Was invited for an almost impromptu zoo sketching session yesterday by Mike DelMundo and Vince Chui. We tromped around the Toronto Zoo for most of the day, putting up with temperatures reaching a high of 37 C / 99 F, and then had to put up with an amazing about-face with buckets of rain and hail on the way home! But we did have a great time sketching the animals, and talking about illustration and stuff. Watch the guys’ blogs to see their sketches when they post them!

Another one for the Journal. This was about getting special offers and things on your smartphone. Was a bit surprised that they asked for this concept, but I guess it showed off the phone with the mannequin better than the sketches where you could see the lady’s face.

Another piece for the Wall Street Journal. I have actually already forgotten what the article was abo0ut… my memory seems to be getting worse and worse. Oh well. The ‘fashion mags’ were done in Painter, which was quite interesting. And quick.

View full comic at WHAZAMO!

I was invited to contribute a 1-page web comic to WHAZAMO! I was asked to do a short about a book that made a difference in my life, and my book is ‘How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way’.

WHAZAMO! Ontario Graphic Novel Month is an online comics celebration by Open Book: Toronto. Be sure to check out the other shorts that are and will be going up! There is also a short video to be released at some point this month featuring the contributing artists.

Lots of love to Ian Daffern of Vepo Studios for inviting me to contribute to Whazamo!

Woman with hat and handbag

Did this the other day. I love those big sun hats. The bag is based off a real one; I wanted to use a photo of the real bag to see how the art would look if composited but agent suggested against it.

Bride

I could have sworn I put this up previously. Apologies if that was the case. This was another test to develop the style. I guess I should say that the point is to develop something suitable for use in the beauty industry, not fashion itself. Ink and scanned textures in Photoshop.

I drew these some time ago off photos of Beyonce. They were prep work for a project I did recently. They’re mostly as I drew them, with a bit of a touchup to the front pose because I can never seem to draw a frontal face well.

Couple of fashion type sketches I did some time ago. They are tests for moving the ink style towards fashion. Not quite right yet, if anyone wants to comment on them be my guest.

This post is also to test cross posting to my new Tumblr account, which I still don’t really understand but am told that I should use, apparently.

Another fun, and quick, job for the great guys at the Journal! Did this for last weeks ‘Ask Teri’ column. The lady on the left is wearing a tight top (you know the kind – the super tight superhero ones where it’s actually fastened at the crotch), and the lady on the right is wearing a twofer. Being fashion-challenged, I had to Google up ‘twofers’. Thankfully the art director sent me some links to check out. Thanks a bunch – that was super helpful!

Original Sin clothing - Click to visit site

'Santa Muerte' printed on ladies tee

I’m so happy I can finally post this! This was probably my favorite project from last year. I was contacted by illustrator Godmachine to create a piece for his new clothing line called Original Sin. As the name implies, the brand is stylistically dark, macabre, goth and well, wicked awesome. They gave me more or less free reign to come up with something, and I proposed a design based on the Mexican ‘narco saint’ Santa Muerte or Saint Death.

They liked the idea, but the original sketch I did was too tame, so they asked me to make it darker, more bloody. Best changes I have ever been asked to do ever!

So, while it’s not really a match with anything else in my portfolio, I’m really happy with this since it’s been a good long time since I had reason to play around with themes and imagery I really like, like mythology, folklore, and good old’ skulls and goat horns. True, it’s not really high brow art. But I think it’s darn cool.

Here’s the art with the colors I proposed. The colors are different for the t-shirt version:

Santa Muerte for Original Sin clothing, Charlene Chua illustration