Thursday, July 9, 2009

Blast from the Past #206: Dinosaur birthday card art

Back when I was trying to make it as a self-employed illustrator, in the pre-TMNT years, one of the ideas I had for making money was to create, print and try to sell a variety of cards for different occasions. For several years, I employed my used book store as the primary venue for this attempt... which didn't really work -- I think I sold a few dozen cards. Not a terribly successful venture, but it was fun.





I am pretty sure these two designs were done for this purpose, though it is also possible that I drew them for friends' or family members' birthdays. Or I could have used the art for both things. In any event, they were enjoyable to draw. -- PL

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I always enjoy watching your pre tmnt drawings, just reminds what a solid artist you are. And it also showcases your love of Dino's. Very nice cards, i would have bought some.

Splinter's Iroonna said...

Definitely LUVS the first-- that's something that would have had Mike catching it and taking it home, begging Master Splinter "Can I keep him? He followed me home!"

Zog the fourth....

HA! I've just finished rereading the last two Harry Potter books, and the word verification for posting this is "sortin"!!

Daniel Schwarz said...

Awwww... so cute! I would have been very happ to receive these birthday cards as a kid!

David McBride said...

These look great. I especially love the triceratops one.

~ tOkKa said...

-->> ..are there color samples of these ?!

(( assume there is .. ))

Anonymous said...

When I was strictly a freelancer, before Usagi, I did greeting cards as well. Mine was for a company named The LITTERary Pet. These were cards that owners could give their pets, pets could give their owners, or pets could give to other pets--basically, Hallmark for pets and their owners. The high point of the cards were when they were featured on The Tonight Show (with Johnny Carson), which pleased the owners of TLP. However, the Tonight Show's writers came up with new captions for my cartoons. The buyers (mostly for pet shops) were surprised at the racy language and stopped their orders.

TLP went out of business shortly after, but I did get to see Johnny hold up my artwork.

Stan

Anonymous said...

hahah what a great story, it must have awesome as an artist seeing your work on national tv esp on the tonight show.