A Night at the Circus - Negative Space

This is the first painting I've done with all those photos I took at the photos I took Sunday. I really wanted to play with the negative space created by the contrast in the photos, and with blending washes of colour for the background. It's taking the little grey watercolour I did a few weeks ago to an extreme. 

This was a bit of an experiment to see how much detail I need to convey the information I want, and to trial a style I really like. I think it would be excellent in backgrounds and atmospheric scenes, especially if I ever get to do a graphic novel, like I keep talking about. Something very Film Noir. I sort of imagine this as the first step, with detail added to the foreground and any important figures.

I put the finished painting at the top because I'm curious to get some feedback before you see the photo it's from. Can you tell what the picture is of? I can easily tell, but a friend of mine was completely confused. Of course, he doesn't have an artistic bone in his body, but as his eyesight is as good as anyone else's, I'd like a second opinion. 

Here's how it all came together. The photo, cropped to size:

I used to 'threshold' edit in Photoshop to try and determine exactly how much detail I could put in/get rid of and still have a recognizable figure (you can tell me if I picked the right balance):

Here's the sketch, taking out the extra detail and person. I just wanted a simple image:

Followed by masking fluid based on the Photoshop image. My idea was that I could then play with the colours however I wanted, and the girl would still be recognizable. Any detail I added would be a bonus:

And here it is before I took the masking fluid off. I love that bit:

T-shirt designs: Zeppelin rides.

I spent the last couple of days working on this t-shirt for no particular reason other than to try it out. For the non-geeks out there it's based on the sci-fi trope that parallel universes always seem to have zeppelins. This was a fun project because I got to pull out my Retro Graphics book and mimic art deco travel posters, which I love. It was also a way for me to experiment with vectors in Photoshop, which I'm finally getting a hang of. I also enjoyed having to limit my colour palette to six colours (for printing), which made me get creative with the design, and learn to do halftones for the gradients. I think this would be kind of cool on an orange shirt, which is why it's pictured on that background, but there are probably a lot of colours that would work well. Now to find a good place to publish this!

Jabberwocky - Trying a Book Edition

I'm going to start working on a new book soon, and I've finally decided on the text it will be based on. I'm going to use Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. A little cliché, perhaps, but for good reason. I think the poem will work well because it's a good length (long enough for a decent size book, but short enough for a small project), and even though it's a nonsense poem, it still has a story to follow, which should allow me a huge amount of freedom when it comes to illustration. I can follow the story or invent whatever I want. I think I will focus of the letters themselves, because the poem features the bizarre words.

The main reason I'm starting this new project, and why it's taken me so long to figure out my newest project is because I want to make a printed edition. This will certainly be a bit of an experiment. Actually a big experiment. It's going to made with lino cuts, with the idea that if I make 20 books instead of just one the price will be 20 times less than a single handmade edition. And that could lead to one actually selling, which would be very welcome indeed! Of course I still need to buy an awful lot of paper and lino blocks to begin with, perhaps someone would like to pre-order one? Maybe I should start a support-an-artist fund? Send brushes!

A Few Influences:

This illustrated version is by Stephane Jorisch, who also did one of The Raven (great minds apparently think of the same authors).

Fantod Tarot Card Pack by Edward Gorey. I've always loved his drawings, there's something about the lines and stylization that I just can't resist. I got this set of tarot cards a few months ago and have yet to figure out how to display them, so I just pull them out once in a while to look at them and read the funny book that goes with it. I think the stark figures on a plain background may be the way make their way into my book.

I definitely want the words to be a little random and twist and turn all over the place. This is a lino cut of Amsterdam by Mark Andrew Webber. His work is incredibly cool, take a look at http://www.markandrewwebber.com

Things I Don't Want:

I like the reproductions of the original illustrations that are all over etsy, especially the ones done on old pages of books, but I don't want my book to be one of a thousand copies.

And while I think this is beautifully illustrated I really dislike it that the poem itself is printed and not drawn. If you're going to put that much work into something, finish it!

A Try at Photography

I haven't posted much in the last few months because I was doing my Basic Military Officer Qualification in Quebec. Opportunities to draw and paint were limited to say the least. I did, however, get in iPhone for my birthday so I could keep up with the world at large, and almost immediately downloaded Hipstamatic, which makes me think I'm a photographer. I'm tryingh anyway! I've been posted and hope I'll be able to do and post creative things very soon, as I will be moving and hopefully have a place to call my own in Winnipeg.

To begin with here are some of my favourite photos from my graduation parade. The one at the top of this post is me being narcissistic and showing off in my uniform (I didn't take that one obviously), but these next ones I think turned out very well. I took about 300+, so some of them had to turn out, right? I have a few more I love as well, but I'm saving them for drawings, so you'll just have to wait for more.

