Koncepts by Karyn BBQ Apron on “Big Love”!

I just heard that one of my Father’s Day designs was used on HBO’s awesome TV show, “Big Love“.

Apparently in a Season 3 episode, Bill was wearing my “World’s Greatest Dad” BBQ apron from Zazzle.

I’m absolutely thrilled and excited. Thanks, “Big Love”. Bill is a great dad!

And here’s a link to the apron itself:

World’s Greatest Dad Father’s Day Classic Apron by koncepts

A sketch-in-progress Da Vinci style:

It’s digital, but pretend it’s conté crayons, okay?

Memorial Weekend Sale! Up to 70% OFF use code: MEMORIALSALE

If you’ve been thinking about getting any of my art or t-shirts at one of my t-shirt stores, now’s the perfect time to do so. Zazzle.com is running a fantastic Memorial Day Sale this weekend. You can get up to 70% off of t-shirts, aprons, posters and business cards.

I just picked up a set of 100 business cards for myself. If you’re still looking for a Father’s Day gift, you should totally check Zazzle out. There’s tons of t-shirts Dad would love. The Memorial Day sale runs Saturday through Sunday.

As a reminder, here’s some of my stores on Zazzle if you’re looking to do some shopping:

• Karyn Lewis Illustration Store
• Koncepts by Karyn - T-Shirts & Gifts the whole family will love.
• Koncepts Kids - Cool kids gear for cool kids.
• Koncepts Bridal - Outfit your entire bridal party in bride t-shirts, bachelorette t-shirts & more.
• Cubicle Wars - Offbeat office humor t-shirts & gifts (lots of customizable business cards!).
• Prodem - Pro-Democrat Political T-Shirts & Gifts

Galaxy’s Greatest Dad T-Shirt by koncepts
Buy tee shirts at www.Zazzle.com

Kids Greatest Dad Ringer Mug by koncepts
Create custom imprinted mugs online at zazzle.com

Super Dad Father’s Day Ringer T-Shirt by koncepts
Browse more Father T-Shirts

Just a quick announcement. For a while now I’ve been considering offering making and selling clip art. I do a lot of t-shirt design, and I know there’s demand out there high resolution, high quality clip art. I think people are pretty sick of seeing the same stuff from the same subscription sites.

After some others in the POD world (that’s print on demand for those not in the know) starting indicating there might indeed be a market for this sort of thing, I decided to go ahead and go forward with the idea.

All the clip art I’ll be offering is completely royalty free, and approved for both commercial and personal use. My only restriction: You can’t claim the art as your own and sell it as clip art somewhere else. I’ll be setting up a FAQ page with more information soon.

My clip art page is now live with a small selection of art all ready up. So far I seem to be focusing on animals, but I plan to do a wide variety of subjects and styles. If you’re interested in clip art by me, but you don’t see what you need, I’m always open to requests and suggestions.

You can see all my available royalty free clip art designs here…

A fan art piece of the penultimate DC heroine, Wonder Woman. I was experimenting with some new styles and was majorly influenced by the amazing comic book & cover artist Adam Hughes.

Wonder Woman copyright DC Comics, of course!

So remember the “Ul’Rath” who I affectionately call, “squidipedes”? Here’s another character concept from the same story.

This guy lives on a planet called, “Nama”, which of course makes him a “Namat”. He’s a hunter for his tribe.

And now the obligatory warning to sneaky art theives: This picture is not for downloading or use in any way by anyone but me, folks.

Just a really quick and rough creature sketch I made for a story idea I’m working on. Posted here to share with a friend. :D

Ul'Rath creature concept, copyright Karyn Lewis

This character concept isn’t for use by anyone but me, gang.

I keep forgetting to share these with you guys. Here’s another texture scan that I use in my stuff all the time. It’s another grayscale scan of a sheet of handmade paper from Nepal. I find these work nicely if you set them to ’soft light’ on top of whatever layer you want to add texture to.

Click to download full sized texture...

If you do use it, I’d love to hear from you - leave a comment or link to your finished work.

This texture is free to use in personal or commercial use. Click on the image above, then right click to download and save full image file.

I’ve been busy trying to get more flower pictures done for my ‘modern floral’ series. Here are three new pieces I did in the past week:

Just added two new pieces to the gallery: Rose Bouquet and Allium Blossoms. I’ve been working on more of my ‘modern florals’ pictures in the last few days. I’m trying get enough done to submit the series to the local museum here in town that has an open call for submissions. The deadline is in March, and I’d like to have a large variety of images to choose from.

These pieces are photomanipulations. I work from snapshots of flowers and then transform them in Photoshop CS3 by adding line and gritty textures via halftone screens, textures and custom brushes.

Here you can see the original rose bouquet photo, and the final result:

I take the photo and enlarge it to fit on an 11 x 17 inch ‘canvas’. Then I draw directly on top of it in a separate layer. I use the photo as a base for the colors, but it goes through several revisions with curve adjustments, levels, color changes and then finally, I add the textures on top.

In many ways, when I make these photo-manipulations, my process is organic and intuitive, much like the process I go through when I create an abstract painting. Many ‘happy accidents’ occur while I’m messing around with texture and filters, and each change is a direct response to what I see as it happens rather than any pre-planned illustration. For instance, in my original vision of the allium picture, I wanted it to be all in warm colors. But nothing I tried worked until I cooled down the color scheme to cool blues. Even then it took me a couple of hours tinkering with the hue and saturation until I found something that became harmonious.

Please keep checking back as I add more florals to the collection.