Thanks to the nice folks over at Owl for giving me the cover of Chickadee’s April issue!

The issue’s theme was ‘green heroes’, and the mag pretty much knew what they wanted and gave me a pretty awesome rough to work from. It was a bit challenging to fit in more ‘green’ elements considering the subheads, callouts and barcode box (bottom left, not shown here). Hopefully it gets the general idea across.

Also inside, a neat 2 page spread featuring some excellent young people who are doing their bit to reduce waste and make the world a greener place.

So, over the last year or so, I have been dealing with a fair bit of pain when I work. I either have a herniated disc, or a pinched nerve, or both. The pain mostly occurs when I work at the computer. While this obviously sucks, it also has given me an excuse to get away from the computer more often and work on stuff I used to enjoy. Like drawing with pencils. So here’s the result of that.

I got some new semi-soft Koh-i-noor pencils and my older hard Derwents…

An awesome and cheap sharpnener from Mixed Media…

This was the original sketch. I drew it in my sketchbook and scanned and enlarged it.

My old computer table now repurposed for traditional work. Lots of pencils.

Work in progress.

Click the image to view it fullscreen!

Enjoy Halloween as witches fight goblins and ghosts. If I could, I would cue the wailing guitars about now.

Illustrator CS6 and Photoshop

Did this as a sketch at FanExpo. It was the last day and I figured ah to hell with it, I’m drawing something fun and cartoony. Turns out doing fun and cartoony is A) fast B) recognizable and C) generally family friendly. I think this sketch attracted the most attention, and made more than one person think ‘if only I had a Cintiq, I could do that too!’. Which was kind of the point of the demo, so mission accomplished I suppose.

Anyway, fast forward a month and a house move later, and I finally found the time to use this as an excuse to test CS6. Some nice features like the editing on the fly line tool, but the somewhat slower responsiveness of the software is making me stick with CS4. Anyhoos, hope you enjoy the art at least.

Did this some time ago but kept forgetting to put up the pictures. This was an interesting project for the wine label G. Marquis. The illustration was black and white; the final artwork was white embossed on a light grey.

The client wanted something that told a specific story, but also wanted it to be subtle. Originally it was supposed to be a more elaborate design but we gradually simplified it so that the illustration could rest on either side of the logo. The artwork was hand drawn with a brush pen and scanned in for delivery.

Been a bit preoccupied lately with various things and haven’t posted for a while. So, here are some sketches to try and make up for the missing weeks:

The last one is digital, though it was based off a pencil sketch. When I get more time I would like to try stuff like this that’s simplified and graphic.

Big thanks to the guys at Kayak for working with me on their Titanic anniversary issue cover.

The sinking of the Titanic was one of the big events of the 20th century; a tragedy that ended the lives of many people, but also marked the decline of an era of optimism and faith in human engineering and commerce. It also was a bitter display of classism at work – a theme that was played up heavily in James Cameron’s movie. As I was working on this, I kept  wondering if society was slipping back into Titanic’s time, where a small number of super rich ruled the world and literally jumped ship when calamity struck, leaving behind the poor to perish. There were some 1st class passengers who did answer the call of noble self sacrifice, but the stories of those who didn’t have become even more legendary.

My initial suggestion was to show the Titanic in a more positive light, perhaps leaving port or being built. The magazine wished to depict the sinking however, but requested it not look too gruesome. I did want the ship to be visible, but I also wanted the passengers to be be prominently visible. So we settled on a shot of people in a lifeboat looking in shock at the sinking ship. I would have preferred not to have the small silhouettes of people in the water (as this is a children’s history magazine), but I guess for historical accuracy they had to be there.

The cover was accompanied by 2 spots in the article. I’d originally suggested the guys in the Marconi room, but we later changed it to the band instead.

For the record, in my head, the rich guy in the life boat is Bruce Ismay. He’s not meant to look like Ismay, but in my head that’s who he represents.

Did this for an article in the Wall Street Journal, talking about the do’s and don’ts of discussing politics in the office. Was asked to keep party imagery out of the picture, which made it difficult to portray the subject matter. I suggested having the guy point to the date on the calendar instead in reference to the election date itself.

Did this some time ago for Kayak’s ‘Shopping History’ cover. Kayak is a Canadian kids history magazine. It was a fun cover to work on, though I do think the historical family over extended their credit…