Happy Holly Jays!

Evening guys,

Today, I'm stocked to share my 2018 holiday cards!

Happy Holly Jay!

- The painting was completed with drawing inks, watercolor, gouache, and micron pens on vellum bristol paper.
- Size is approximately 7 x 10 inches (17.8cm x 25.4cm) in size.

Prints, cards, and more are available on:

RedBubble

Society6
INPRNT

Have a happy holiday season and season's greetings to all!

Ice-Cream + Beer = Collective Arts Brewing - Series 4

Hi friends! I got some exciting news this week - that this little, quirky illustration below will soon appear on beer labels from Collective Arts Brewing, as part of their Series Four craft beer. Thanks so much Collective Arts! :)

Series Four is scheduled to be available to the public by mid-March 2015.
There will also be a Reveal Party at THE GARRISON, 1197 Dundas Street West in Toronto, on February 19, 7:30PM. I probably won't be able to make it, but if you're in the area, you should check it out! More details & RSVP here.

Check out all the other artists of Series Four via {this link}!

"I don't always eat ice-cream, but when I do - I choose my cone carefully."

Additional info:
- This illustration, along with a few of my other pieces, was part of one The Postcard Shows.
- Rendered with micron pen, waterproof inks, and white pencil.
- Prints + etc available on Society6 + RedBubble + DesignByHumans

Update - March 25th, 2014:

Recently, I received my sample bottle in the mail and I took a few photos to share. It looked wonderful in person!

The mini print of "Ice-Cream Cones" in the photos is a postcard print ordered from Moo.com.

Cheers!

Mail Me Maybe?

Happy Friday!

Apologies for not posting for a few weeks. No, Free Textures Friday hasn't been cancelled. I just had to pause it for a little while due to the need to focus on a few other projects first. It shall resume next Friday and the theme will be "diverse denim".

Kay, but today I'll show you a few process steps for my latest little illustration I call "Mail Me Maybe?"

One of my fellow illustrators - Patrick Wong {his site here}- told me about this show happening in New York at the A.I.R. Gallery which I couldn't help but want to submit something into. The show is called "Wish You Were Here 12" and here's a little bit about it from their website:

Artists & Friends of A.I.R. Gallery:
We invite you to participate in our yearly benefit postcard show:
Wish You Were Here 12: June 27 - July 21, 2013 Reception: Thursday, June 27th, 6 - 8:30 pm
Last year's exhibit featured work by over 400 artists from as far afield as Australia and Guyana. This year we hope you will join us in our mission to provide leadership and community to women in the arts by exhibiting your work in Wish You Were Here 12. Artists of all mediums including writers and musicians are encouraged to donate.
**All the proceeds of this exhibition help fund our programs, including our Fellowship Program for under-represented and emerging women artists.

I got to work as soon as I could, though not without technical difficulties which derailed me a little. I roughly knew what I wanted to do right away so I just threw down some quick compositional thumbs to help me decide whether I wanted to work horizontally or vertically:

thumbs

My plan was to illustrate the endangered Scissor-Tailed Hummingbird (Hylonympha macrocerca), since I wasn't able to incorporate him into my Mail Me Art 3 piece along with the other endagered little guys. And to go with the whole post card/wish you were here theme, I was going to incorporate some envelopes into the piece as well.
So I got some paper, penciled and inked him. But then I discovered that the paper didn't like the ink too well and that it would erase along with the pencil...

inks 1.0

Instead of starting over entirely - I scanned what I had in and printed it on some thicker bristol paper I normally use. I printed the inks at around 20% though, so that I could re-ink on top and change it up a little. Eventually it looked something like this:

inks 2.0

 And then I coloured it with my usual mix of coloured waterproof inks, watercolour, and gouache and it was done! 

finished

I'm sad to say that it all came together a bit last minute and I mailed it out yesterday, but hopefully it will arrive safely in time, before the due date of June 7th!
 
Bristol Smooth Paper
Size: 4 x 6"
Media: microns, waterproof inks, watercolour paints, and gouache

Have a good weekend! And send someone a postcard or a card! They'll be so surprised! It will be awesome:)

Playing Outside With Imagination and Pride

Happy Saturday!

So, today I'm sharing with you a revisit of some ideas and themes I worked with last spring. My inspiration comes from my childhood memories of enjoying imaginative play-times outside. Currently I'm using those ideas and themes and reworking them into a collection of illustration + poetry spreads which will hopefully turn into a nice book sometime =)

"Little Lilac Ladies"

Ancient myths say mystic powers
Are given to some lilac flowers.
Those having five petals or more
Store magic wishes at their core.

This piece alludes to how my friends and I would comb through lilac bushes in search of 5 petaled flowers because supposedly they had wish granting powers!

 And some process steps:

Inked floral work

Painted floral work

Again, the finished piece

"Helping Hands"

When spring returns back to the land,
Little birds could use a hand
With making cozy, tidy nests
For themselves and for their guests.

This illustration reflects how in the spring my friends and I would build nests out of grass to help the birds out :)

(rhymes + illustrations are all by me)

Size: 11x17"
Media: Waterproof inks + watercolour + gouache + microns

Character Sketches

Ahoy there!

Posting some sketches tonight! These are for a children book illustration project, the first part of which is character concepts for a story.

Here are some of my favorites:

Wishing everyone a creative and happy week ahead! :)

Childish Things

Finally finished scanning and retouching all 10 pieces of a project from the spring semester. The theme is childhood, and these pieces are based on memories I have from my childhood. Style wise, this was my "minimalist" approach, haha=)

Materials:
`Bristol Smooth Paper
`Micron pens
`Koh-i-Noor waterproof colour inks
Size:
7×7 inches

P.S. Now I'm also on Society6

"Butterflies, to Go"

"Mighty Monarch Mage"

"Drifting Dandelions"

"Garden Guest"

"For the Birdies"

"Unleashing the Ladybugs"

"Little Lilac Eaters"

"Karma"

"Fly and Falter"

"Revenge Against the Nettles"

Playful Occasions & Congratulations

It's been a while since I've posted.
Well, here's my first completed illustration project of the semester. The objective was to start to create a series of creative and unique greeting cards. This was my shot at it. I call this series "Small but Significant Occasions" - perfect for those little but awesome events in life=)

**Available for purchase on my RedBubble
 

Materials:
`Bristol Smooth Paper
`Prismacolor pens
`Micron pens
`Koh-i-Noor waterproof colour inks


Happy Friday!

Munny Doll - Darling Dragonete

The year of the Dragon approaches!

front view
Photo courtesy of my instructor: Jaime Anderson

back view
Photo courtesy of my instructor: Jaime Anderson

And in lieu of this festive time - I present to you my final Surface Illustration class project=)
Our goal was to take a 4'' blank Munny Doll and turn it it into a character that we'd enjoy and reflect our artistic styles, and potentially be part of a toy series.

Materials Used:
+Acrylic paints
+Staedler Black F series felt pen
+Glitter glue
+ some art clay to model the horns and scales

Happy Hedgemas!

Yes, that's right - a cheesy title.

Here are some Christmas themed hedgehogs that I've been slowly working on for the past couple of days. Awww...look how fat they are!

Done in Illustrator + Photoshop
Used my own textures + free online textures

Process:

Step 1: hand- drawn sketch

Step 2: In Illustrator - inked with the paint tool and coloured with live paint

Step 3: In Photoshop - Added some grass and gradients to the hedgehogs

Step 5: Added lots of textures, still in Photoshop

Step 6: Added some shadow definition with the burn tool and levels mask brush.

 Done!