Illustration > Mr. Dave’s Best

I sure like to draw. But I don’t really have a set style. At least, I don’t think I do. I guess I just never really found a niche interesting enough to gnash on. I’ve spent my career using my drawings to help get concepts across to creatives and clients, and to decorate the products I’ve made myself. So being really versatile was great for that. Heck, for a while I was getting freelance jobs in San Francisco just to draw other peoples ideas for them. This page of weird drawings was part of a personal project I started to get my head out of a really busy time and to stretch my illustrative muscles a bit and let loose.

FINAL: Mr. Dave’s Best Stickers really let me go to town in whatever direction I felt like. And Procreate let me choose the best digital tool for each topic. For example, I liked the rough charcoal feel for these poor chickens. — **FINAL:** Mr. Dave’s Best Stickers really let me go to town in whatever direction I felt like. And Procreate let me choose the best digital tool for each topic. For example, I liked the rough charcoal feel for these poor chickens.

I’m a terrible painter. Watercolor, acrylic, oil...oh, I suck so bad at that. I came up in the world drawing with markers. Especially the bullet point Design Markers (my blood is 80% xylene). I’d eventually do all my drawings on paper, scan them on a big HP flatbed I had, and then color and manipulate them on my desktop. I illustrated Safe Baby Handling Tips that way. In the end I’m glad I have all the original drawings on paper as a tactile keepsake, but what a pain it was. I’d had a small Wacom tablet, but it was always too awkward to draw while looking at your screen and not your hand. Kinda like rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time. Then I really invested in one of those Wacom tablets that mirror your desktop. Better, but all the giant cords and transformers…still not ideal. Procreate on the iPad? Oh yeah, that’s the ticket. So convenient. So powerful. So easy. It made me want to draw again.

FINAL: A little mishmash of Unicorn Poop and People Not Getting Well Soon. — **FINAL:** A little mishmash of Unicorn Poop and People Not Getting Well Soon.

FINAL: I produced a few Mr. Dave’s Best Posters. This one I made for an elementary school silent auction. I made another poster at the same time that would have been…inappropriate. — **FINAL:** I produced a few Mr. Dave’s Best Posters. This one I made for an elementary school silent auction. I made another poster at the same time that would have been…inappropriate.

Everything here was done digitally over a span of about a month and a half, and it was the most fun I’ve ever had drawing. It didn’t hurt that I did a lot of it in the quiet moments during a long trip through Amsterdam, Prague, Budapest, and Austria. Imagine sitting on a wood bench in the shade alongside a canal in Amsterdam, drinking a cold beer, pantsless, drawing away on your iPad. That was totally me. Except with pants. I added that last part to see if you were paying attention. But seriously, that’s what’s so great about being an illustrator who lives in the future – you have a complete art studio that fits flat in your daypack. All in all, I did over 150 drawings on various topics that would eventually become sheets of stickers sold under the banner, Mr. Dave’s Best.