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Channel: Igor Lukyanov - Graphic Artist | Illustrator | Portraitist
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Elephant Drawing

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A drawing of an elephant had been created as another template for political t-shirts from Buffalo Jackson Trading Co. just like the donkey drawing I wrote a few posts ago. An elephant and a donkey were drawn for t-shirts featuring symbols of two major American parties – Republicans (elephant) and Democrats (donkey).

elephant drawing
Elephant drawing for Buffalo Jackson Trading Co.

republican elephant t-shirt
This is how the Republican Elephant t-shirt from Buffalo Jackson Trading Co. looks like

And again I won’t delve into politics of the United States of America in this post because I know nothing about it. All I know is that it seems that the majority of customers of Buffalo Jackson Trading Co. supports the Republican Party and welcomed t-shirts with the elephant while booing t-shirts featuring the Democratic donkey. However the guys from Buffalo Jackson Trading Co. wanted to be fair and spent their time and money to make t-shirts for the Republican Party supporters as well. But anyway I simply wanted to show you the elephant drawing here without politics involved.


Related posts:
Lion drawing
American wildlife art

Custom Bookmarks

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There was a woman from the United States named Kat who asked me to create custom bookmarks for her to use them for her new blog promotion while attending a book convention. Kat is crazy about books and she shares her passion for books on her blog called The Book Tart. Kat wanted two customized bookmarks featuring a reading woman. The woman on the drawing was supposed to look like Kat and be seductive to support her motto – "Reading is Sexy". Well, you have to go an extra mile to revert people back to reading books today and if you are an attractive woman it is easier to do that. I also love those wise phrases she wanted to place on the bookmarks: "Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy books, and that's kind of the same thing" and "I have more books than clothes or shoes – combined".

customized bookmark

So I am writing this post to show you how those custom bookmarks look like. The drawings were created on the basis of reference photos and descriptions provided by Kat (including her desire to add some vintage girl vibe to the drawings). These bookmarks are another example of highly customized artworks I can create for personal and business purposes. I can handle the most advanced customization requests as there is nothing that can be more customized than illustrations featuring characters with the portrait similarity to any person. If you are for the fist time on my blog, please, feel free to check some portraits created by me to see what I can offer when highly customized art is needed.

custom bookmarks

Related posts:
Custom posters for a chiropractor
Custom greeting card

Astronaut Reading a Book

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The drawing of an astronaut reading a book was my first commission from Skip N' Whistle– a company offering eco-friendly screen printed t-shirts in New Orleans, USA. The company is known for its great selection of fun and clever t-shirt designs.

astronaut reading a book
I was asked to draw a spaceman sitting down with his legs crossed and reading a book

One of the reasons why I was contacted by a representative of this company was that guys from Skip N' Whistle were not quite happy with hard edge vector clipart that so many people used to translate their design ideas into drawings. And I cannot but agree that freehand drawings have so much more soul and life than those made with Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator or any other computer-based graphic editor. There is nothing better than a hand-made work totally created by human mind and hands. Hopefully, customers of Skip N' Whistle will appreciate future hand-made designs of their t-shirts. I believe there will be plenty of popular Skip N' Whistle designs re-made into freehand drawings by me and/or other artists because it seems that managers of the company are ready to go for it.



Another reason I was hired to create the drawing for a t-shirt from Skip N' Whistle was my distinctive drawing style of hatching and cross-hatching making my artworks look somewhat vintage. Skip N' Whistle’s t-shirts and accessories feature a lot of vintage-inspired designs and guys from the company believed that it would be cool to make custom designs while keeping that so popular vintage vibe.

AD ZONE: Read books, watch videos, have fun

Unfortunately, I do not know the exact meaning of this drawing of a reading spaceman but the design looks fun which means that Skip N' Whistle is likely to find a lot of buyers for t-shirts featuring an astronaut with a book.

