Here’s my design for this year’s Christmas card. I had the nice people at Docusource of NC handle the printing and folding, and it turned out nicely.

Here’s the front :

Here we see Santa granting the deepest wishes of both the Lizard Man and the Monocular Horned Yeti. See how happy they are?

But what do mortal enemies do as soon as they open their presents? They fight! And it was all part of Santa’s plan!

I’d like to thank George Lamontagne for the idea of the prehensile mustache. Matt Turner also deserves some credit for suggesting a revision to the Monocular Horned Yeti’s mouth.

My friend Chad Morgenstern suggested that perhaps this wasn’t the real Santa, but rather a Jewish Rabbi who being out of work, signed up for a job playing Santa to earn some extra cash. Little did he know he would save the world when he shared a couple of gifts with The Aliens! Chad’s odd sense of humor may surpass even mine.

This painting is taking longer than I planned, so I’m posting a little update to hold over until I can finish the thing.

Robert Frost once began a poem with these timeless lines :

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.

Perhaps Mr. Frost was foreseeing the worldwide commotion portrayed in this epic illustration.

Behold the hordes of Lizard Men, bursting forth from their cthonic strongholds. Nixiebots and giant kin obey Saurian masters above and below to completely disrupt human society.

Here’s one of the Saurian masters. Mysterious electronic devices transmit lizard-mind impulses to robotic slaves.

What hope does the human race have? Surely they’re overwhelmed?

Not if Mr. T has anything to say about it.

And who are these mysterious diminutive anachronisms?

They seem to be studying a map of some sort. Are they here for the fight, or perhaps to loot a few treasures while everyone is occupied with more urgent matters?
Until these questions are answered, keep a wary eye open for anyone expressing sympathy for lizards and snakes. They might be fellow travelers with Saurian forces! You might also consider purchasing robot insurance.

Here’s another groundbreaking collaboration with Tommy Long. Behold, the friendly carnivorous giraffe ridden by a dead eyed koala with arms reminiscent of Plastic Man.

Below the black eyed gaze of the sharp toothed giraffe a multiple amputee hippopotamus is further victimized by the fierce attack of a mythical Rainbow Turkey.

16x20” Acrylic on Masonite.

Behold Tommy’s original. The pig on the right is using the wolf’s vain huffing and puffing to fly his kite. But the lupine wind cannot penetrate the brick house, so the pig on the left delights in building a house of cards, which he could never do in his other drafty houses.

Using a combination of Illustrator, Photoshop and ArtRage, I attempted to capture the fury of the wolf and the tranquil security of the pigs from Tommy’s original dramatic masterpiece.

Here are a few details of the characters.

Another Masterpiece, penned by Tommy and brought to vivid life by my humble self. Here’s Tommy’s Original Marker Drawing :

And here’s my interpretation:

It features a polar bear fishing, King Neptune pulling in a Leprechaun who is barfing gold, a cybernetic pig fish, and an anteater and a penguin.

Notice the polar bear - he is not saying “ror”, he is thinking “ror.”

Tommy’s only criticism is that I made his second penguin look like an anteater.

Special thanks to seneschal for his scan of a brown paper bag. It was a great texture overlay.

Over the last few weeks, a few of us at work have become addicted to the NC State surplus sale every Friday. Now that the students are coming back, it’s more of a hassle, but during the summer we got some pretty cool things. Behold!

I got a nice sturdy light table for $25 after about  a month of watching the price drop.

After scoping out some more expensive oscilloscopes, I got a Waveform Monitor and a Vectorscope for $5 each.

And, I picked up this nice 500 mhz G4 Powerbook. It was a gamble, because there was no power supply and no battery so I couldn’t test it. After securing the missing parts from ebay, it turns out that the little Powerbook works pretty well. Surprisingly well for such an old slow computer. The battery life is great and the screen looks pretty nice.

This one’s taking me a long time to finish, so here’s a preview of some areas of the painting that are more finished.

The painting is 16x20 and I’m using acrylic, as usual. There’s a lot of detail, and I’m still exploring technique and methods so it’s taking too long! But I’m having fun.

So a couple of weeks ago, Doug had an accident involving his wheeled garbage container. I would call it a ‘trash can’ but to me, ‘can’ implies something made of metal and most trash bins today aren’t.

Tommy drew the above to depict and reinterpret the actual events. Because I was in a rush, I scanned my version of the drawing and finished it in Photoshop.

What exactly happened to Doug’s fingers? You’ll have to ask him yourself. Tommy’s version gets the big picture correct, but is off in some of the details, like what Doug was wearing.

This is the first Gold Star I did digitally. While reloading some OS software on my desktop, I made use of my tablet to sketch out the star in ArtRage. I finished it the next day in Photoshop with a little help from Illustrator.