Praxis

10" x 15", acrylic on board

I don't know if its seeing Yuta's pieces come together, Sunday painting party or everyones kind words, but lately i've been so jacked to produce work! Like for the most part, i can't contain myself during the day, because i can't wait to come home and try and finish pieces. This feeling could be best be described as "Bananas". Here's a little practice painting i did one night, while waiting for zee laundry. Hope you diggs it.

PS i should be posting another piece from the Dark Passenger series before the end of the week, so stay tuned Bat-fans!

Recipe for Bee-ing Queen

11" x 13", mixed media on paper

Sooo....who likes bad puns? Really?! that many of you...i bet you wanna know where you can find more....well, look no further. This was our first illustration assignment since coming back, it was something that made us reflect on our own work, and sort of assess our methods and filters for visual problem solving. The idea was that we had to come up with a recipe for just about anything, in this case i chose a Recipe for 'bee-ing Queen', (another idea i threw around was How to make a Bloody Mary.... involving a vampire and a girl named Mary). Overall, i'm moderately satisfied with the execution of the painting, and drawing---but i'm pretty much unsatisfied with the direction it ended up going, i felt like a lot of passion was lost from when i was working on the rough to the final. It took on a much more narrative direction, something i consider a bit of a crutch of mine, an i've been fighting to change. But after a lengthy, and very insightful conversation with Marco, we came up with a tentative solution that i think should help me break some of my nasty nasty habits.

Lions and Tigers and Beards?

The first pencil is for a perfectionist project we had earlier this year, that sort of bombed! Like the concept worked and so did the pencil, but when i put it into colour it became un peu perdu. Oh well, i still liked the pencil. The second sketch is of another personal piece I'm working on. The concept/ idea came easily to me, and the drawing was so fluid and natural for some reason. so I'm pretty excited to get crackin' on it. And finally, sometimes in life you have teachers that just bring something extra to the table, just that little bit extra that makes learning an experience...in this case Mikal brought the heat--He had one of the most gloriously tame beards i've probably ever seen in person. He was also a wicked philosophy teacher, Greg and Jesse can back me on this one.

Guardian

Since about the beginning of break I've been working on a lot of personal work, trying to put together a series of 5 pieces. The theme through out the 5 pieces is the idea of the "Dark Passenger", the burden of ones desires vs. their own sense of self and about the exploration of the shadow self, as well my own personal archetypes. Its a concept that was semi inspired by the show Dexter (fantastic series by the way). This is the first piece that I've finished for the series, this piece was alot of fun to work on, i had to do a lot of back and forth with this one, but by no means was it.... unBEAR-able!...i know, im the worst. The title for this piece is "Guardian", hope everyone diggs it.

10" x 13", mixed media on paper

Sibling Rivalry

Sibling Rivalry
Adobe Illustrator, 300 dpi
17"x22"

I was also thinking of going with the title 'Casino Bro-yale', but Claire wasn't having any of that. This was the final project for my Information Illustration class, the project was a personal poll of some kind. For mine i decided to secretly document my brothers daily habits against those of my own. As you can probably guess this became a competition really quickly. Once all the data was collected Claire and i came to the conclusion of representing the information as a circular chart--that would also tie in with the whole spy vs. spy/ James bond feel i was going for with the Vector portraits. The panel from the National Post was back again for the critique, Richard Johnson, Kagan Mcleod and Andrew. Overall i was really satisfied with how this turned out and the presentation went really well, with a few minor adjustments that were made.

How to Handcuff a Criminal

Being a man entitles you to a number of generous 'perks' that just make life so much sweeter....an example of such would be moustaches, and what is known as a "Man Test". The "Man Test" is a right passed down from the greats: Jesus, Vishnu, Colombo, where in every man has the ability to challenge a fellow brethren to any act that could be deemed 'manly'. You may ask, what does the Man Test have to do with an Information illustration? Well to make a long story short, I challenged Gregory Dubeau to get pepper sprayed in the face, and he subsequently challenged me to be tazered. So Greg and I went to the police station one faithful morning, accompanied by the lovely Melodie Papp who came prepared to watch and laugh.

We were greeted by Constable Vegso, a member of the Halton Regional Police Department. He provided us with step by step demonstration on how to hand-cuff, tazer, and pepper spray someone, as well as baton and fire arm etiquette.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) we werent able to finish our Man Test. However i was handcuffed and taken down by a police officer...im sure thats something to be proud of.

Master Bill

Master Bill Tour Poster

Photoshop, 10"x16"

Master Bill Digi-pack CD

PhotoShop, 17"x5"

Master Bill was the name of the band that i made for our graphic design project, if they were real i think they'd sound like Muse meets Stabbing Westward...and they would go on a tour where in fact Red heads would have more fun.

Gliders rock...am I Wright?!

This piece was done for my interpretive illustration class, we had to design a coffee sleeve that would be chic and protective from the scalding heat of gourmet coffee. It was also suppose to tie into some of the contemporary designs of Pearson Airport's Terminal 1. We could choose between 3 campaigns/audiences for this project (Red Eye, Sky Blue, and Jet Fuel) . I decided to go with Sky Blue because it was a pretty open direction where i could really put my spin on it, so i decided to go in a kind of nostalgia-flight history direction. An ode to the super wrightbros, if you will. ...i.e. i got to draw gliders and a guy name orville. I was pretty happy with it, it was fun to do... Im still very unsure of myself in the digital colouring arena, something im going to have work at.