Visual Scribing

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My first graphic facilitation commission has not remained unnoticed. Shortly after I had published my blog post about graphic facilitation I was contacted by a representative of CipherEx (a computer consulting services company that designs, models, tests, and builds secure networks) who asked me to create an entire series of graphic facilitation videos to visually capture some important office and network security rules for their customers to remember. The guy who contacted me called this work visual scribing and I think this term, indeed, suits the visual facilitation process which suggests no live drawing. So, from now on I’ll call this kind of work visual scribing or simply scribing.

visual scribing
My new visual scribing commission suggested drawing with an invisible hand

The main challenge in the CipherEx’s assignment was that the customer wanted the drawing hand to be invisible in the final video. I knew that it could be done with some iPad applications which make it possible to record the drawing process through a stylus. However, taking into consideration more important needs, purchasing an iPad was not an option. It took some time to develop my method of the “invisible hand” visual scribing with the equipment available to me at that time. While honing the method I managed to complete the first video of the series in September 2012. And the customer was happy with the result. I’ve got customer’s permission to share this video, so you can watch it below:

Visual Scribing: Security Around the Office


Portrait of Stephen Alonzo Jackson and Other Artworks for Frats

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Making t-shirts with custom designs for college fraternities is another idea of Buffalo Jackson’s management purposed to satisfy their young male customers who gravitate towards classic masculine values in fashion opposing today’s fashion trends aggressively promoting men with metrosexual and sleek appearance. A portrait of Stephen Alonzo Jackson was the first artwork created by me for Buffalo Jackson Trading Co’s new series of frat t-shirts.

I never knew about Stephen Alonzo Jackson until Buffalo Jackson commissioned me to create his portrait. Due to this company I learn a lot of things about the United States history. And I am now aware of Stephen Alonzo Jackson being one of the most important men for the Kappa Sigma fraternity as he managed to transform Kappa Sig from a struggling local fraternity at the University of Virginia into a strong international Brotherhood.

Stephen Alonzo Jackson
Stephen Alonzo Jackson is possibly the most important man in the history of the Kappa Sigma fraternity

I actually love the idea of college fraternities and sororities which we do not have in my country. I believe it feels good to belong to a community, a club which only people sharing the same traditions and common virtues can join. It must be nice to feel the team spirit which helps people withstand competition and encourage support for those brothers in need and troubles. College fraternities and sororities seem to be a powerful institutions making students’ life even more exciting and saturated with positive experience.


No wonder Buffalo Jackson Trading Co. appeals to college fraternities when advocating their traditional rugged gentleman muscularity expressed in lifestyle and fashion. A lot of fraternity members are prone to respect traditions of past generations and, being conservatives, they are less easily enticed into new fashion trends shifting far from a classic image of a man.

Other Artworks for Colledge Fraternities

The portrait of Stephen Alonzo Jackson is not the only artwork ordered by Buffalo Jackson Trading Co. for fraternities. I also made a few drawings featuring frat crests and badges. You can see some examples below:

theta chi crest
Theta Chi crest

sigma chi badge
Sigma Chi badge

Slow Loris – Endangered Cuteness

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Slow lorises and slender lorises are cute animals but their cuteness has put them on the brink of extinction. Many people do not understand that slow lorises are not like kittens or puppies and having them as pets is actually dangerous for their health and even for the very existence of the entire population of these primates.

cute slow loris, slender loris, endangered species
Slow loris - endangered because cute

Cute pets are popular on the Internet. So I decided to leverage the power of cuteness and promote the idea of preserving the wildlife by making a call through my art for abstaining from human’s fads which do nothing but put innocent animals in peril and physical suffering. Slow lorises undergo a painful untoothing procedure which suggests cutting out or pulling up to 8 of their teeth before delivering them as pets. This awful operation is often done with simple nail clippers and in many cases it causes lethal infection or blood loss, not to mention an excruciating pain the animals experience.


I really hope that someone looking to buy a slow loris as a pet will get to this page and change his/her mind after reading this article. It is important to make the demand for pet lorises decrease by raising people's awareness of this species endangerment and tortures. That’s why I’ve made this drawing of a cute slow loris. Hopefully, this image will attract some visitors to this page and those who wish to adopt a loris as an exotic pet will shift their focus to less endangered animals or traditional pets such as cats, dogs, hamsters etc.

You’d Better Purchase a Hi-Res Image than a Real Slow Loris


Slow lorises’ cuteness creates a truly insatiable desire in lots of people for keeping one of these living cartoons at home as a pet. Many of those who set off to buy a slow loris are probably not aware of the harm they are causing these long-suffering creatures by keeping them locked in their houses and thus helping boost the illegal pet trade. I know it may seem a poor substitution but I strongly recommend that you’d better purchase my drawing of a cute slow loris than a real one. So why it’s better to buy the high resolution image for those who love slow lorises and would like to express their love by protecting them rather than supporting pet smugglers’ cruel business with their money?

