Dennis Jones
eclectic artwork & other random things
My Fancy New Drawing Boots
I was kinda thinking I was out of the hockey playing business… and then my youngest son bought me two fabulous ultra-light composite hockey sticks for Christmas, so I really had no choice other than to sign up and play another season…
…and how did my brand new season of Wednesday Night Ice Hockey go last week? Thanks for asking …not so good.
I put my skates on in the locker room, walked to the bench, hopped over the boards and onto the ice, wobbled uncontrollably to the center of the rink and fell down. I was so embarrassed. And I continued to be embarrassed for the rest of the night. I could not skate worth beans. I seemed to remember being fairly good at some of this hockey stuff, but now for some reason I couldn’t do anything…
…and then I remembered why in the back of my mind I was thinking I was out of the hockey business. I popped the rivets loose on my skates last summer during a game (which basically means the blades are no longer firmly attached to the boots) which pretty much renders your skates useless.
So bright and early Thursday morning I hopped out of bed and onto the internet, bought a pair of closeout skates and they arrived Tuesday afternoon, just in time for Wednesday night hockey. The only problem with brand new skates? They are hard as a rock until they get broken in… so today I’m wearing fancy “drawing” boots in my studio in a futile attempt to soften these puppies up before tonight…
…and if I STILL can’t play hockey worth beans even with a brand new pair of skates? A few of you might say that maybe it’s time I give up hockey …but I say it’s just time for me to come up with new and better excuses for my poor play.
Dennis Jones Custom Wallpaper
Several different companies have used my artwork to create custom vinyl wall coverings. The one thing they all seemed to have in common? By the time the artwork was purchased, the printer printed it and the installers installed it, the final product seemed to end up being rather expensive.
Over the years, many churches have emailed me personally asking to purchase some of that Dennis Jones Bible Character “Wallpaper” …but sadly, no such product exists…
…but a church in Oklahoma was persistent when I told them no such product existed and together we figured out a more affordable “do it yourself” delivery vehicle for a vinyl “wallpaper”… FATHEAD… yes, those people that do the restickable vinyl football players.
We tried one as an experiment (Jonah) …it seemed to work pretty well, so we are moving forward with a few more. When their remodel is complete, I will get some photos of the finished rooms and post them here.
Who knows… Dennis Jones Custom Bible Wallpaper might be just around the corner! ha
Playing Some Weird iPad Football
I’ve been playing a quirky little turn-based strategy game on my iPad that pits teams of dwarves, elves, rats, and miscellaneous unidentifiable creatures against one another on a football field. One of the neat things about the game is the ability to customize your team and my current squad is a clan of orcs I’ve named Da Kansas City Cheaps.
This is a picture I drew of my star middle linebacker Galnar SmashTeef.
He started out as an idea in my sketchbook and somehow ended up in full color here on my blog.
Concept To Finish
I just finished up a job that was chocked full of black and white illustration. I took one of the small spots, added some color to it, and here you can see my process from start to finish.
Chiefs Minus Star Running Back
Kansas City Chief running back Jamaal Charles will miss the rest of the football season with a torn ACL. Coach Andy Reid says there is definitely a “sense of urgency” to replace him…
…might I humbly suggest they look into just how busy Christian Okoye might be these days?
Geaux Vous Tigres!
Last night our refrigerator died a horrible death, so Karen and I made the best of a bad situation and ate ice cream like there was no tomorrow. Today while waiting for the repairman to come save us, I scribbled this picture out for the LSU peeps in my family who seem to be pretty excited about this years football season.
Notre Dame FUMBLE!
As a good lil Hoosier who lives 30 minutes away from South Bend, all I wanted to do on Saturday night was see how Notre Dame did playing Clemson in a monsoon. To kill time as I waited for the game, I scratched out this picture. The game started and Notre Dame proceeded to fumble the ball away about forty-seven times. I’m not saying I was responsible for any of that… I’m just saying maybe next week before the game I will draw a Notre Dame football player leaping into the end zone with the ball securely tucked under his arm.
2nd Annual Walk Into My Future Day
I woke up on Wednesday… deja vu… and found myself once again standing in front of small groups of children showing them how they, too… can draw goofy pictures… just like me. It was the second annual Walk Into My Future Day at Huntington University. Here are a few of my exceptionally talented art students and some of the amazing pictures they created!
Back To The Future
I just got back home late last night after being on the road for three weeks. I’m currently working on several different projects for a bunch of interesting companies and I can’t tell you about any of it… other than to say there is a lot of really fun stuff currently in the works. Hopefully it will all make a grand appearance someday in the near future.
Halloween
It seems that summer is coming to a close and fall is just around the corner… I guess it’s time for Halloween pictures. I posted a few on my Behance portfolio site.
You can see them by Clicking Here.
Running With The Big Dogs
Concept work is always fun. This is a project I worked on a couple of years ago… a crazy little pack of finger dog puppets.
In concept work my role is not to create finished color artwork, but to develop characters and then show them in front, side, three quarter and back views. My sketches are then used by animators and sculptors to create 3-D versions of the characters. These are some of my starting ideas for the pack of dogs and a few of the 360 degree views.
Release The Hurt
Last Sunday the pastor’s sermon was entitled “RELEASE THE HURT” so I immediately started my sermon notes with a pixie and a viking getting ready to “release the hurt” on somebody. Much to my surprise, the sermon went in a totally different direction than I had envisioned.
The pixie painting (and video) was done on my iPad using ProCreate.
An Unsolicited Guitar Pick Tip
I suspect there are very few people in the world who look to me for guitar tips, but here’s something I came up with the other day that is sort of art related.
Because of my drawing process, I blow through a lot of kneaded erasers in a year. The reason being once they become overly saturated with material, they get sticky and don’t function very well as erasers anymore… but what do you do with a kneaded eraser when it won’t erase anymore? Throw it away? Not me, I save them… why? …because, you just never know when you might need a useless, worn out kneaded eraser to MacGyver something up with.
A few weeks ago, I was playing a fairly aggressive acoustic guitar riff on a stage that has big tv monitors and those things radiate serious heat. As the temperature on stage rose during practice, I had more and more trouble holding on to my guitar pick. When I got home that night I started experimenting with solutions to this problem. I tried drilling a hole in a pick so my fingers could sink into it and hold tight, but that destroyed the integrity of the pick and it quickly broke in two. With an exacto knife I scratched up the surface of a pick, but that didn’t seem to make much of a difference. I just needed something tacky on that pick that I could hold on to… hey, wait a minute… what about A KNEADED ERASER. I put a thin layer of worn out kneaded eraser on the pick and it worked like and charm! Give it a try if you struggle with the same issue.
Digital Painting With Procreate
Another quick picture (and video) I made on the iPad. I just discovered an option that lets you see the brush cursor as you paint in the ProCreate App… which doesn’t sound like a big deal, but for me was a game changer. Being able to see exactly what size your brush is on the picture is huge.
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