Samuel Valentino's Blog, page 16

Threadless contest - please vote!

Threadless is having a T-shirt contest for Monsters Inc. and Disney. This is my entry - if you like it, please go to http://beta.threadless.com/monstersinc/boo-23/ and vote. You'll have to sign up, if you haven't voted on Threadless before, but there's some really great art there so it's worth it just to browse. Any votes you could send my way would be greatly appreciated - thanks!

I'm on They Draw and Cook this month!

The recipe/art site They Draw and Cook has six "Giggling Good Recipes" as the highlight this month, and my art was one of the six pieces included! You can see their site here (which I recommend – a lot of good art there). Or, when they have a different feature some other time, you can see the art here.

The Coffee Queen

A perfect match! The Donut King and the Coffee Queen.

I based her on my wife, which may be one reason why the kids think that I'm the Donut King. This is pretty much how I react to her. Initially I was just going to do a drawing of the Queen's portrait, but thoughts of my wife inspired me to draw it the way I really feel.

Although if I ever grew facial hair like the King, I'd find myself sleeping in the bathtub. And shaved when I woke up.

Christmas Book 2012 - the Donut King

Yet again, it was time for the kids' Christmas book! Was initially planning the pirate story, but wanted to get back to some watercoloring roots after all the computer art I'd been doing lately. So I did The Donut King instead.
Here's the man himself, looking all round. His title isn't a misnomer. I'll put up more pictures in future posts.
The kids liked the book! I got a few comments that are either praise or slights, depending on how you take them. One was that the Donut King is supposed to be me. I think that's because of the facial expressions, since I'm not round (although my wife, with her great cooking, is working on it) and I don't have facial hair. In addition, I've been known to eat things other than donuts.
Second, my oldest daughter said, "You wrote this? Really? It seems like a real book!" I'll take that as a compliment and not a reflection on previous books. Although to be fair, my then 4-year-old wrote last year's. But to me it seemed like a real book, from a clever and precocious young author.
But I may be biased.