  • You can print out this drawing and hang it on a wall to always get amused with the slow loris’ cuteness without paying for harming and torturing it;
  • You will be able to tell more about the slow loris endangerment to your friends and relatives who will see this cool drawing in your place;
  • You can print this high resolution royalty free image on a t-shirt or publish it on a website or a magazine to let the wide public know about the endangered species issue:
  • slow loris t-shirt, endangered species t-shirt
    You can print the image on a t-shirt to let people know about the problem of slow loris endangerment.
  • You will support my social work in creating drawings to address people from all over the world with the problem of endangered animals.

I have a few special ideas of artworks dedicated to the endangered species issues. Unfortunately, I cannot focus on social projects too often as I have to work on paid commissions to be able to pay my bills and feed the family. If people buy my animal drawings, they will help create a budget necessary for me to spend more time on my wildlife protection initiative without having to worry too much about money.


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Expanding My Team to Create Professional Vector Art

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I started my career as a graphic artist with illustrations for archaeological digs in Crimea. I have been creating freehand artworks for a significant part of my life and even today, when artist’s business requires mastering graphic editing software such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, I still gravitate to old school hand-made drawing. The majority of people start learning to draw or paint in a traditional way using conventional art tools such as paper and brushes or pencils. Doing so is natural. That’s why lots of old-schoolers proved to be unprepared for the digital era when all kinds of artworks can and sometimes must be created with the aid of special software and hardware like graphic tablets. I was lucky enough to have had the opportunity to learn how to utilize Adobe Photoshop to edit, outline or color my freehand sketches in order to turn them into digital pictures as well as to how work with Adobe Illustrator to create infinitely scalable vector images that are indispensable for many purposes dictated by technology advances of the twenty-first century.

In this blog you can find a few articles about projects which suggested applying my modest skills of creating vector images, for example, posts about the motocross vector illustrations, the panda mascot, and the posters for a chiropractor. However, when it comes to large projects involving vector graphics, I feel that my vector art skills are not strong enough for me to be able to offer my clients fast delivery and top-notch quality of images compared to artists whose major specialty is vector graphics. Therefore I decided to ask my former colleague to join me and become my associate in creating vector art for my customers who approach me with their big vector art projects. Her name is Natalia Busayeva. We used to work together for a web design and development agency, but today we both are freelance artists living in the same city. Natalia has acquired solid Adobe Illustrator skills which is exactly what I need to compensate for my lack of experience with vector graphics and meet my customers’ most challenging demands.

Our First Project Together: Vector Images Related to Sports and Hobbies

The first project Natalia worked on under the brand of Igor Lukyanov’s Artistic Studio was a series of vector pictures related to sports and hobbies. They were created for Split P Studio, LLC (owner of the "FunnyLuggageTags" trade mark) – my old client for whom I created custom drawings for the vintage-fashion-inspired luggage tags. These images were also purposed for a collection of luggage tags. As you can see from images below, vector art created by Natalia has a professional flair, even though I showed them in low resolution and they look not at their best here.

mountain bike vector art, male biking
Male mountain biking

mountain bike vector art, female biking
Female mountain biking

fly fishing vector art
Fly fishing

mountain climbing vector art, male mountain climber
Male mountain climbing

mountain climbing vector art, female mountain climber
Female mountain climbing

mountain hiking vector art
Mountain hiking 1

mountain hiking vector art, male and female mountain hikers
Mountain hiking 2

jogging vector art, female jigging in city
Jogging in the city

jogging vector art, male jigging in nature
Jogging in nature

golf vector art
Golf

snowboarding vector art
Snowboarding

mountain skiing vector art
Mountain skiing

I hope you love this demonstration of my team’s abilities to create high-class vector art. So if you ever need custom vector illustrations of top quality you are welcome to contact me and I’ll make sure that your needs are met in the most professional manner.