B&W Garter - getting the technique now

Here's my second try at using charcoal and oil paint. I learned quite a bit from the Horses experiment a couple of days ago. I did fewer layers, and after the first two I simply put down a layer of glazing medium and then drew into that (instead of the other way around). Much of the detail and most the actual lines stayed in the paint. I then scratched out some of the charcoal, which added more detail. You can see it in the close-up:

I'm really happy with how it turned out because you get enough information to really read the different textures, like the lace, but it has all the softness of the charcoal mixed with oil paint of the first painting.


This painting is for sale on Etsy.

B&W Horses - an experiment

I love the look of charcoal and oil paint, so I decided it was time to try it out for myself. I found an old mangled photo yesterday, and it was the perfect subject, a fountain I'd snapped a picture of years ago and kept around just in case. This is the finished (at this point, we'll see I suppose) product.

This was the first layer. I painted over the charcoal with some flake white diluted with lots of solvent. I took photos along the way so I could look back and figure out what to do differently next time.

I like this stage best, with the lighter background and sharper drawing, but unfortunately the charcoal would never stay like this and has to be painted over to stay on the canvas. However, I did experiment with drawing on top of a wet glaze, and the charcoal came out fairly defined and stayed put, so I'm going to try that a little earlier next painting (as in the second layer rather than the forth, like this painting), and I think I'll get better results in the end. Even though this is a painting it looks very much like how I sketch, layering vine charcoal and then compressed charcoal for depth, contrast, and definition. That's probably why I like it so much.

Jess Blowing Bubbles

I'm experimenting again. I pulled out an old photo of my friend Jess. I decided to go for a bit of a different look than normal, play up the colours, and do something maybe a bit surreal.

The original photo. I simplified the background.

Step One. I did an ink outline because I like bold edges, especially when so much of the finished drawing will end up covered in reflective, distorting bubbles. I put watercolour over top, which I made a little bolder because of the coming layers. The colours didn't follow any particular scheme because I'd decided against a realistic skin colour. Then I covered it with conte and pastel.

My life this week was all hockey. And a book.

Somewhere in between watching the Olympics non-stop this week I decided to try something I've had on my mind for some time now. I ordered some silk thread off ebay a couple weeks ago and it arrived so I could begin! So I embroidered leather to make a book cover. I really wanted to wait until the silk got here because it's simply so much richer than cotton. It look terrific next to the leather, what a great contrast! I'm glad I used the good stuff, because it took freaking ages.


I love Moroccan design, so I choose a pattern I like, made it more complicated (because that's what I do, just because I'm me and like making things difficult) and then did it in different colours while I was at it. I found a nice Moroccan-themed colour swatch that made choosing the colours very simple. The embroidery itself is not terribly complicated, just rope stitch for the outline and lazy daisy inside. Just painstaking and well, painful. I couldn't find my thimble and sewing through leather is tough! It's also kind of weird because every single pinprick will leave a mark, and too many stitches close together will simple punch big hole in it. Which is why there's no filling stitch, just pattern. Which will make things interesting if I don more of these because I'll need to figure out how to fill in the spaces without, well, filling in the spaces.

After the spine was done I wanted the covers to have some attention as well, but not more embroidery, so I did a pattern under the leather, simply cutting out a thin piece of cardboard into more Moroccan shapes (a simplified version of the spine) and putting it on the binding board so that the leather took up the pattern, but subtly.


Continuing on with making the whole thing look very rich, the inside cover got a couple different papers. A richly textured handmade green to match the main thread, and a lovely neutral marbled paper that picks up all the colours. I'll admit, I did cherry pick the marbled papers from everything sent in for the paper swap because it was the only thing that matched. (By the way, I should have that all ready to go Sunday, I took the day off so that I can watch the game).

All in all, I'm fairly happy with how it all turned out. Luckily, no one can see the back of the embroidery, which got messy pretty frequently. It's hard to work on this stuff! And it didn't take many tried to figure out how many threads I needed to achieve the proper weight for the outline. If I manage to figure out an easy way to get my pattern on the leather then I'll really be rolling. Or at least creeping along a little faster, I'm trying not to think of how many hours went into this. But all in all, a successful attempt!

Postcard Potfolio

I've been trying to find ways to display paintings in the fantasy artist portfolio I will someday make myself when I came across this tutorial. I really liked how it looked when it's all done and it looks easy to add/remove/move pages while still displaying almost the entire page, plus the back-to-back display means you don't have to see the blank back of the sheet of paper. But I didn't like the folded look, that the corners could still flip up, or that the back stayed very tight together.


So instead of acheiving this with origami I made the elements seperately and sewed/glued it all in place. The corners that hold the postcards are sewn in the centre so everything stays in place very very well. I wasn't 100% on how it would look with the back of the accordian fold not held together in some way, without the postcards in it it bulged out too much and had no shape, but now that it's done it fans out so beautifully to display everything that I'm really really pleased. Experiment succesful! This will be perfect for my portfolio.