Been very busy with work over the last couple of months (at least I think it’s been a couple of months, I’ve sorta lost track of time). Am STILL really busy, which is a good thing all things considered. Am currently working on something for Oxford University Press, as well as several other things.

Anyways, here’s the new stuff that’s been added to the site:

Eating Well – Nourish

For Eating Well magazine, in the new ink brush style. Very happy with it. It’s about the joy of growing and eating your own food. I love food. Even though I don’t eat all that much.

Kayak – Summer in Canada spread

For Kayak’s summer issue featuring Monty Moose.

Know Magazine – Baked Alaska

For Know science magazine for kids. About the discovery of Baked Alaska. More food, strangely.

Worked on this fun article for Seattle Metropolitan some time ago. Apparently there’s so much caffeine in Seattle’s harbor that the fish have elevated caffeine levels. Don’t ask me how or why someone decided to test this on the bay fish…

Illustration in the mag. no, I’m not pimping JW!

The isssue also had an awesome cover!

Some new work for Salon, which is a specialty magazine for the salons and stylists. It was a very fun job where the editors and art directors decided to go all retro-stylin’! I did a bunch of illustrations for their special business issue, so each piece covered a specific business tip like making the most of photo shoots, increasing counter sales and recruiting. I also did a 2 page comic spread covering ‘a day in the life’ of a Toronto stylist who was trailed by a business expert who gave him tips on improving his business day.

This was a delightful project for Pearson I did some time ago (and completely forgot to show it). It’s a zoo that illustrates different kinds of friction (sliding, static… I forget the rest). It was really fun to depict all the different animals and scenarios.

Did this recently for the Alberta Egg Producers. It’s going to be part of a display banner that they’ll be bringing around the province to promote eggs to kids for a healthy lifestyle. We were initially going to a do a large scene of kids doing all sorts of energetic things but unfortunately the time and budget didn’t allow for that. Still, I think we did pretty good with what we had! You can see the final design for the display put together by the art director here.

Yeah, um so… happy easter.

Remember, don’t piss off the Easter Bunny.

Forgot to mention that I did an interview recently with Outlaw Design Blog.  Also did the cowgirl as a wallpaper for them, if you’d like one for your desktop, please download the best sized pic here.

Did some work for Kayak, Canada’s history magazine for children. I created the moose, Monty Moose, plus a couple of other spots which are in the magazine. Watch out for more Monty Moose!

Nude girl on a swing. I was testing out my new keyboard and the position of it on the new table. It will take some getting used to because it’s smaller, and it’s particualrly bad for typing, but better for using in conjunction with the tablet as I don’t have to spread my arms quite so widely.

I had a bunch of sketches sitting around to do up so she got chosen. Sometimes I feel like I’m wasting my time making artwork of girls; there’s no market for stuff like this anymore apart from people who want to see free ‘porn’ on the internet. Sometimes I feel that people don’t consider me a proper illustrator because of the girls I draw, and on the other hand I wonder if I should let society’s perceptions of correctness oveerrule what I like to draw (or dictate what is intelligent at least).

Anyway, I’ll put up a process of the picture another day.

Righto. So here’s the final image again. I didn’t crop it this time, and I toned down the white highlights from yesterday. I guess it does pay to let the eyes take a break from artwork. I’m happier with this version. While not perfect, I think it draws the eye correctly now.

As with all my illustrations, this started off with a sketch. I drew the people on a couple of different sheets of paper and tweaked the composition in Photoshop. The guy in the middle was supposed to be a flat silhouette at first.

Usually I don’t work with color roughs, but in this case I had a color scheme in mind so I quickly hammered out some color in Photoshop. I exported it as a jpeg to Illustrator where I made a color palette based off this. Don’t pick colors off jpegs in Illustrator, the swatch always turns out icky.

The vector work took quite a long time, about a week though I was working on it on and off. I tried to keep the gradients more subtle, which took longer, plus the details like the cameras were annoying to work in as they were all turned at different angles. You can’t really see the details in the finished piece so I’ve included a closeup of some of the people here.

The people were on separate layers in Illustrator and they were exported in groups as EPS files and recomposited in Photoshop. The composited initial PSD file looks exactly like the original Illustrator file.

And so begins the evil of Photoshop. Added a lightsource in the middle and some glowing bubble things to indicate flares from the cameras.

Effects were added to the layers of the imported people. Some were blurred more than others in an attempt to create depth and motion. I guess it was alright, not a huge success, maybe needs more practice.

So now the people on both sides are blurred, as are the people in the background. The background folks also have a soft halo of light around them.

Final touches – added more light particles, and a blackish band at the bottom to unify the picture. I actually worked in the details on the guy towards the end, despite what these pictures show (I deconstructed the final file in order to show the layers). The flat silhouette thing didn’t work out so well so I added some details in Illustrator and the wings and imported those back to Photoshop.

You can see the difference between the image now and my first ‘finish‘ where the highlights were too strong.