Portrait of Young Michael Caine

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I remember watching Michael Caine movies when I was very young. It may be that these souvenirs of youth made me want to draw a portrait of this well-known actor. Or may be I was charmed with the fact that Michael Caine will be 80 years old in 2013 and he still looks good and active.

young Michael Caine wearing cool glasses
Young Michael Caine wearing his signature hipster glasses

He still acts in many films. Michael Caine’s face looks rather attractive from artist’s perspective. Although he was born in a poor family, he has that peculiar British nobility in his appearance. Michael has a beautiful family and despite his solid age he even mastered Twitter. This active gentleman seems to have that irresistible aura that has inspired me to draw his portrait. So I found a picture of young Michael Caine that had been taken a year before my birthday and I used it as a reference for the portrait. Furthermore, this picture shows Michael wearing his famous hipster glasses; therefore I wanted to include this cool accessory into the portrait. I also learned from the Internet that one of Michael Caine’s favorite songs was “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. That’s why I decided that this great piece of music should be the soundtrack for my video showing the portrait creation process. I believe this song indeed perfectly fits a mature man who lived a long life of success. I hope Michael Caine himself will find this portrait and share his thoughts about it in the comment section below (well, I know it sounds almost impossible, but it doesn't hurt to dream).


P.S. many people ask me what kind of pen I use for my artworks. For this portrait of Michael Caine I utilized one of my most appreciated drawing tools – a Pilot Birdie fountain pen.

Related posts:
John Wayne
Steven Spielberg
Hank Williams, Jr.
Johnny Cash
Michael Connelly

Portrait of a Ukrainian Girl

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This is not for the first time that I create portraits of Ukrainian women. Being a Ukrainian artist, I am sometimes contacted by people from abroad who ask me to draw gift portraits of their Ukrainians wives, girlfriends or acquaintances. You can see some examples of such portraits on this blog too. There is an artwork ordered by an Italian guy who wanted me to create a portrait of his Ukrainian wife as an elf princess and another portrait created for an American man’s girlfriend living in Ukraine. This time, when a guy from Moscow asked me to create a portrait of his friend from Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, I thought why not to use this commission to show a little bit of Ukrainian culture to the world. So I made a video showing my work in progress and added a beautiful piece of Ukrainian music as a soundtrack to the video. And here are the results of my work. Hopefully, you will enjoy some Ukrainian spirit in this artwork.

Ukrainian young girl
Ukrainian girl portrait


How Google’s Webspam Team Works (Featuring Matt Cutts)

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It’s unlikely that anybody who visits my blogs knows who Matt Cutts is. I myself was unaware of the man till recently. But in fact Matt is a very useful man who works as the head of Google's Webspam team which goal is to protect all us, users of the World Wide Web, from an annoying and sometimes even dangerous spam. But let me tell you why I am writing about him here.

Challenging the Power of the Internet


So I have a good fried who works as a translator, copywriter and SEO (search engine optimizer) and who helps me a lot with promoting my business online. He never stops talking about the outstanding power of the Internet in the matter of getting any message to the world and reaching out to influencers of any industry. According to my friend the only thing needed to attract attention even of the biggest guys is the content that would appeal to them. And so I asked him who were the influencers of the industry HE worked in and whether I could reach out to them with MY content and with the help of the almighty Internet. I learned then a few names from my friend including Matt Cutts who seemed to be Zeus for SEO’s.
Matt Cutts cartoon with Penguin and Panda
Matt Cutts fighting spam with his "team"
So the challenge for me as an artist was to create an image that would be shared in the World Wide Web and eventually be seen by Matt Cutts. And hopefully this image would be appealing enough for Matt so that he would be willing to leave his comment below the post. I have come up with this cartoon showing Matt Cutts fighting spam with a penguin and a panda (as I learnt from my friend, Penguin and Panda were the codenames of the latest Google’s search engine updates aimed at reducing spam and offering a better search experience for all Google users). The idea was to depict Matt driving a vehicle which would remind the word “Google”.

Well, let’s hope it won’t take too long for Matt Cutts to see this cartoon and comment here. I also hope I’ll be able to tell apart real Matt Cutts from false ones that may want to comment as well.

