Joy Division Sketch

© 2007


This is a sketch for an illo I just finished for Exclaim! It's a portrait of the band Joy Division. The were popular in the in the late 70's. The lead singer committed suicide and the remaining band members went on to form New Order. I put those 3 members on a separate branch for that reason. In the research I did about the band I found that they were described by the media as being "doom laden" and that death, sadness, anger, bitterness and loss were recurring themes in their music. I love using crows/ravens as metaphors for death and I love drawing birds so it seemed like a good solution. I wanted to incorporate the birds somehow and eventually arrived at using the bird's bodies. The art director wasn't crazy about my idea when I first suggested it, but he liked the sketch. That just goes to show that if you have an idea that you like, draw it even if it's not what the art director had in mind. They don't always know what they think they want.

I'll post the final tomorrow.

Funky mugs

© 2007

Here's a sketch I did on while I was on vacation.

These mugs live at my aunt's cabin. I love them. I don't usually drink coffee, but I like to drink coffee from these mugs when ever I visit.

Road Trip 2007

I got back from my vacation on Sunday. It was great. I love going on road trip adventures with Dario. We just laugh and have so much fun. After an entire summer of all work and no play I really needed that. The break was good for me. I feel refreshed and inspired and excited to work out some ideas.

Our road trip took us to Nelson and then to my Aunt's cabin in Salmon Arm. Here are some shots from the trip.



In a coffee shop in Nelson...





GOATS!!!!!!









I love old hippy busker couples.



On a pub patio in Nelson...









In this shot I'm enjoying the new rosemary olive oil Triscuit crackers while waiting for the ferry. They're wonderful. If you like rosemary you must try them.

I'm outta here!

The children's book is finished and has been sent off to be printed. I am officially on holidays and won't be updating my blog until after September 9th.

More Process

Here's the rest of the process photos I mentioned the other day.
The book is pretty much finished, I'm just making the final adjustments to the files. My husband printed out some color copies for me at his work yesterday (he works in printing). He even trimmed them and bound them so I could see what the book will look like. I'm pretty happy with it. I can't wait to see it all finished.

Happy Day

This is the final version of what the cover will look like (except that it looks a bit washed out here).


© 2007

Dario's been gone almost a week, but he'll be home in a few hours :)
And I finished the last painting for the children's book this afternoon :)
And I'm almost finished tweaking the design :)

It's a good day.

Process for cover painting

My husband has been gone for several days now and I've been quite busy. I'm still choked about having to cancel a week of vacation plans, but we managed to move our holiday to the following week and have worked out an alternate plan. I'm just really looking forward to a break. I desperately need one.

I'm almost finished the book. I'm half way through my second last painting. I have one more to do after that, something for the title page, but I haven't figured out exactly what I'm doing yet. I don't want to just duplicate the cover. I'm thinking something simple...

I took some photos of the cover at different stages of completion. Here's some of my process:













I have a few more process pics from some other paintings for this book project but I'll have to post those later as that's all the time I have for now.

Painted cover... and summer woes...

© 2007

Here's the painted front and back covers for the Children's book I'm working on. I'm pretty happy with the colours in the original painting, but depending on which computer screen I see it on, the colours can look quite acidic. I really hope the colours come out okay when it gets printed.

After 3 months of not seeing my friends and having no life and working full time during the day at a design job and then working on this book project the rest of the time, I'm almost finished all the paintings. I can't wait to be done. I've enjoyed the project, I've learned a lot and hopefully this will help open some doors for me illustration wise (it would be nice to be able to quit that design job...) but it's been crazy and I'm pretty much burnt out. I won't be posting any more of the finished paintings until after the book is published, but I do have some process stuff that I'll be putting up in the days to come.

After all this (and numerous problems and stresses at my design job) I was looking forward to a week of holidays the last week of August, but I found out this afternoon that my days off have been revoked. Another woman in my department is going to be gone at the same time and we can't both be gone (I was originally told it didn't matter, but apparently it does). So that really sucks. My husband's band, Ahnabith Gish, is playing in the Shine Through Rain Music Festival near Winnipeg, Manitoba. I was really looking forward to attending that and then spending a few days in Winnipeg as I have never been there. Then we were going to visit some of my family before going to my parent's place in Saskatchewan for a party in honour of our recent marriage. We'll still be going to my parent's place, but the 9 days of vacation prior to that are now pooched. I'm pretty bummed.

front & back cover sketches

Here's the sketch for the front & back cover of the children's book I've been slaving away on for the past two and a half months. I think I might have inadvertantly squished this scan of it a bit in photoshop because it looks a bit weird to me, but you get the idea. I'm going to put the title of the book on the fence and my name and the author's name will go at the bottom. The back cover will have a synopsis of the story on the sheet tacked to the fence.


© 2007

Utne illo: Please Mr. Postman

This is my illustration from the June issue of the Utne Reader. I really should have written about this sooner, but with all the chaos around the book I'm working on, it slipped my mind. It was my first time being published in an American magazine so it was a big deal for me. Hopefully some of you saw it. It's a really good issue.

The art director at the Utne Reader was awesome to work with, I hope they hire me again some time.