He just never quite gets the latest costume trend...
Poor Creepy Robot.
Here the ashes lie undisturbed
2009
Watercolour on paper
8 1/2" x 13"
It conjures up thoughts for me of what stays constant in a changing landscape, and how we can be so attached to a physical location that we literally cannot leave it. And there's something slightly sinister about the text that I find really attractive.
Digging through the archives
I found this in my files this morning and thought I would post - I did it earlier in the fall, around the time when articles were appearing in various media about parents' anxiety surrounding H1N1 in the schools. This is also an experiment in colour for me, an experiment in trying to stay within a certain palette. Editorial illustration is really what got me interested in illustration in the first place - I need to do more of it!
Logos - the No-gos
I'm in the middle of a logo / company branding project and did a lot of preliminary designs - a really fun process in my mind - trying to capture the brand of a coaching service for parents and communities with special needs children of all ages. I'm posting some of the ones we didn't go with, and I'm working on a final design right now (hopefully done over the weekend!)
I actually found it easier to "sketch" ideas directly into illustrator and run with them there, rather than do a whack of preliminary drawings in a paper sketchbook. Now all that's left is to put the finished logo onto a business card, letterhead, envelope, a flyer.... oh geez I'd better get working.
The Good Red Earth
2009
Watercolour on paper
8 1/4" x 12 1/2"
I think this is one of my favourites so far.
Creepy Robot Loves the Ukelele
Hopefully more robofans will make it in time for the second set.
Poor Creepy Robot.
Moonlight Sail
2009
Acrylic on canvas
20" x 16"
Still exploring the idea of a journey on water, light & shadow, creating a mood. Really trying to hone those painting skills - a painstaking, crazy-making task.
Foundation Design: Final Project
Our final project for Foundation Design was to design a shopping bag. We had previously drawn slips of paper with a type of store (Deli, Hat Shop, etc.) and I drew Perfume Store - which, at first, I wasn't all that crazy about. I have only ever owned one bottle of perfume in my life, and it was a free gift from the one and ONLY time I have ever answered a telephone survey. I'm classy like that.
But the more internet research I did about perfume, the more I got the aesthetic; for example, Kenzo is doing some pretty amazing things with their perfume packaging right now.
The name "Yozakura" means "cherry blossom lit by moonlight" in Japanese and it seemed a perfect fit. To be honest, I had already picked the colour scheme long before I thought of the name of the company (hey, when you design everything from the ground up, I think you get to do it in any order you please!) Designing the company logo was a lot of fun.
Yes, it's a wholly impractical bag in a production sense - 3-D flowers would probably make any bag manufacturer unceremoniously show me the door - but I liked the idea of the bag continuing its life as a keepsake, a treasure in its own right.
The only thing you can't see in these photographs is that the black surface of the bag is quite shiny, and there are large hand-drawn flowers that echo the shape of the paper ones and are sort of "embossed" in a random pattern all over the bag.
So I hand the bag in on Friday, and I believe the whole class is weighing in on the mark. Wish me luck!
Portrait Sitting - Girl
It was our last Foundation Drawing I class on Thursday and while our teacher was giving us our final marks one by one, he had this poor girl sitting for the entire three hour class. People would get their marks and just pack up and leave, so by the time class was nearly done, there were only three of us left. I felt so badly for her! But I did get a pretty great sketch out of it. So there.
The Release
Classes are coming to an end; it's hard to believe I only have one more week left. In Illustration class, we were allowed to do "whatever we wanted," so this came out of thinking about boats and the stories that go with them. I am pretty happy with this image and may try to take it over to watercolour at some point.
Fundraising sketches
I learned me a valuable lesson this week in client/illustrator communication. I did seven sketches of characters for a theatre company's fundraiser and put in about two days of work from conceptualizing to finished sketch (just pencil, not inked or anything), only to have the "this is great, but I was actually thinking...." response. Humbled, I mourned the loss of two good days of work, but then got back into it and pushed past the original inspiration, drawing up three versions of *one* character. Which is what I should have done in the first place. It was a valuable, and very inspiring lesson! Here are the original designs, which I still like (but am also happy with the new sketches). I'll post the three other versions in a later post.
The Sweat poster
What is The Sweat? As bands go, it's a little difficult to explain. But I was happy to capture all of their epic, sweaty rock in this poster for my design class.
Self Portrait
I'm sure there's something meta-navel-gazing (can that exist?) about posting a personal self-portrait on a personal blog, but in my defense this was a project for class....so up it goes. Can I tell you how freaky it is to recognize yourself in pencil? Try it sometime.
Creepy Robot Loves the Ocean
Creepy Robot's undersea vacation is about to get a whole lot more romantic...
Fashion Illustration take 2
After looking at the red dress illustration for a few days, I thought that I hadn't quite captured the look that I loved so much about David Downton illustrations. Hence the blue dress - it's my second attempt.
Fashion Illustration
It's been a really busy few days and I haven't been able to post anything in over a week or even attempt to do a sketch for Illustration Friday, which secretly is alright with me because the last two topics have been really hard! Nevertheless I hope to get back on that train, plus I have a few more ideas for Creepy Robot Love that have been kicking around inside my head that I would love to see on paper.
