Grounded
Posted on | January 8, 2012 | 4 Comments
This week’s Illustration Friday project. The word of the week is Grounded. To create this image I combined a cut-paper collage with scanned linework, then digitally composited and edited the whole thing, adding some digital elements in the background.
Bucket Brigade
Posted on | December 7, 2011 | 2 Comments
Wistfully thinking of summer at the beach with this week’s Illustration Friday word brigade. My take on a bucket brigade is based on sketches from last summer. What is it that makes us love working on beach projects? They can be a lot of work, and we know they won’t last. Maybe it is the pure delight in materials, the sand and water, the abundance of these simple elements, the chance to work and create together.
Here I am working again with collage combined with acrylic painting, this time on plywood. I like this combination. I like the intense color and defined shapes you can get by layering the collage over the painting, and the plywood can be easily scored and scraped to add lines and textures at the end.
Round
Posted on | November 25, 2011 | 4 Comments
This is the fastest I’ve ever finished a piece for Illustration Friday. Yay!
The topic of the week is Round. I decided to work up a sketch I had done on the bus and emphasize the roundness of this particular person’s head and hat.
I was working with the technique I used for the author portraits (see previous post), but with the addition of collage. In the version below, I’ve added the linework back in. I think I like the more simplified approach better in this case — just the painting and collage, with just enough information to let the viewer fill in the rest.
Author portraits
Posted on | November 25, 2011 | No Comments
Last week I completed five author portraits for the fabulous literary magazine I work for. Follow that link to see all the portraits on their Facebook page.
The technique was a new experiment, and I like how it turned out. I sketched the portraits, transferred the sketch to paper, and painted the colour work. Then I scanned the drawing and painting layers separately and composited them digitally.
Silent
Posted on | November 15, 2011 | No Comments
For Illustration Friday this week, I decided to work on a Remembrance Day image for this week’s word, Silent. In Canada, November 11 is called Remembrance Day (known in the US as Veterans Day). I’m still somewhat new to Canada, and I am always struck by how widely and sincerely observed it is. The red poppy is symbolic of the sacrifice of veterans and is worn on almost every lapel during early November.
This image is a digital composite of several elements, including a monotype print, and painted and cut collage elements.
Stripes
Posted on | November 9, 2011 | 1 Comment
This week’s IF topic is Stripes. I’m glad that was the topic because it made me think of Bill Murray all week. At first I worked with the idea of stripey socks, but my piece for that idea just seemed like something I’d already seen. So instead I decided to work on trees as stripes. The medium is paper inked with a brayer, linocut, and/or painted, then cut and pasted.
Speaking of Bill Murray, I’m going to plug something everyone should at least know about. It’s the Tobolowsky Files podcast. If you like storytelling, just download an episode and try it out. The stories are by Stephen Tobolowsky, a character actor who you might remember as Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day (speaking of Bill Murray). I think its pretty amazing.
Tuesday morning
Posted on | November 8, 2011 | No Comments
Colours of Vancouver Island autumn. Collage, paint, ink brayer, and monotype. Linework composited over collage digitally.
Scary
Posted on | November 2, 2011 | 1 Comment
If you are a mouse, you should be afraid — very afraid — of owls. This week’s IF entry, for Scary, features the barred owl that visited me on Halloween morning this week. I stepped out into our backyard and was startled when I turned my head to see a big barred owl sitting in the lower branches of one of our maples, just a few feet away. It sat and watched me, as owls often do. I wondered if it was one of the owls we watched as babies two years ago. They would hang out on one of our often-used trails and we would spot them there regularly for a month or so. I suppose they shifted to more nocturnal habits.
Scattered
Posted on | October 20, 2011 | 6 Comments
Hello! I hope you enjoy viewing this image for this week’s Illustration Friday topic, Scattered. The background is acrylic on masonite, with painted/inked paper collage applied. The inspiration for this image comes from our backyard birds — very busy at the moment getting ready for winter.
Hibernate
Posted on | October 2, 2011 | 6 Comments
Hibernate is the word of the week for Illustration Friday. I decided to do a linocut. The style just seems to lend itself to countryside themes like this. This has gotten me excited to do some multi colour linocut reduction prints. I suppose the trees should be bare, but this is how winter looks to me after five years on the BC coast. An extension of fall: dry grasses, gray skies, foliage that never really goes away.
Something about this “see you next spring” sentiment is fitting, considering this week saw the end of baseball season and the final-strike epic demise of the Red Sox. Being in the baseball-free zone that is western canada, I was reduced to “watching” the final games on the MLB website via live text updates. I have to say, though, it was excitingly suspenseful.
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