New house, paint and watercolour Crayons...

A recent image I completed today. The text is a verse from a song by Gavin Sutherland. There are four verses, I want to illustrate each one. This week I acquired some watercolour crayons which I had never used before, but saw them for a good price and thought I'd try them out. They were really easy and nice to use. They are on par with watercolour pencil crayons, except are chunkier so it is easier to complete bigger areas faster. They are not as smooth as marker washes, which is what I do a lot of. I might try combining some crayon with marker washes and see if it's a good combination. I think the colour was slightly washed out in my scanned image, I could stand to up the colour a little in Photoshop. It's nice to have the time today to sit at my desk and do some art. I've been very busy lately with a lot of things, but namely that I bought a house, and got Posession last week! Here are few comments inspired by this recent purchase:


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I Love Books

This is just a quick note to follow up with a previous blog post about Maira Kalman. I happened to find her book The Principles of Uncertainty on sale at chapters for only $7.99! I could hardly believe the price. I also picked up An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories which was also on sale for a steal of a deal at only $12.99. I only got it last night, so I haven't had the chance to read it yet, but I'm happy that Chapters can feed my graphic novel addiction(though I prefer to think of it as my graphic novel education...). Here is a description about the book:
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300111703

A photograph I took was selected for Winnipeg’s first Timeraiser event! Timeraiser is an event that has people bid on art using volunteer hours instead of money. It first buys art from selected artists who apply, then the event is a little like a job fair, only with volunteer opportunities, and future volunteers put a silent bid on a piece of art, and the winner who bids the most volunteer hours gets to go home with that artwork. Timerasier events have occured accross the country for a number of years in most major Canadian Cities. This year's Winnipeg event is taking place at the West End Cultural Centre on May 6th.

Check out a video for it here:
http://timeraiser.ca/en/how_it_works

Duet- Illustration Friday

Duet for Illustration Friday. I tried two versions. I'm on images number 193 and 194 for my year-long image a day project, with means that I'm actually a little more than halfway. All year I've been doing pretty good at not falling behind, but in recent weeks I have missed drawing for a bunch of days which leaves me almost three weeks worth of images behind. I'll have to push myself to catch up.

Toy-Illustration Friday

The topic for this week's Illustration Friday is Toy. It is a picture of my dog's stuffed toy.

American Splendor-Movie and Comics

I watched the movie American Splendor Last night which is a fantastic indie flick telling the true life account of how an ordinary guy from Cleveland ended up writing his life into a comic series, was a regular guest on David Letterman, and really just wanted to come out kind of ahead in life, instead of just trudging through it. American Splendor first began as a comic series illustrated by the recognised illustrator Robert Crumb who was friends with Harvey Pekar. Harvey's whole philosophy behind the comics were to write about the mundane aspects of life, the everyday, lonliness, his relationship with his wife, and things that actually were a part of the everyday. The movie was based around the accounts of his life, how the comic books were formed, and how aspects of his life were shaped because of what he wrote.
An interesting aspect to this movie is that it includes voiceovers and interviews with the real Harvey Pekar. The portrayal of his life appears to be true to the comics in that it keeps him as a regular guy who really just cares about not being lonely, staying employed, and promoting what brings some satisfaction to his life-his autobiographical graphic novels. The movie won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, and was the winner of the 2003 Cannes film festival international Critics award.

The first issue was published in 1976, and many issues followed almost yearly over the next 30 years. A variety of artists illustrated his stories, with the most noteworthy being Robert Crumb. Pekar's story was somewhat inspiring to me, as an illustrator and someone who loves memoirs in all forms. It is actually hard to interest me in a Graphic Novel that isn't based on someone's real life, or real-life facts, so when I find something that is really an illustrated embodiment of someone's life, it makes me kind of happy.

I ordered an anthology of the American Splendor books today, and I'm pretty stoked to read it.

I visited ArtCity today, which got me excited for an upcoming March workshop that I will be teaching. They accepted me as a Community Artist to teach a one day workshop in book binding. Art city is a non-profit drop-in community art centre that "is dedicated to providing high-quality, free-of-charge art programming to participants of all ages." It is located in the heart of the West Broadway community. I walked in and the place was buzzing with activity, colour, children, and exciting props and costumes being made for a video workshop that was going on. It will be good to step out of the school setting for an afternoon, and into a different atmosphere, and imagine, actually teaching something where there are other adults there to help! Some people even volunteer to help out there!(Ok to be fair I do have some very awesome EAs who regularly work in my room with me, but they work with some specific higher needs kids, and not there as general help for the whole class.)