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.

Sketch I did for Illustration Friday’s ‘Swim’. Didn’t realize it is already Friday again, and they already changed topic! Oh well. I thought it turned out nice though.

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.

Big thanks to Sharon Milne and Adobe Press for including me in the awesome new  book, Adobe Master Class Illustrator! Here are some pictures of the inner pages:

The book is mostly a showcase of art, wit several short (2-3 page) tutorials by some of the artists explaining their techniques. I was impressed by the varied selection of artists and work included in the book. It really is an inspiring piece that shows you just how much variety you can get with artwork created totally or mostly in Adobe Illustrator.

You can buy the book at www.adobepress.com/illmaster

Use the coupon code ILLMASTER at checkout to get 35% off!

(I don’t know if there is an expiry on the coupon, so hurry up and get your copy!)

I will be having my first solo exhibition this February at Manta Contemporary in Hamilton, ON. If you ar in town, please drop by and check it out. The show runs through February. Show opening is on Friday Feb 8, during Hamilton’s monthly Art Crawl.

Manta Contemporary - http://mantacontemporary.com

(Note: Apologies if this gets cross posted!)

Happy New Year! Maybe your year ahead be as bright as…. a lombax with a lamp? I dunno. May it be cute and a little creepy, maybe?

Click the image to view it fullscreen!

Halloween doodle. Ink pen, drawing ink, india ink, sumi ink, gouache.

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.