was in town with his daughter a few weeks ago to see Disney. We had dinner with them one night, and Brady bonded with them over a game of "number fun", drawing on the "To Go" bag as we waited for our check. What you do is someone draws a number, and gives it to the next person, who has to figure out how to make it into a drawing. I was surprised that Brady was holding her own with them. At the end of the meal, David promised Brady to send her some "Numbers Homework" in the mail. True to his word, a few days later, a small sketchbook arrived in the mail, each page with a different number on it. Some were easy, but some were pretty hard...like the number "seventeen"...SPELLED out. I was impressed again with Brady's creativity, and she did about half of the book in one sitting (she'll finish it soon, David, and we'll send you some of the drawings!). SO....I decided to give her a project of my own. We have a "Summer Fun Sketchbook" that we're keeping this year, and I gave her some "Number Fun" pages to do in it. This drawing of the crowd at a movie concession? It started out as the number "Fourteen". See here for yourself:

Here it is again, superimposed over the final image:
I was impressed with the drawing itself, for the reasons I pointed out, but now I was speechless. I have no idea how she came up with all of this. Wow

Joe Bluhm

Another NCNer and great friend, Joe Bluhm. I can't find his photo right now that she drew from, but this likeness is even stronger. I will post his photo when I find it. For this one, I asked her the same type things: "What's big about his face?" "What's small about his face?" "What's different abotu his face?". Then, we made a list of those things for her to refer to while she drew.

Mike Paglia

One of the great things about the National Caricaturists Network (NCN), is meeting caricaturists from all over the country and the world. Mike Paglia here is an NCNer, and one day Brady and I decided to let her practice her buddign caricature skills on Mike's face. We first talked about stuff that stood out on his face, and then she drew him. I scanned it in for her, and she thought it was cool to color it on Daddy's Wacom tablet.

Brady

Hi, this is Brady's dad. I am a professional cartoonist, specializing in likeness based cartoons, i.e. caricatures. Brady has wanted to draw and be an artist since she could first tell us. She says she wants to draw "Funny faces at Disney just like Daddy". I'm sure she will one day in the near future, if she keeps up with it. I am posting Brady's artwork here for her friends and family to see her progression as an artist.

This first posting is of Brady at one of our artist meetings where I train new artists for our company, Caricature Connection. She's the only girl looking right at the camera, just to give you a hint.