I had the pleasure of having an illustration featured in STEPHEN magazine. It’s was for an article on unconventional theatre set ups.

Other than that, just been busy working on other freelance projects and enjoying my first summer in Vancouver. Like I said, I did add a LOT to the gallery, so you should really check it out. That’s all for now!

I’m refining this style the more I work with it, and I finally getting pleased with how it’s looking. I think part of the idea is to be less… finnicky. Blocky, whimsical shapes add to the effect, I think. What about you?

It’s from a project we had to do for Children’s Book/Story Character Design. I chose to do a story based on the poem/song The Cat Came Back, which used to be my favourite poem/song when I was a kid (it had cats and people died = instant childhood favourite?).

The characters I designed were The Old Man who tried to get rid of the cat, and the cat himself. Then I had to do a page spread, where I chose the bit where the cat drowns a boy.

Man, even when I do stuff with my cutesy style, it is morbid. The stuff I’ll show you next will be happier. I promise. Also, wish me luck!

Anyway, some news of interest: I entered an Olympic themed exhibition that was set up to generate artwork that could be displayed locally at the celebration for when the Olympic Torch rolls through town, which had two prizes of $1000. Hi giant run on sentence! But how could I pass that up? So I entered a few pieces, an experiment and an old piece from second year.

Well, I ended up winning one of those $1000 prizes. Ooh, aah, pat on the back. That was nice, to be certain.

The piece that won is below — it was actually a 2-hour experiment, more in the style of my abstract and old web/graphic design work than my usual illustration. I just find that funny, in some way. It’s completely made out of circles, and only circles.

But that’s some artwork I’ve done. I didn’t put it in my portfolio section because I don’t think its really representational of my illustration style. I am doing some other stuff that I should hope to show you soon — we’ll see how that goes.

However, the challenge with creating art that would sell to the audience in my home is pretty… cliche. The things people here like are landscapes of farmer’s fields or still life of plants or fruits. And maybe a lamp made out of antlers (I’m not even kidding. This was actually a piece entered into the show last year). Not a lot of variety, nor is it subject matter that particularly interests me. So to challenge myself, as satiate the goal of making something salable, I wanted to do my own take on those cliched subjects.

I decided to do something I liked to use for some web design. Abstract shapes! Throwing some abstract swooshes or light shapes in the back of a website design isn’t anything new. But I really like doing them… I can do them for hours! They’re kind of relaxing for me. But instead of just having a unintelligible mass of swooshes, I wanted to see if I could use them to resemble something. In a way.

So, to combine the swooshes (do they have a term for them?) and the still life, I tired to do abstract takes on foliage and flowers. The upper one are takes on grass and leaves. The lower one, the one below is a take on flowers.

With this one, the first one is a rose, the second is tulips and the third is a daisy. I wanted them to refer to the subject, yet still be interesting shapes. The look pretty simple, but they took quite some time to do (I’m finicky)… but I enjoyed doing them, and I like how they look! Now I’m kind of reluctant to sell them…

I had originally intended to have this format for my portfolio show, but due to unforeseen circumstances (the printer/maker moving shop), it didn’t work out. But I got it, eventually (a week and a half late), and it looks pretty good. Though I have some nit-picky problems with it, but overall I am very satisified.

In addition to a portfolio, I also wanted it to be archival. To make one, once a year, for the rest of my career. To look back on how I’ve changed, where I started, how far I’ve come… and also something to leave behind to future generations. It will be neat to have.

I actually got two, so that works even better! One to present to people, to show what I’ve done and so they can get their jam-hands all over it… and one to tuck away, for posterity!

…or at least, it was kind of fun to design an entire book (40 pages worth) all by myself. Because I’m a nerd like that. Now I want to do more!

I’m going to be living at home for the next few months because I want to save enough money to make a good start/nest egg for my move to Vancouver in the near future. I don’t want to move before the Olympics because things will be too crazy (both rent-wise and people-wise), and I can save more money here because I don’t have any costs.

So, in the mean time, I’m working on setting up a work station for myself so I can do some freelance work in my downtime from my regular 9-5 job, working for the Art Gallery painting murals for the City of Dawson Creek.

Another one of my plans for making good of my time here is that I hope to be doing Illustration Friday every week… and even if I don’t have the time for a finished piece, at least do concepts and sketches for it.

But, since this is a sketchblog I should probably offer up something for you to look at, yes?

For those whom are more familiar with my work, they will know that these aren’t new. They are a pair of shoes I designed through Zazzle for myself. They’re cute, sure, but they were actually mostly an experiment of the services/quality of Zazzle. I own a pair, and I must say that I like them quite a bit.

And I want to make some more shoes in the coming months… and I would also like to include a store on here. But I’m not sure how. I don’t really want to add it to my top navigation, because I feel that would detract from the more professional and important aspects of the site, but I would still like for it to be noticeable and available. Suggestions?

My outfit is a funny thing — I went out with Tanya, intending to buy dress pants and she intended to buy a pencil skirt. However, we did the opposite: I bought the pencil skirt, she got the dress pants! I’m very pleased with my outfit though and I stayed in my budget.

In other, more interesting news, I added more work to the gallery. I’ve had a few comments about how surprisingly dark my work is (I guess I don’t show a lot of people, outside of school, my darker stuff?) so I felt I needed to reinforce the fact that I do lots of cutesy things too. This is one of them.

It was for one of my final projects for school — to come up with a concept/concept art for a commercial, for any product of our choice. I chose a higher-end cat food, and had it set in a very fancy cat boutique. The concept was that the Owner (below, right) brings her spoiled kitty (below, center) to the shop to buy him something indulgent. The Sales Assistant (below, left) then proceeds to show her increasingly extravagant cat toys, peaking at an enormous, golden cat tower.

The cat is delighted by all these ridiculous, over-the-top goods, but the owner just doesn’t think its good enough. Then she spots something — the Cat Food. She returns to the cat, bearing the bag of food, and the cat is just as excited about the food as the silly golden cat tower. It was fun to do! I really like playing with this style, I may try doing it non-digitally once I get some more time.