Here are a few recent pages from my sketchbook. Some are ok, some are atrocious. I’ve been drawing a lot fo monsters lately.

Lately I have been working with my good friends, Lopez Lomong and Tim Lawrence on an exciting project called 4 South Sudan. In summary:

4 South Sudan is a unique partnership between World Vision and the Lopez Lomong Foundation. 4 South Sudan’s mission is to meet the needs of the South Sudanese people through water, healthcare, education, and nutrition.

The site was launched a while ago, but we recently pushed out significant design upgrades. A good chunk of the branding work was done by the fine people at World Vision. I encourage you to head on over to LopezLomong.com and get involved.

You can also hear more about Lopez Lomong’s amazing story by watching the 4 minute video below (produced by P&G-Tide).

Have you every seen a tri-horned gator? Neither have I.

Sometimes when working on an illustration piece I’m forced to sacrifice my favorite part of the illustration for the sake of the piece. This was definitely the case for this illustration. A couple of weeks ago I posted a work-in-progress sketch showing the entire family. Once I began the final rendering in Illustrator it became very clear to me that the composition was not going to work. It was too cluttered, too many focal areas, and so forth. So, I decided to get rid of the house, mother, and daughter all together and focus just on the man taking his dog for a walk on the moon. Once I made this decision the composition opened up, and became much better. I might still do a second version with the mother and child, but we’ll see.

I haven’t been very good lately at posting work-in-progress sketches (I usually post them after posting the final piece, but not before). So here is a rough color sketch of the latest in my Home of Tomorrow poster series. This edition features the moon. Who wouldn’t want a view like that?

This sketch was roughly done in Photoshop. The final piece will be rendered in Adobe Illustrator. To see the first installment of Home of Tomorrow: Underwater click here.

Just your run-of-the-mill chameleon wearing a birthday hat. Lately I’ve been concentrating on the best way to adding texture elements to my vector illustrations in order to create a unique style and depth. I’ll probably end up using this illustration as a birthday card. There’s a novel idea!

Beginning the process of vectoring the illustration

Working on the stripes.

Greetings folks. I haven’t posted anything all year so here are some sketches I’ve done recently. Honestly, I’ve been hard at work on some exciting design projects, so I haven’t been doing much sketching this month. That’s a shame.

I sketched this sad sports fan after watching the 49ers/Saints football game this weekend.

Hello everybody. Just wanted to share that for a limited time my 2011 Christmas illustration is being featured on the home page of AddThis.com. They even added a cute, subtle animation.

Behold the official Cleland Christmas card of 2011. This is a 5″x7″ full-color card. I haven’t yet put this card on the market for purchase. That’ll probably happen next Christmas.

Concept value sketch

Taken from my iPhone

Detailed image

Wallpaper

Wallpaper featured on Smashing Magazine

I created a special wallpaper version that is featured on Smashing Magazine. To download your very own copy click here to visit the post on Smashing Magazine.

Merry Christmas!

Here is art for Stages Performing Arts Youth Academy’s upcoming production of The Phantom Tollbooth. The visuals are heavily influenced by the 1970s Chuck Jones animated film. For more information on the production check the Stages website.

Rough composition sketch.