I’ve been rather bad with the updating of the blog this year, and this one’s another belated post. This was done for the Wall Street Journal’s Ask Teri column and it’s probably the fastest job I’ve turned around so far.

It happened that the 4th of July fell on a Monday this year, so lots of places were closed for the long weekend. As a result, I got the brief a day later than usual, but still had to turn out the final by the following day. So, I had to rush out a couple of sketches to the art director, then go straight into the final art in the evening. The article was a question from a senior lady who wanted to know what to wear that would be appropriate for her age but not frumpy.

The people at the Journal were very nice and helped give me some suggestions about what to draw.

Below are the two sketches I sent off.

Eye glasses were added on later. I originally had her with white hair but the editor felt that made her look too old so I changed it to a light blonde instead.

Another Journal piece for the ‘Ask Teri’ column. ‘Ask Teri’ is a question-and-answer column where readers ask the fashion editor, Teri Jones, for her advice on different things.

For this piece, the reader was a 40-something year old lady who said she was a size 12 and fit, and wanted advice on what swimsuit to wear. The editor suggested a few things, including a one-piece with cutouts.

Now, size can be a tricky issue. Being a size 12 does not have to mean a person is fat, and these days it’s even more important to depict various weights as acceptable so long as the person appears healthy. But that being said, in a fashion column, people are usually depicted as extremely thin. So I try to maintain a balance by depicting someone who’s not fashion-model skinny, but who probably isn’t a true size 12 either.

The Journal usually has a fast turnaround – I get the brief on Monday evening and expected to produce 2 – 3 sketches by Tuesday morning. The approvals come some time on Tuesday afternoon and we shoot for a Wednesday morning delivery so that everything can be put together for delivery in the Thursday paper.

Considering the short timeframe, I sometimes do roughs and sometimes I just got straight into a sketch. I did do some roughs for this piece. Roughs are usually not shown to the client, they’re just my own ideas for layouts:

I pick 3 roughs to work on and did them up. Here are the sketches I delivered:

The final artwork was done up in Illustrator and imported in Photoshop for additional touchups and to enhance the soft edges.

WSJ Ask Teri / Charlene Chua illustration

This was done for the Wall Street Journal’s Ask Teri column for Thursday Jan 20. It was a very quick turnaround (same day). The column is about a man who lost weight and so got his suits remade to fit. He was asking if he should get his shirts remade as well since the necklines were still uncomfortable. The art director originally asked for a picture of a tailor working at making a suit, and I supplied him a sketch of that. I also supplied an alternative sketch for an idea with a pair of hands with a measuring tape across a businessman’s neck, which I thought had related more to the text. The team at the Journal liked the idea and we ran with that. I ended up making the guy look older with a bit of a heavier neck. It was a nice, quick job, and it was great working with the folks at the Journal again (who are simply amazing with their response time!).

These were the sketches I provided:

This was the original tailor idea.

This was my original alternative. I adjusted the guy to be older.

Thanks to Angela over at Santa Fe Reporter for working with me on this one! This is the cover for the magazine’s ‘winter guide’ issue. The space at the top is reserved for the masthead. The brief was open so I came up with some ideas involving winter. We both liked the idea of some sort of ice princss, so I married a couple of concepts together and came up with this.

Below are the other sketches I roughed:

(I ended up re-using this one for my own Xmas card.)

This was the reworked sketch:

My husband is an avid gamer and game reviewer. One of his passions is tackling the matter of narrative in games by examining their current state in the medium, and anticipating their development. This piece was done to accompany one such feature article in C&G Monthly, a Canadian pop culture magazine focusing on comics and video games.

Being married to someone who is passionate about games, it’s inevitable I suppose that I share some of his love for them. I’ll admit I’m much more of a backseat gamer than one that actually plays games, mostly because I don’t have the reflexes for many games and I tend to panic under the time-sensitive stresses that are core to the gameplay of most games. But I do enjoy watching the games that we buy, in  particular the ones that have good storylines.

Rough concepts for the illustration

To me, the current attitudes towards stories in games is similar to the attitude people had towards comics when I was growing up. Comics were viewed as this sub-par combination of badly drawn pictures and bland, 2-dimensional stories for children and no-too-bright adults. In recent years, thanks to successful movie adaptations (or so i think), the public has come to accept that it is possible to tell a deep, meaningful and engaging story through comics, and at some level  it’s more socially acceptable now. Games, in turn, have moved in to fill the spot vacated by comics to being the pariahs of  storytelling.

Which is a darn shame because while some games still have bad stories, there are some stories to be enjoyed in the still-developing medium.  Stories in games are uniquely experienced, both as gamer and observer, and the bottom line is that it’s a bit unfair for people to dismiss the stories or to simply say that there is no story to be had.

So, when my husband said he was doing a piece about narrative in games, I wanted to cook up something that helped illustrate the article in a nutshell, in a way that looked hopefully more mature and intelligent. It’s not much, but I hope that combining a thoughtful essay with a picture that isn’t just space marine/bikini warrior will help to eventually get people to realize the same thing they did about comics – that both comics and games don’t need to be stupid entertainment for kids, and that you can get some good stories out of both.

Worked on this a couple of months ago with the good folks at Mclaren McCann Toronto.  The project was for World Vision’s Spring 2010 direct mailer. The job was to create an illustration for the envelope, which would be repurposed for the letter and note card inside. Additionally, I was asked to illustrate a little mask for kids that was to be printed with lenticular printing (remember those plasticy cards where you turn them and the image changes?).

The project was great fun and I really enjoyed (more…)

Did this recently for Lucid Media. It’s the cover for the issue featuring Canadian director Atom Egoyan. The illustration is  portrait of him, with characters from his various movies woven into his hair. the watermark background is based off Armenian patterns in recognition of his heritage.

Here’s the work as it appeared (the inner black and white spot was another cover concept that we decided to use for the article instead):

Here were the roughs I did. I normally don’t do color roughs, but decided to for this one:

Spring is here! Happy Spring! This piece went out as a email promo with the message ‘spring cleaning is good for your soul’. Below are some of the rough concepts I drew up beforehand – thank you to everyone who gave their input!

Did this during a couple of Livestream sessions last week. I guess I forgot to post it up here.

If you missed the stream, you can see the recordings here. A good 2h of my computer screen and me rambling on about stuff! Hear my rant about Captain Planet!

Also, I just realized that the last year of my life practically disappeared from under me. At least, it seems that way when I look at my previous blog entries for 08 and 09.

Santa Fe Reporter cover

Did this recently for Santa Fe Reporter, for their 2009 ‘Sweat’ issue. The art director wanted a kickboxing girl (since that is a feature article), and it so happened that I already had a girl in a kickboxing pose from an old illustration. I showed it to her and she was happy with reusing it, with some new elements in the background.

santa fe reporter, cover sketch

So this was the sketch for the cover. I was asked to do something dynamic, with Chinese dragons, so I came up with the dragon and various lines and elements behind the girl to make her look cooler. I asked for the masthead so that I could work the design around the main elements on the page.

This was the final art, without the masthead.