Update: Matt replied me in Twitter within 10 minutes (!) after this post was published. I am now totally convinced of the outstanding power of the Internet!
Matt Cutts on twitter
Matt Cutts replied me in a moment after this blog post was published

Flying Bird Drawings

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Flying birds seem to be a trend with my clients. After I had first created a drawing of flying mallards for Buffalo Jackson Trading Co. a few years ago, I was approached by a number of people wishing to have a flying bird drawn for different purposes including logo design and branding, web site graphics, t-shirt design, custom stationery design etc. No wonder, flying birds are popular as they look really beautiful and graceful and let humans at least feel the freedom they will never have. In this blog post I would like to show you some of my flying bird drawings.

Flying Osprey


flying osprey
This flying osprey was drawn for Alexa Pulitzer LLC - personal stationery manufacturer

Flying Ducks


mallard duck flying, duck in flight
This duck is another design for Alexa Pulitzer LLC

flying wild duck
This duck was drawn for a t-shirts produced by Fowlaholic

Flying Canada Goose


flying Canada goose
This Canada goose was drawn as a t-shirt design for Feet Down Designs

Custom Ethnic Luggage Tags

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I have recently created another series of custom drawings for the luggage tag shop owner on Etsy . If you follow my blog publications you might remember that I and my team members have already made luggage tag images for this client (see vintage fashion luggage tags and sports and hobbies luggage tags). Since then I've made friends with Anna - the Funny Luggage Tags shop owner and one of my best clients. I really enjoy working for her because she is both a good person and a Russian-speaking citizen of the United States. And since I am also a native Russian speaker I have a special attitude to this customer.

Speaking about nationalities, I should mention that the new series of luggage tags addresses various ethnic groups of buyers such as Asians, Latinos and African Americans. It's a wise move for someone selling things in the USA. After all the United States of America is a melting pot of different cultures, ethnicities, religions and races. Therefore any individual approach to buyers who are proud of their ethnicity can always be beneficial. So here are the images:

Asian woman luggage tag drawing
Drawing for ethnic luggage tags targeted at Asian women


Ethnic luggage tag for Asian women

Ethnic luggage tag for African American women
Drawing for ethnic luggage tags targeted at African American women

African American luggage tag

Ethnic luggage tag for Latin American women
Drawing for ethnic luggage tags targeted at Latin American women

Latin American luggage tag

Latino luggage tag for women

Quote Artwork

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My friend and loyal client Anna (the one for whom I create images for luggage tags she is selling on Etsy) asked me to illustrate a quote by Steve Maraboli that goes: "She is delightfully chaotic; a beautiful mess. Loving her is a splendid adventure".

Well, it's kinda hard for a man to illustrate a mysterious female soul on a single drawing but I tried as best as I could and Anna loved the result. So here is a custom quote artwork I created for Anna:

Steve Maraboli quote - She is delightfully chaotic...
She is delightfully chaotic; a beautiful mess. Loving her is a splendid adventure. ― Steve Maraboli

Portrait of Walt Whitman

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   Walter "Walt" Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.
    This drawing was created for Sticky Leaves which is a new company based in the USA that's dedicated to helping people show off life passions and positive world views on high-quality, artistic t-shirts sold at a reasonable price. They're starting things off on Teespring and hope to expand to having their online store set up soon. This Walt Whitman design can be purchased on their latest shirt, which is available here: http://teespring.com/waltwhitman

Watch me creating this art on YouTube:

Portrait of Victor Hugo

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  Today i want to share my next portrait created for Sticky Leaves. http://teespring.com/victorhugo
 Victor Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. He is considered one of the greatest and best known French writers. Outside France, his best-known works are the acclaimed novels Les Misérables, 1862, and Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831 (known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). He also produced more than 4,000 drawings, which have since been admired for their beauty, and earned widespread respect as a campaigner for social causes such as the abolition of the death penalty. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo

Hunting illustration

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Being a hunter i have made this piece of art with great pleasure.


As usual, you can watch me creating this at my YouTube channel

Elk drawing

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Beautiful Colorado mountains and an elk.

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 John Muir ( April 21, 1838 – December 24, 1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher and early advocate of preservation of wildeness in the United States.
 Finally settling in San Francisco, Muir immediately left for a week-long visit to Yosemite, a place he had only read about. Seeing it for the first time, Muir notes that "He was overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling down steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muir

Today i want to share my last project dedicated to John Muir and the Yosemite Half  Dome mountain.
 
 You can watch the "making of" video as well.

Howling wolf

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