Sophie

You may think I have fallen off the face of the earth...again. The fact of the matter is that I have been rather busy, but despite being busy I have managed to draw on a fairly consistent basis. (Yay me!). The painting was a challenge and took much longer to finish than I thought it would, but it's inspired me to want to paint more. I also discovered that I like working on larger pieces - I wasn't sure I would.

I've had a couple of 'commissions' lately, which has been great for keeping me focused. I've attached a rough copy of the first. This is Sophie, a pug that belongs to my friends Andre & Jessica. The 30's gangster thing is some kind of inside joke and Andre asked me to make this for Jessica's birthday that is coming up in a couple of weeks. I think I managed to capture Sophie's essence here. The drawing is still rough - I need to fix the perspective on the tommy gun and do more inking. I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out.

Until next time....

Entry for Tim Burton Moleskine Contest

So, here it is. I got a sudden burst of creativity tonight while watching way too many hours of the Winter Olympics on tv. I can really relate to the quote as I myself have never been able to quite grasp a 'realistic' style of drawing. And I've always enjoyed that while working for Disney on 'The Fox And The Hound', Tim Burton likened HIS Foxes and Hounds to 'roadkills'. It's okay Tim - you are far too original for Disney anyway.

A very interesting article about women employed by Disney in it's heyday. A good and interesting read. I'm still working on the painting and my Moleskine submission. Read this until I have some new visuals to show you!

Nostalgia

Here is the link to an article about some former employers of mine who I worked for doing character design about 10 or 11 years ago. I learned a lot working for them - mostly that I didn't know much about computer animation (I was admittedly in a little over my head) but they were great to work for and I DID learn a bit about Flash animation as a result. At the time they were set up in the old elementary school in Miami, Manitoba - oddly their office was located in the same classroom that I attended Kindergarten in. It was strange to get up in the morning and go to work in the same room I learned how to count and do my ABC's in, let me tell you! The job holds fond memories for another reason too. I had the opportunity to live with my dad and spend loads of quality time with him before he passed away a few years later. My dad was an artist and he always enjoyed showing me what he was working on in his studio. I had a car at the time, but he would often drive me to work and pick me up again, CBC radio blaring loudly as rumbled down the gravel roads leaving a big cloud of dust behind us.

Tim Burton Moleskine contest

The groovy folks at Moleskine have come up with the following contest: "In celebration of the Tim Burton MoMA exhibition, Moleskine created a limited run of (rare) custom Tim Burton weekly planners. These planners were given out to guests of MoMA during the opening events. So rare are these, that we could only find 2 in the Moleskine NYC office! But we're all about giving back, so we're going to give these away to 2 lucky Tim Burton + Moleskine fans."

If I can get my ass in gear, I'm going to enter this contest. I love Tim Burton and I love Moleskine notebooks/sketchpads, so shouldn't I do what I can to get a limited edition Tim Burton Moleskine planner? This girl says 'yes'!

I'm baaaack!

After a long time away (due to pure laziness, procrastination etc.), I am blogging again. I've been working on a painting for where I work my day job and that's taken up some time, and has been a good challenge for me. Normally I'm a pen & ink person if I do anything, paint is definitely NOT in my comfort zone. But I'm trying hard to get back into making art on a more regular basis. I've attached some photos of what I've done so far on the painting.

The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes