Illustrator
I love drawing ladies in costume. I always hear about artists setting goals for themselves of one drawing a day, whatever the theme is, and I feel like drawing one Victorian lady a day is something I could really get behind and motivate myself to do…maybe 😉
My favourite book publisher, The Folio Society, holds an annual illustration competition to illustrate one of its upcoming title. This year was Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, a gothic retelling of fairytales so I thought, why not. I’ll try my hand at this one, since fairytales are one of my favourite subjects to draw and I’m a bit of a folklore nerd.
Because the retelling was gothic and rather dark, I poured on the black ink with washes of watercolour. I also had a few of my lovely students pose for me. I didn’t win, but I’m very glad I entered and feel very satisfied with these pieces, especially the first two.
Illustration for The Bloody Chamber
Illustration for In The Company of Wolves
Illustration for Puss In Boots
The competition also had us designing the jacket. The Folio Society puts out beautiful hardbound editions so I imagined this design in black linen with gold and red hot foil. Hot!
My mother went on a trip to Ireland last summer and came back with a stack of amazing landscape photos. I love the big stormy skies of Ireland and the U.K. And they certainly don’t call it the Emerald Isle for no reason. And the ruins are pretty cool too.
Recently I illustrated a little book about sheep called Shepherd in Residence by Elizabeth Creith. I did the cover illustration and book design, as well as interior illustrations. I had never really drawn sheep before (at least, not this many) but these were a lot of fun.
Pick up a copy of the book on Amazon and Indigo.
Cover for Shepherd in Residence
Interior illustration. Yes, that’s a crow perched on a sheep.
This poor sheep was stranded on a ledge near a dam. Interior illustration
Sheep having their dinner. Interior illustration
Back jacket design, also by me.
Printed interior illustration
Joel and I had a fruitless search a few weeks ago for a location in Sudbury interesting enough for plein air sketching. We wandered around for over an hour trying to find a somewhat inspiring location and came up with nil. This time, however, we opted to go back to our old sketching stomping ground for Copper Cliff Part Deux.
I’m pretty much convinced that despite it’s industrial neighbours, Copper Cliff could be transformed into an artsy small-town suburb of Sudbury, if anyone in Sudbury had the imagination to do it (which of course, they don’t). There is a old style main street, a large green park, stately historic homes and an old building that must have been a hotel at some point but which is now an old folks home (what a waste of good architecture). Joel and I are kind of fascinated by Copper Cliff. Of course you would have The Stack constantly in the background, but we think it’s a place that has some kind of charm.
Copper Cliff, ON. We liked the look of this old school barbershop.
Copper Cliff Part Un, almost 2 years to the day in 2009