QWAC and Cabbagetown festival

Two of my paintings will be up (at the toronto school of art booth) at the Queen West Art Crawl and Cabbagetown festival in Toronto this sept. The Cabbagetown fest is this weekend..the 11th and 12th of september, and the QWAC is the 18th to the 20th. This makes me very happy but at the same time I'm in the midst of starting a Collections Conservation and Management degree in Peterborough so I have to race home and prep the artwork!

I'm glad these two got in to the show because they actually depict the city :)

hand sketches....

my hands, to be specific. I used to hate drawing hands but after I did these, I had a bit more confidence.. normally I'm not big on drawing from life but it's good to know you can still 'do' it.

Tree painting (ancient Oak)

A painting I'm working on based on a photo I took of an ancient oak tree from Sherwood forest in the UK a few years ago. Yes, robin hood-times tree! It was huge and I've always wanted to paint it.

It's oil, 24x30 inches..

"Of all the trees that grow so fair, / Old England to adorn, / Greater are none beneath the Sun, / Than Oak and Ash and Thorn."- Rudyard Kipling

A piece I did in the last few days.. it's been a long time since I've used a pen to sketch.

More Old Sketches.. Pre Art School

I just found these recently.. they're at least 5-8 years old, if not older. It's weird comparing how I drew then to how I draw now. Almost feel like my style was more my own then it is now, since being in school. I guess that can bring up the whole issue of the role of school in artistic development. The technical aspect has helped me hugely in terms of composition, spacing, material use and so forth but the creativity and personal side was harder to tap into. Getting pieces done in a set timeframe has always been a challenge because I don't *always* feel creative, some months there's nothing and other times it's a crazy wave of ideas within like 2 or 3 days.
The middle piece I remember doing based on a man I saw on the bus when I first moved to TO (10 years ago..holy mother) who I thought looked like a dwarf. I then drew the guy from memory and put him at a table because I couldn't remember what the bus seats looked like. I was also reading a lot of urban fantasy/Charles De Lint and Terry Windling-type books then.

Oldish sketches...

These are a bunch of sketches I did over 3 years ago which I've been meaning to turn into larger, more complete images. I don't know what medium I want to use yet..maybe something new. New territory mwahahahaha!!

The first one will definitely be a painting because I want to get the effect of the woman and the boy walking into another reality, so the scenery's going to mesh. I'll probably rotate it to so that they're walking to the right because apparently I have the tendency to make all my compositions left heavy with everyone 'looking' to the left. This is what school has taught me, thank youuuu constructive feedback.


Note the tiny man at the bottom..this is supposed to be a living mountain. The guy at the bottom is climbing.



dragon creature..



faery woman luring away a young boy, birds watching.

Paparazzi pics

These are from a Ronald McDonald House charity gala that I helped photograph in June.. l think they turned out well- though I couldn't use a lot of them because of who was in the pictures. These I could post by permission of the RMH charity people.

Digital art show at Launch Projects

I've got my first group show at Launch Projects in Toronto on June 30th!

The show will be up for two weeks (till July 10th).


Facebook link:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=103155469733550

New work

A new painting/digital hybrid. All the images are from photos I've taken, with the exception of the boy in the tree..he is from my head. I needed something as a central focus so he was added after everything else was done.

Festival on Centre Island

June 12th (tomorrow!) from 12:00 to 4:00 I'll have a table selling some outdoor/nature photo work. It's a tree festival put on by the city, hence the tree photo-age. A lot of these images I've been showing at festivals in toronto this and last year- a few have had good responses, generally, from people.

http://www.torontoislands.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69&lang=en

Here are a few of the images.

finished series.

Ok. I've been working on this series in theory and practice for about a year and a half and finally got them all finished. Essentially it's a combination of the theme of Toronto urban meets nature or the unexpected/otherworldly. I used a mix of painting and digital transfers and hope to keep with this technique for a few more pieces, until I get sick of the process..as it's a lot of work.

The first one is called Urban Henge- the idea of ancient objects in a more modern/urban site, and the things we think we would never encounter there, but maybe had been there way down under the surface at one point in time. In an empty lot (this is the site of the burned down series of buildings along Queen, where Suspect video used to be), these things can get churned up with the clearing. Also, the fox was added because I did once see one at a construction site on the lakeshore, sitting on a dirt mound- unexpected but really not so, because there's a park about 15 min. walk away.


Much Music Forest- In this one I put an older, otherworldy musician with a lute coming out of the forest against the modern centre of music that is the Much Music building. The forest was probably there at one time in the past but has made way to the John and Richmond corner..


The last one, Sanctuary, was a name I came up with because I realized that a lot of Coffee Time shops are places of refuge for people who are down and out. Homeless people, addicts, but also regular old guys just looking for somewhere to hang out for the day. The nun I put in because I saw her standing there one afternoon in the winter, waiting to cross the street (this is one at Bloor and Lansdowne) and it was such a weird contrast to the roughness of the area. It hit me that I could put stained glass on the building and have it be a representation of a place of sanctuary, like a church.


..glad to be done.

Leslieville Festival May 15th

So, surprisingly successful day at the Leslieville tree festival. This is the third year I've participated, with more or less positive responses to my work, however; this year I said to hell with it and brought some paintings that I did at school within the last year and set those up. With some prompting/convincing from my friend Carolyn, I put a $50 price tag on these experimental (they're mixed media-still working out kinks) pieces, and sold one! Goes to show that you need to put yourself and your work out there sometimes and just let people see what you're doing.
Also realizing that bird and owl imagery is really appealing to people.

Some of that nature/fantasy side I was talking about..

As I said, Vess was a huge inspiration to me when I was a young teenager. Even after not seeing his stuff for years, when I look at my own work, I realize that influence is still there when it comes to the fantastic..
Here's some work from school in the last year.

For lack of a better central focus.. cats are readily available.

My first post!

I headed down to the Toronto comic arts festival today and sat through an amazing lecture/show by Charles Vess. For those who aren't familiar with him, he did the artwork for Stardust and has collaborated with Neil Gaiman on a bunch of stuff. Fantasy based mostly.

The best part of the presentation was seeing the work he does for the community he lives in, set design, props, public sculptures, mural designs etc. He also has an obsession with putting the Miyazaki figure, Totoro, in a lot of his illustrations, which he explained was partly because of his connection to nature.

It's like looking for Waldo..

http://endicottstudio.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/04/04/fairyprocessionfinal_3.jpg

www.greenmanpress.com

He was my earliest inspiration for illustration!