Threadless kid's shirt up for voting...

Score this design: "Butterfly Star!," to help it get printed on Threadless!

Family Portrait + 2 Shirts for Voting

I do a themed family portrait for my wife every Valentine's Day. Well, I was crazy busy with work and... I dunno. So I just finished it. My 2 year old, Penelope, looks and talks just like an Ewok, so that's why I went with the Return of the Jedi idea. And as for why I made my wife and I brother and sister, well, I wanted a lightsaber. When I saw this as a kid I sure wasn't wishing I could be Han Solo.

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I also have 2 shirts up for voting.
The first is at Threadless.


The second is one LaFraise.

My Wooden Robot by
MikeLaughead

Please check out the shirts and comment on them. I appreciate constructive criticism so please tell me how you feel.

Record Shop, a Logo, Sketchiness and My Favorite Disney Princess

This is an illustration for the Night & Day section in The Pitch. The section has a blurb about Record Shop Day or something. I had fun doing the album covers, please add comments for your guesses if you are inclined.


This Winter semester I have been teaching a Digital Painting class at KVCC here in Kalamazoo. I have the class upload their work to a blog for viewing and critiquing. Halfway during the class I made this logo for the class blog. I like how it turned out so I figured I would show it here. If you want to check out the class blog, here is the address:
KVCCDigitalPainting.BlogSpot.com
Much of the work uploaded is in progress, but there's some really great work on there.


Just a little sketch I did during a church meeting recently. I think this came as a result of reading Pride and Prejudice recently. The book is seriously awesome. I'm amazed that Jane Austen could write so well and so finished without an editor to help cut and change what doesn't work. The biggest problem I have with it is she sometimes doesn't say who is speaking in a conversation. That is frustrating!


Because Disney distributes the Studio Ghibli films in the US, I thought this little thing was funny. I guess I could have included Nausicaa in there as well, but that might not have worked as well. Just as a clarification, I did not draw this, I just photoshopped it together one day. I figured it should be available to everyone who wants it.

New Animated Website Header

I finally fixed the bugs and added this animated header to my website. Check it out: MikeLaughead.com

Skeleton Kat, Squid Head, Buildings, Butterflies and Reptiles

I was asked to do a sample for a children's book. The basic premise is a skeleton cat that likes to play the drums. Well, I went a little overboard with it. But the back and forth with the editors and art directors was really great. They had some great insights and advice. This is a progression of the ideas from first to last. There are things I like about all of them. I'm not sure if I like the 3rd or the last one best. But there are some great things going on in the first one as well.


I did this a while back as a t-shirt design. I really like inking with a brush, but my illustration style has veered away from it. This was an experiment.



This is from an old job. I had to do some building "caricatures". I'm posting a couple of my favorites.


My wife requested that I design a wallet she would actually like to own. This is the result. I think the tinymeat folks are pretty busy with their new store so I haven't heard back from them about it.


I did some spots recently and these were my favorite ones.