I really hope that the little art shop in Chinatown near Clarke Street has survived. I like independent shops more than the big chains. Found cool stuff there, such as this book, and that brush.
This is actually a face I did years ago, in black gouache, and just added colour to, today.
Cats are self-explanatory. But I’ve always liked airplanes, and especially the DeHavilland Mosquito.
As a boy, my Dad picked up a scrap from the famous “F for Freddie,” a Mosquito that unfortunately crashed on an airfield in Southwest Calgary on VE day, 1945. (article here). I don’t know where that bit ended up….
I come from Alberta, and when I was younger, I spent a summer building jumps and painting fences at the Spruce Meadows Equestrian Centre.
While I’m not a great rider (my sister was!), I loved seeing the horses. They liked seeing me, out in the fields. I think they mistook the paint cans for feed buckets!
This was such a fun freelance gig. I did illustrations and writing for NEWS EXTRA, a newspaper tabloid sold at supermarkets and gas stations. It pretended to come out of Florida, but was actually published from an office in the Notre Dame de Grace neighbourhood of Montreal.
Every other week or so I brought in my cartoon illustration for the “self help” section of the paper. Sometimes I did illustrations for creepy stories about ghosts, or monsters. I also made up captions for the gag photos. This involved writing mini-stories, including as many terrible puns as possible.
Literary lights of the Montreal English-language writing community wrote the feature articles under assumed names. Most of the stories about movie stars were cribbed from Italian glossy magazines, which had been roughly translated and then embellished.
The paper finally folded because Sylvester Stallone sued it for running an article implying he used artificial means to enhance his — ahem— “manly powers.”
Still, NEWS EXTRA was tremendous fun to work for. The editors were two young women, and the publisher was a guy who didn’t care what you drew, just as long as you handed it in on time.
This was a gig where they just told me to do my “Jack thing.” I learned a lot!
And my Grandma loved these magazines. She was thrilled to see my name in them.
The health articles had real information, and were researched by actual medical experts, I believe. This page has good advice on pandemic-style eating, so I’m putting the whole thing up. I don’t think I wrote the photo caption about the lion, but that’s the basic style we aimed for.
Out of my files, this is a comic I did way back in 1988, when Robocop was a big deal, and the Transformers Cartoon was airing.
I used this as a sample of my work, but don’t think I got it published anywhere, even in a Fanzine, which is kind of stupid. It’s still a funny comic, I think.
A couple more sketchbook pages! Pencil used was my Prismacolour “Tuscan Red.” (I think of Star Wars more than Italy here!) Or it could be brown, come to think of it. I’ve sharpened it so much it’s now a numb in a pencil holder!
Esi Edugyan has a cool lecture series at the moment on Ideas on CBC radio!
Digital colour, which I find harder than the traditional deal….
More or less practicing here, pictures just out of my head. Nice heavy paper with texture. Fabriano 140lb. I need new paints, however.
These are pretty tiny, BTW. 8 by 5 inches or so…..
This is a little late for Martin Luther King Day, but I drew him a couple of years ago, for an article for Coreopsis Journal of Myth & Theatre. It’s called It Can Happen Here, and it’s written by Ron Boyer.
Pictures done from reference are more “realistic,” but not as much fun to draw as more cartoony things.
I sort of adore the way ballpoint pens “blob.” Other artists wipe the point, I think, in between doing cross-hatching lines.
I have lots of sketchbooks on the go at any one time. Here’s one that I started in May of this year. These are the first few pages.
Sometimes I’m in a bit of a mood when I draw these. But they generally look fun, even if people rarely smile in these drawings. It IS good therapy, and I draw every day.
I decided to scan a few more. This is sort of an old book, from the beginning of the pandemic. These are $4.00 “Dollarama” sketchbooks, which are great, because they are cheap, and the paper likes watercolour. Brush pen, though, sometimes wicks a bit.
These things claim, however to be “acid free paper,” which is a fib, because they yellow very quickly. So in a few centuries, they might be dust. But I won’t be around either, so what would I care?
