Marc Johns @ Flickr

I just discovered this fellow through a bookmark over at vi.sualize.us. Interesting and nonsensical watercolors that work well enough by themselves, but when you add the captions he comes up for them, you can’t help but chortle.

Artwork by Marc Johns.

From his profile:

Marc Johns creates whimsical drawings filled with dry wit and humour. Whether it’s a man with branches growing out of his head that need pruning, or a pipe that’s trying to quit smoking, his characters are simply, sparsely drawn, yet speak volumes with just a few strokes of the pen. He’s been drawing since he was tiny. He’s not tiny anymore, but he’s not exactly big either. Marc is not sure why he’s talking about himself in the third person…

I generally aim to say as much as possible with as few elements as possible. My work often leans toward humour. Finding the humour in things often leads to finding the truth.

I like to create absurd situations, by combining things together that don’t belong, or imagine what inanimate objects would say if they could speak. For instance, the pen I am using to write this draft would probably say: “I’m tired. Can we stop for a bit?” Or perhaps it would say: “I can’t believe you’re making me write this. This is rubbish. Signing cheques would be more inspiring than this.” These are the things I think about. I think about alot of things. I think about thinking. Don’t try it though, it’s not worth it.

I use watercolours in ways you shouldn’t. I make my own sketchbooks. If I smoked, I’d roll my own. I’d rather draw than rent a movie. Don’t try to start a conversation with me about recent films. I haven’t seen any. I play the guitar. If I was a hobo, I’d learn to play the ukulele, because you could fit one in your duffle bag. My artwork and the materials I use are quite compact. You could fit my studio in a large suitcase. I hope you like my drawings, or at least some of them.

Below are PDFs containing helpful shortcuts to many common design programs. Some of these were developed by the folks over at Computer Arts, the rest were created by yours truly.

The shortcuts here are the defaults. Most of these programs will allow you to customize these to suit whatever needs // wants // quirks you may desire. Hope you find them helpful!

• 3D MAX [ 49k ]
• Acrobat [ 546k ]
• AutoCAD [ 2.7m ]
• Cinema 4D [ 62k ]
• Flash [ 115k ]
• Freehand [ 42k ]
• Illustrator [ 41k ]
• InDesign [ 42k ]
• Photoshop [ 41k ]
• VIZ [ 124k ]

With just a few simple settings (and a lot of extra time) you too can create much more realistic lighting in your scenes. I am working in Cinema 4D release 8.2, and have found the setting below to produce results that I am pretty happy with in a fair amount of time.

You can download my file [ 613k ] and mess around all you want. Try adjusting the values to suit your needs, or just to experiment with how it effects the look or render time. Model found at 3dtotal.

Pen

A draft of a poster for my friend’s band. It never really came to fruition, but someday…