Paul Bunch

My Cartoon Mantis, Panda and Frog

paulbunch — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:51:20 +0000

Recently, I got the opportunity to draw some conceptual cartoons for 3 animals for an upcoming children’s book: a Praying Mantis, a Panda bear and a frog. Drawing cartoon animals is always a fun thing for me. You can be s0 outrageous and break all the rules of reality and people still like it.

Unfortunately, the publishers were looking for a different style than mine. But I ended up with new ideas and some very good samples for my portfolio.

Filed under: Current Works of Art

PhotoShop manipulation on family photo

paulbunch — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:12:12 +0000

Recently, on a trip to Salt Lake City, Utah to visit my daughter, I wanted to get a shot of our whole family together. As it turned out I got a series of photos, but none of them had everyone in the shot together, so when I returned home, I used the magic of PhotoShop to put everyone together. Click on the following link and follow the photos and captions to see what transpired.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2044834&id=1217715552&l=656a81f741

Filed under: PhotoShop Magic

Baby Lion and Baby Bengal Tiger

paulbunch — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 01:18:08 +0000

I went back to the Jackson County Fair last night, mainly because I had another free pass and I didn’t get to see the entire fair the first time on Wed. night. The highlight was seeing the baby lion and the baby Bengal tiger. They were cute and full of energy. Of course, it’s all cute and cuddly until they grow up. Then don’t turn your back on them.

Filed under: Life in general

Fast production of newspaper icon

paulbunch — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:56:47 +0000

I had a series of icons to draw for the Mail Tribune’s Outdoors section. The goal was to quickly produce some icons that looked different than what we were finding in typical clip art searches. The key factor was that there couldn’t be any outlines, because that’s what every other piece of clip art was doing. One in-house artist had already attempted the project, but was buried in other work and couldn’t pull the rabbit out of the hat in five minutes.

So I gave it a shot. I knew it had to be a quick and slick process that wouldn’t take very long for each icon. So I decided to grab stock photos and trace over them. In the example below I came up with the concept of a person looking through binoculars, but then the viewer had to know what she was looking at, so the icon became a simple montage of two images: the deer in the circle and the person looking through the binoculars.

I printed out the photos on 20 lb. bond paper turned the printout over on a light table and, with a pencil, outlined the picture on the back. This was a way to immediately simplify the picture and plot out areas that would eventually be areas of gray. Then I scanned the pencil outline into PhotoShop and used that image to trace over. I used the lasso tool to map out the different areas on various layers and filled them with gray tones. The woman with the binoculars was done separately from the deer in the circle and then I combined the two finished images together in another PhotoShop doc. I also reduced the deer in the circle and put copies of that image in each circle of the binoculars to give the illusion of a reflection of what the woman was seeing.

Filed under: Graphic Design Tips

Test Post

paulbunch — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:40:20 +0000

I’m learning how to tweak my posts. This is a post that I don’t want to send to Facebook. I just want it to appear on WordPress.

Filed under: Blogging

Researching Blogs

paulbunch — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:16:56 +0000

I’ve been doing a lot of blog research, now that I have more time. This one is written from my WordPress blog site.

Filed under: Blogging

About the Artist

paulbunch — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:59:46 +0000

With extensive experience in the graphic design field, I have created logos, business cards, letterheads, brochures, business forms, charts, magazine/newspaper ads, calendars and Flash ad animation. I have used Quark and InDesign continuously over the last 10 years. But I’ve also been having fun doing other things such as cartoon illustration and calligraphy. Collaborating with Insight Technical Education, I wrote a book for kids giving them an overview of graphic design, entitled Practical Graphic Design (see the website link listed below). Recently, using my cartooning skills, I illustrated a children’s book for ITE Media Publishing, entitled Just an Ordinary Little Dog.

But even though I’m into all the virtual tools of Adobe Creative Suite, I’ve also discovered some very interesting textures in the traditional fine art of acrylic painting. Using modeling paste, wrinkled tissue paper, cheese cloth and glass beads, all mixed into acrylic paint, I create beautiful European landscapes.

Posted in About, Uncategorized