Characters of Line.. Some Self Portraits in Pen and Ink

Self Portrait at Cote des Neiges, Montreal (2005)
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Self Portrait in Early January (2013)
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Self Portrait with Spiky Hair (2013)
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Self Portrait on Sunday Morning (2013)
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At the Mercy of the Mob... black and white final

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And here's the final version of my latest illustration for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (pencils here).

My goal with this illustration was to create a dynamic black and white composition full of contrasting angles (the placement of the long lights above, the top of the desk, the captive guy's legs, the angle of his torso and arms, and just for good measure the beams of light streaming down from above). I wanted the areas of black to emphasize and play off of these angles even more. I often work my blacks into my illustrations in a free, more abstract way... they don't always reflect the properties of light. In this drawing, the aim is to have the blacks work in their own way, with their own inner logic, to compliment the composition so that when you squint your eyes you get a dynamic, interesting abstract image in its own right. It's also important that everyone's faces are hidden, or partially obscured, to add to the feeling of anxiety and claustrophobia. At the same time, the woman's face is partially revealed because of the role she plays in the story.

Can't say any more than that! Look for the illustration and the accompanying story in the upcoming issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Mag...

As always, Corel Painter 11 + Wacom Cintiq 21UX.

Rough Night..

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Pencils, for an upcoming mystery magazine illustration...

Wacom Cintiq + Corel Painter

Lil' Thief

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It was a cold and drizzly weekend in Ottawa... good weekend to stay in and work up my "Lil' Thief" illustration, which continues my fascination with New York's garment district in the 1950's. You can see the pencils here.

Keyboard Player (5 min. SketchTime iPad Sketch)

Keyboard Player (detail)

Keyboard Player (click to enlarge)

I've already written about how great SketchTime is... It is my favourite go-to sketching app for the iPad and iPhone. As it happens I'm beta testing a new version right now, which includes more colours and even more shades of grey! Look for it soon in the Apple app store. This was the first lil' sketch I made while giving it a go on my iPad 3. As with all my iPad and iPhone sketches, I'm letting loose and having fun... not too worried about flubs, more interested in capturing a neat subject with energy and hopefully grace. Lately I've been enjoying selectively building up forms (the face, the forearm) while leaving other parts of the sketch less finished... Very quick sketch (5 minutes).

As a reminder, you can see all my iPhone and iPad sketches at my dedicated iOS sketching site: iosketch.tumblr.com !

Chance Encounter iPad Sketch

Chance Encounter (detail)

Done in Procreate on my iPad 3... definitely going for a loose, sketchy feel here. I've been doing a lot of iPad/iPhone sketches and posting them on twitter and on my iOS sketchblog, iosketch.tumblr.com

Lil' Thief... (sketch)

Process sketch for a new illustration. The drawing took about half a day (lots of referencing old photographs on the net). You may notice that the woman's torso has been adjusted (she's rotated leftwards slightly from the waist up. She was bent much too sharply toward the man in version 1 of the sketch...)

Done using Corel Painter 11's awesome "real 2B pencil" setting on Wacom Cintiq 21 UX.

The Button Man! Recent Illustrations (part two)

Here's the final version of a "pencil"* drawing I published in my previous post. It's a piece for a short story by Joseph D'Agnese titled "Button Man" (a great read by the way!). Look for it in the March issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

*All my drawings are done using Corel Painter + Photoshop on a Cintiq 21UX. Even though my workflow is 100% digital, I continue to be obsessed with merging the latest technology with traditional techniques.

Hope you like it!

Recent Illustrations... (part one)

Some recent illustrations for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine...

The Brave New World of "Graphic Journalism"

Illustration by Ralph Steadman

With the recent success of my Urban Sketching course at the Ottawa School of Art (Ottawa's first-ever USK course!), I've been keeping my ear to the ground for topics relating to the brave new world of urban sketching, sketch journalism, etc.

Here's an article by Samuel Burr about "Graphic Journalism," which I came across this morning in American Reader. While tangential to Urban Sketching, Graphic Journalism interests me nonetheless because of the inventive and genre-bending way it combines text with images (urban sketches also often use text; however, they more clearly favour the image). One of the things we cover in my Urban Sketching class at the OSA is how urban sketching differs from visual journalism. The two are obviously closely related as well (kind of like cousins...).

I find Burr's description of how one encounters images within the body of text in graphic journalism very interesting. I've reproduced this discussion below. For the full article, click here.

Evidence of this is a new form of journalism, which is edging its way into the mainstream—graphic journalism. Signs that this form of journalism is very much on the ascent have glowed bright neon for a while now. Ralph Steadman’s illustrations combined with Hunter S. Thompson’s text in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas laid some ground work. Still, it was not quite graphic journalism. An influence, certainly. A foundation, not exactly. Graphic journalism mixes coverage of real events of a broad scope (investigative journalism, event coverage, even critical examinations and first person accounts of travel, media, et cetera) with illustrations, as Lucy Knisley’s current piece “The New Life of the… COMIC BOOK” demonstrates. Artists with rooted interest in graphic journalism at this early stage, such as Ms. Knisley, are not only pioneers, but they are progressively shepherding this new form of journalism towards a wider audience. When it will truly “arrive” is up for debate, but the mainstream (though it is this form’s inevitable destination) has no purchase on graphic journalism from an artistic standpoint. So, enjoy graphic journalism now, as these roots are as plentiful as they are pulchritudinous.

One of the fascinating elements of this genre is the manner in which the illustrations that break up the passages not only leaven the text as artistic evidence of sorts, but also allows one’s mind to engage the subject and go places that one does not when reading a text-only article. The pauses engendered by the pictorial breaks recall the experience of viewing art in general. That affinity between the calm act of encounter and the pause the reader must take in the midst of reading is a curious and important one.

But how these two experiences—encountering illustrations in graphic journalism and viewing art in a traditional gallery setting—differ is perhaps most interesting. When you meet with an illustration in a work of graphic journalism, you are in the midst of an unfolding narrative that is not your own; you have a story; you’re already implicated in another world by proxy of the text. When viewing art in a traditional setting, however, you may go into the gallery thinking about your daily to-do list: perhaps worrying about your laundry, your girlfriend, your life—you go in thinking of something, and so, in an important sense, your mind is not free. Because the artistic act is doubled in graphic journalism—because you first give yourself into a written narrative, and then to a visual one—your mind is free (or at least, freer). Your mind, perhaps subconsciously, absconds from the quotidian, from your lamentations of the past and your presentiments of the future. It is more possible to live in the moment, however fleetingly, because you have here, in one contained genre, two modes of escape, two accomplices. And so, in an interesting and deeply compelling way, this newest instantiation of the doubled art experience opens new avenues to the imagination, new ways of engaging the senses.

(Again, for the full article by Samuel Burr in American Reader, please click here).