Jirka Vaatainen Princesses

This art student has made a name for himself by mixing photo elements of real women with artistic renderings to create ‘real’ Disney Princesses.

What do you think?

Dapper Clown

We come to the last of my early works. I did hundreds upon hundreds of other drawings, but all have been lost in moves or thrown out for one reason or another.

This is yet another clown. Just what my fascination with clowns was I can’t say, and perhaps it’s best if I don’t delve into that part of my psyche too deeply!

I’ll try to continue to supply posts here on The Creative Kingdom as I come across creativity in any form!

The Thing

As I’ve mentioned before, I was really into comic books growing up. The Fantastic Four was a favorite book, and Marvel Comics were my favorite overall. This wasn’t done as a character study of The Thing, but it always reminds me of him.

It also shows how few lines and detail that is needed to convey expression and character.

Mr. Fire

OK, there’s a lot going on here: First is the matter of rendering a full drawing with a theme. I usually just did characters on their own with no background or context. Second, I was experimenting with flames. I think I did a pretty good job of stylizing it! Third, that’s one buff Snoopy!

But why does Mr. Fire have an ‘A’ on his chest? We may never know…

Leaper

This character has no date, but it was likely 1987 or later. This is the only time I would have attempted a female figure. This also continues my ongoing use of clowns.

And how about that neck?

Alien Re-encounter

If you’ve been visiting for a while now, you’ve probably seen this alien before. If you compare both drawings, you’ll find that I drew lines at horizontal angles to his joints. This was to be a comic strip character that I never developed further, and his one feature was that he would always have these lines intersecting his body.

I believe it was meant to accentuate his casual approach to life, as he is always leaning on the lines.

I don’t remember the point of the character or what I had planned for the strip. These details are unfortunately lost in the sands of time.

Thumbs Up

You may notice something different about the signature on this drawing. It’s a combination of the first letter of my last name, and the first letter of the first name of a good friend of mine from 1986. His name is Jim Ottley, and we used to collect comic books, attend movies, and blow way too much money at arcades back in ‘the day’. Good times!

This collaborative effort was a creativity exercise: One person draws a shape or line on a page, and the other person has to make something recognizable out of it.

Jim would have started this one, and I believe the starting shape was in the swirl in the lower back of the character. From that, I created this Thumbs Up character. We did many of these exercises, but only two remain that I know of.

Thanks!

Just a quick post to acknowledge all of the people who have ‘liked’ my artwork over the past few weeks.

Your taking the time to click the like button is most appreciated! There are just a few more examples of my 80′s work to come.

I hope everyone enjoys them!

Owl

Well? Have you hugged your owl today? I have no idea what I was thinking when I came up with this tagline for this drawing. But I am impressed with the claws!

Also, you can see an early version of my signature, with just the ‘B’ and the date, before I added the ‘tens’ in 1985.

Clone Clown

1985 sees my fascination with the weird continuing. Robo the Clone Clown is one of my favorite characters from my early artistic career.

It’s pretty obvious that Science Fiction had a least a little influence on me.