In the classroom front, the pace of homework assignments have accelerated and it's forcing me speed up the whole concept to finished work process. It's hard, but good.
Here's an assignment from my Illustration class for a fashion illustration.
It was one of the more frustrating sketch processes I've gone through in a little while, but ultimately I'm happy with the result. Even if I she does look a bit like Jessica Alba.Illustration Friday: Worn
She wasn't surprised to see that the heart she wore on her sleeve was getting pretty worn.
Gouache and graphite.
Creepy Robot Loves To Go Camping!
Creepy Robot thinks his ghost story is going really well - the other camper robots are really frightened!
Poor Creepy Robot.
A different take on drifting
I'm really drawn to the idea of a "journey" lately and this image is no exception.
Apologies to J for not choosing her colouring suggestions!
Pen & ink, coloured in photoshop.
Illustration Friday: Drifting
Now that it's summer, it's easy to drift away...
This was one of my first attempts at using gouache.
Beck (after Riccardo Vecchio)
This is my pen & ink version of a beautiful oil painting of Beck done by Riccardo Vecchio - in my heart of hearts, although I absolutely adore Creepy Robot Love, I want to draw more like this.
And ps. This was done with the chopstick!
Twiggy from memory
This week's Illustration class had us looking at an illustration of the model Twiggy for 15 minutes and then we had to draw her from memory! Pretty hard stuff, but pretty fascinating too. Yeah, I'll admit it doesn't look exactly like her, but I'm happy with the results nonetheless. Today my instructor said that he wanted me to work on my expressiveness and then gave me a chopstick. True story.
Angry Woman gets Inked
This is exactly the same woman as before, now rendered in pen & ink. Seventeen thousand little tiny marks of pen and ink. (Not that I was counting). I think it might be time to move on to another person's face!
I'm also considering a new project called "I draw what I eat" which would be a series of loving pen & ink renderings of meals that I'm about to eat. Either a brilliant way to gain a whole new artistic appreciation of food, or the worst diet plan ever conceived.
Pen and Ink Texture Thumbnails
This was an exercise for Illustration class - practice rendering textures in wood, water, and stone using only pen and ink. I think my favourite is actually the first in the water series, because it reminds me of wet cobblestones.
Illustration Friday: Unfold
Got a bit stumped this week. This was a hard topic! Creepy robot love to the rescue...
Foundation Design: Logo
Logo design for a Metropolitan Zoo
This is my cubist giraffe. As is what usually happens, I'm sure, this was originally my least favourite and most hastily sketched of three thumbnail roughs we had to show our instructor last Friday, and of course it was the one that interested her the most. I had a hard time simplifying it (logos should be clean and simple, easily reproduced) without losing the freehanded-ness of the giraffe. So although I really like it now, I don't know how successful it is as a brand or a trademark. But it says to me (as much as zoos can): modern, metropolitan, ehrm....Paris.....?
An Angry Woman
This was another assignment for my Illustration class; we were to do a portrait. This lady I found on Google Images and thought her expression would be an interesting challenge. Here's the original photograph:
So it's pretty clear the proportions aren't right. What's interesting to me is that my drawing now looks much more masculine. The woman in the photograph is obviously a woman, and although she is not wearing obvious makeup or sporting a particularly "feminine" expression--some people may think otherwise, ha--she is unmistakably female. My drawing on its own looks like a drawing of a woman, but now that I'm comparing the two I can't help thinking that it's possibly a man in drag--Michael Palin?--and all because the face is slightly elongated (see the relative distances between the nose and the mouth, for example). I think it's pretty interesting how slight proportion changes can change a gender!
Creepy Robot Love: Bowling
I wanted to mix my current love of this little robot guy with a recent craving to go bowling. See you at the Danforth Bowl!
Name that Illustrator
Here's a quick and slightly unfinished sketch I did in last night's Illustration class - don't worry, this isn't my instructor. It's an Albrecht Durer that we were shown as an introduction into observing the human head, and it was by far the best 20 minutes of the entire three hour class last night. Our lessons plans have been a bit...eccentric...of late (really? Orthogonal drawing?), but one of last week's homework assignments turned out to be surprisingly revealing. We were asked to gather images from any professional illustrators we found inspiring, and as I pored through a few Illustrators' Annuals, New Yorker Magazines, and even a book of Rolling Stone Magazine Portraits, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was seeing and responding to the same Illustrators over and over again. Some of these, like Riccardo Vecchio, were in fact in all three publications and I had bookmarked each one of his illustrations without even knowing who had made it. It strikes me as, not sad exactly, but almost irresponsible that in some cases this was the first time I was actually looking at the artist's name squirreled away in the magazine gutter, especially to think that I would kill to have my own name there - even if only in 4 point font.
Anyway, here's a short list of the Illustrators that I have, apparently, been loving for some time - click on their name to see an example of their work:
Illustration Friday: Adapt
Just imagine if dinosaurs had adapted to the cold weather during the last ice age...This was a pencil sketch that I scanned and added colour in Photoshop. Looking at it now, I think would have gone even further in the shadowing on Ms. Rex.
