These cartoon coin vector illustrations were a long time coming. I sketched the original art way back - potentially in high school, but definitely in college. I had created an initial sketch of the Washington Quarter, and loved how it came out, but I just never finished the rest of them.

Earlier this year I decided to get off my lazy butt and complete these, and now that I had some vector art skills, this was a no-brainer to complete. It also coincided with my acceptance as a contributing illustrator at iStockPhoto, and I thought these would be great as stock illos. How often does money come up in some article? And couldn't those articles be exponentially enhanced with some cartoon coins to go along with them? But of course. You can check out the coins and pick up a very reasonable royalty-free license for all the cartoon coins at iStockPhoto.

These were actually quite a bit of work, as I hand-lettered all the type on the coins. And getting those metal highlights to work and still keep things simple and cartoon style, but effective, was time consuming. And time equals money, right?

It was fun to work these up, and I went through quite a bit of variations to get the style just right, as well as to keep it consistent throughout each coin. Of course the next in the series will be good ol' George Washinton on the dollar, and I have some fun ideas for variations on that one. I'm also thinking I need to do the "Indian Head" or "Buffalo" nickel as well.

Here's a close up of the penny, or you can get even larger, full closeups of each coin at iStockPhoto if you're interested in snagging a license.

Need custom cartoon illustration? Please contact me.

entire contents ©1995-2008 George Coghill