Gifted

So Ryan, Mel, and Martha and I were in H&M today, and low and behold what happens to come on....that's right, 'Last Christmas'. I'm not embarrassed to say that I sang it most of the way home. But now I can't get it out of my head...this is a problem.

Anyways, I figure now that we're on the subject of Christmas and gifts, I could share my contribution to Cerasoli:LeBasse's 'Gifted' show coming up on the 12th of December.

'a waking lie'
12" by 12", mixed media on paper

'Dreamworld'
12" by 12", mixed media on neutral grey Stonehenge

I'm pretty happy with how these pieces turned out, and actually had a lot of fun working on them, even though I hated them immediately after they were finished...but that might have been the lack of sleep and cold weather, haha. It felt nice to get back to some loose painting while still trying to keep with the unconscious sensation of drawing.

And with that, I shall leave you with some tender Holiday wishes from GM (cause lord knows I can't get it out of my head)

Last Christmas
I gave you my heart
But the very next day you gave it away
This year
To save me from tears
I'll give it to someone special

take care folks

Artistaday

I was featured yesterday, November 23 rd, on the fantastic site that is Artistaday.com


I've been getting a ton of really nice emails and comments from people, just wanted to say thank you!

And an especially big thanks to Geoff! Really appreciate it dude!

Deafening Demons

'Deafening Demons'

20" by 23", graphite on paper

It feels like it's been awhile since I've posted a finished piece of work...let alone something I'm proud of, haha. I wanted to explore the nature of victimization with this piece and a lot of the struggles and strife that are associated with it. An idea that I sorted batted around was, that as much as this sort of thing can be born of an external trauma, someone or something making you the victim, it's sort of perpetuated by one's own defeating thoughts about themselves. The piece went through a pretty large evolution from the original concept to visual, in the beginning it was a more 2D concept with the image itself being a huge style jerkoff...but I wanted to push it further, so I could find a better way to marry the image and the idea together. After having a solid chat with Thom about the concept, I was able to develop a much clearer vision of the piece.

This is one of my pieces that I finished for Cerasoli:LeBasse's exhibit over at Art Basel Miami, in December, I'll post the other two images in a little bit. But for now I'm going to enjoy some of that fluffy white stuff on the ground outside.

Take care.

In Darkest day, in blackest Knight...

Sorry, I had to post this....
If you haven't seen this already...what the hell?!


Last year, Greg, Irma, and I went down to Gladstone Hotel in Toronto to see Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki give a talk about their graphic novel Skim, which is a really beautifully crafted book btw. Sidebar- we went out to this Ethiopian restaurant after and found out that Ethiopian food is reeeeally good. Anyways, not only is she hot and talented, but she gets to illustrate the BEST illustration jobs...like her most recent piece for Entertainment Weekly about 'The Dark Knight' and how it was one of the Top Entertainers of the year!

Here's a link.

She gets to illustrate Batman...sooo jealous haha

Gotta look up to get down

Here are the final versions of the Obama-Mccain pieces I was working on for my interpretive class. I'm not gonna go into the concept stuff with these two too much...mainly cause I don't want any crazy canadian Pro-Mccainer (like there are any) sassing me out. But it was interesting the way in which my teacher Thom, art directed this piece; Part of it was he pushed me to try and find a more harmonious use of the text elements and the visual itself, to see if I could marry the two.

It's been pretty awesome to have Thom as a teacher, I think the line he said to me on the 3rd week of class kind of sums it up, "Big things Nimit. Don't be afraid to get messy with it, I want you to scare me, really scare me with your work...let's f*ck it up!"



PS. I know I'm a little off with my Mccain...he's got more of a Cheney vibe too him for some reason. scaaarrryyyyy

Anyways,

take care folks

Rock N' Ritchie

So I was reading an interview with Guy Ritchie the other day, it was talking about what they described to be his "Rise and Fall, and Rebirth" from the film industry. It was pretty funny, they were really building him up to be the young gun with the bright eyes for film making and then boom! ....Madonna. All of this was to promo his new movie ROCKNROLLA, which everyone's been saying it pretty much marks his return to form or that "he really brung the heat with this one"

...and after watching the trailer a hundred times I'm dieing to see it.

In the mean time I decided to do an illustration about it for my interpretive class. I was trying to play with the idea of him being in a type of 'movie jail', and with the release of Rocknrolla, he's getting a second chance at the game.

Tsk, Tsk, TIFF

For my graphic design class, we were given the assignment to do our own redesign on the 'Toronto International Film Festival' poster campaign. I went back and forth with a few concepts that I wanted to go with for this project...I initially wanted to do a whole retro thing and go with a nostalgic sensation, but that wasn't really doing it for me...so I started thinking about it more and researching the festival further, and settled upon the idea that everyone who comes to the festival pretty much lives and breaths movies ('film-heads' if you will) and considering that it's the 2nd largest film festival in the world, next to Cannes, everyone there wants to stand out from the crowd. So this is what I came up with.

It was a lot of fun to just use straight photoshop for this project, with the drawing of all the characters to the background and all the shapes, even though it's a big no-no for graphic design. Sorry Ms. Dallas.

How sweet it is...

This illustration is about half way done, I'll be sure to post the final once i'm all done. Just wanted to show my support!

Note: i just saw this over on Francis Vallejo's blog and had to post it! Nice call dude!

Yes we can! hahah

Analog Color's Endless Reflections

The latest episode of the fantastic Analog Color series has just dropped...And I'm giddy like a goddamn school girl that I get a little cameo in it! I posted the preview for this episode a little while back, but again this episode is focusing on the Sandman Endless Reflections show.

Analog Color Episode 4 Nucleus Gallery/Sandman Tribute from Modus Films on Vimeo.

I absolutely love what Jeremy is doing with his Analog Color series, it's really great to be able to peak behind the curtain of what's going on with all these artists and events.

Keep on keeping on J!