Like this.
Stretching the Dollar
This was an exercise for my Illustration course, the topic was "Stretching the Dollar" and the stipulations were that it be in graphite, realistic, and we had to see two people and a dollar bill in perspective. I think I spent at least 10 hours on this drawing alone!
Illustration Friday: Cracked
This week's inspiration was a film noir still I saw and wanted to try and capture the high contrast lights and shadows and moodiness. It was pretty fun!
Illustration Friday: Contagious
This week's Illustration Friday post. The little eggies were hand drawn (I don't know why they look so much like mini eggs, I must have chocolate on the brain), then scanned, touched up a bit, and the colour was added in Photoshop.
Illustration Friday: Subtract
This Friday's theme was Subtract - so I subtracted the outlines of fish from a piece of blue japanese paper and the fishing idea was born. If I were to do this again, I would find a way to make the fish look more "cut out" - my scanner has flattened the paper so I find it's hard to tell.
Humpback Whale
The text in the New Yorker article has nothing to do with humpback whales, but this drawing made me fall in love with pencil all over again.
Illustration Friday: Legendary
Illustration Friday is an email group to which I belong that sends out themes on Friday of every week and everyone is invited to submit an illustration based on that theme or topic. I've been getting the emails for a few months now, but only today did I do anything about it. Here's my submission for the theme "legendary." I went with the legend of King Arthur...through the eyes of a 10 year old boy. It was done in pencil.
A bird in the hand
I have obliterated everything except for the hand - which was the only piece I liked - from the painting called "Muffled" and just tried something else entirely. I like the collage feel of the elements: abstract swaths of colour, a realistic hand, and simplistic drawings of birds. Not sure if this one will stay like this but for now I like it.
2009
Acrylic on canvas
20 " x 16"
Reimaging of Abstract
This is a reworked version of an earlier painting - I like that the main image is much less defined, much less "something" (a face, an object, etc.) and more indistinct.
2009
Acrylic on canvas
20" x 16"
Joey Pancakes
Portrait of Joseph (Joey) Kurek (Aged 3 months!) commissioned by the parents
2008
Acrylic on canvas
16" x 20"
City drawings
Three pen drawings based on photographs I took while in Europe - (Top: Lyon, Middle: Paris, Bottom: Hamburg).
Paris Sketchbooks pt.1
I've sent myself to Paris for a month in the hopes that some solitude might inspire a little creativity. The first two weeks have been filled with walking, museums, galleries, walking, museums, oh, yes, and walking. But I always have my sketchbook with me, and statues make perfect models (they don't move or pay their bill and get up and leave the cafe...grr). Not all of the drawing I've been able to do has been direct from life, which I feel is good, nay, better. I need the life drawing to find the proportions, and the other drawing to skew them.
These were all done between June 3 - June 15, 2008. Pencil.
Birthday
It was my birthday last week, and I thought I would capture it in comic. Obviously I'm feeling some form of pressure (most likely self-imposed) about the addition of one more year on my age...but the feeling passes quickly enough.
A comic beginning
After a particularly lackadaisical Sunday I decided I would capture it in good ol' pen and ink. It's about as deep as an ashtray, but I really like the lazy flow of the activities culminating in a very satisfied sleep. I think it captures something interesting about close friendship and how, even when you don't feel like talking, it makes waiting for the streetcar oh so much more enjoyable.
In the flesh
This one, to me, is half a painting. It is the underlayer, the base you paint in order to build up depth in the ensuing colours. My problem is - what will the top coat be? I have this (terrible?) feeling that when I start to overpaint this one I will in fact obliterate it. I've never before felt that to be a negative thing, because usually I'm so unsatisfied with the original image that I'm happy to start over. But this one has a quality that I enjoy and one that I would be sad to lose. She's not finished, however, and she needs work. Acrylic on canvas
16" x 20"
Human Landscape
2008
Acrylic on canvas
20" x 16"
Painted and overpainted, this piece started as one thing, reached middle age as Image 2356 - which you can see in an earlier post - and for the moment has paused here. I find it extraordinarily interesting how the paintings, when painted over, can take on a completely new style or mood. There is a person under there, still (I haven't yet been able to divorce myself from painting people) but the colours are masking, hiding, protecting him from the viewer. I think I will let the painting pause here for a while.
Begin to speak
Not only will this blog be a catalogue of works-in-progress, pre-finished and post-started, but it will be a witness to the creative process I'm undergoing. It's a process that is drawn from (hopefully) all corners of my life - family, friends, work, city, vacation, night, day - it will all have a bearing on what goes on here. I think that's kind of the point of art, anyway. I'll probably find ample pixel space for imagined or otherwise complaints, difficulties in the journey, roadblocks and speedbumps, but with any luck the exercise of writing will act also as a purge. And then...I'll post the results.
Seems simple, doesn't it?
When you finally hurt me
2008
Ink on paper, chiyogami paper, scotch tape, mounted on cardboard
Printed text:
"when you finally hurt me
i finally felt what they were all talking about"
6.5" x 9.5
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