art prints for the calgary comic and entertainment expo

I'm pleased to announce that I will have a table in the small press section at this years's Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, April 26-28, 2013. My booth will be Q07 (see the map at the end of this post), right next to fellow children's illustrator, Mike Boldt, the intention of which is to have an unofficial children's area among all of the art and booths that are aimed at older audiences.

In preparation for the con, I've spent the last few months making prints, postcards and pins of some of my existing illustrations as well as working on some new pieces for prints that will only be available there. Here's a little look at some of the things I'll have at my table...

Beehive, Balloon Girl and Accordion Player prints:

Cloud Nine and Waving Boy postcards:

I apologize that some of these photos are a bit fuzzy. I'll post proper scans of everything before the convention.

I will have booth Q07 which is circled in pink on the map below. Follow our hashtag #Q07 for Comic Con related updates!

(click on map to view it larger)

painted doodles

flat storage

I've never had a proper place to store my artwork. In the past I've just used large, corrugated cardboard folders that I kept wedged behind furniture.  When we bought our house last summer and I found myself with an entire room to use as my studio, the first piece of furniture I wanted to get was flat files. I quickly discovered that the real ones were out of my price range, and I wan't able to track down any used ones.

Ikea ended up having something that suited my needs perfectly; it also fit my budget.  The shallow drawers are not quite wide enough to fit large sheets of watercolour paper, but since I mostly work smaller than that it's the right size to hold my original art. It also tucks right in under the table that my scanner and printer sit on.

I finally bought and assembled it a few weeks ago.

Could that be art prints peeking out of the drawer? More on that later :)

little doodles

check out that lovely, old cash register...and my book!

I've been meaning to mention this for a while, but the picture book that I illustrated, Bye, Bye, Butterflies! by Andrew Larsen, is available in Calgary at a very unexpected location.  The Silk Road Spice Merchant in Inglewood is stocking copies of it and they have been since it first came out last summer. Although the store has nothing to do with spices, customers of The Silk Road have bought close to 60 copies so far. Not bad for a store that specializes in spices, herbs and seasonings.  The owners of the store are wonderful people who have been really supportive of me and the book and I'm so very grateful.

Also, as those of you who 'like' my page on facebook already know, last Friday I got some really exciting news.  A Chinese publisher has bought rights to Bye, Bye, Butterflies!  I'm absolutely thrilled! I can't wait to see copies of the foreign edition of my book, which is supposed to be out by the end of the year.

eating candy

making friends - chirp magazine

I wanted to share some of my process for the 4 illustrations that I did in the March issue of Chirp Magazine.

My initial sketches were pretty rough but once I had worked out how the illustrations would look, I did tighter sketches to show the art director.

The feed back from the art director lead to some small changes, the most noticeable one being the setting of the fourth illustration. I made the changes, added more details, and then submitted a new sketch.

The sketch was approved so I started painting, working on all 4 illustrations at the same time.

Here's the final art:

birds

new work in chirp magazine

I have 4 full page illustrations in the March 2013 issue of Chirp:

I'll post some sketches from this job next week.