January 24th 2013

©Arden Wray 2013

This past weekend I had a visit from photographer Arden Wray.  She's been working on an online project called Boots & Pine, taking portraits of those in the creative communities; so far, around Toronto and Hamilton.

She was a lot of fun to visit with, and got some lovely photos out of our couple of hours together.  You can view our interview and her photos from the other day here, but the rest of the site is a lot of fun to look through.

©Arden Wray 2013

January 14th 2013

For those of you familiar with Chris, you'll probably know this about him; he's genius at tying knots.  He's studied a bit of marlinspike rope work over the last couple of years, and has gotten really good at putting his newly-found knowledge to use.

He's made beautiful rugs, like this one for our front door:

as well as some other beautiful items around the house.

And so, for Christmas, I wanted to do a drawing of something he'd really love.  I decided to do a drawing of a sea chest becket; or what Chris calls, 'the highest form of rope art'.  (Nerd!)

The chest becket is tied using a number of different types of knot to create a beautifully decorative handle.  

'A fancy chest becket served as an outward symbol that the owner of that chest was a sailor who deserved respect.  The knowledge of how to tie certain knots was often bartered and only experienced sailors knew how to create such intricate pieces.'

- the Marlinspike website

January 8th 2013

Here's another of the portraits I've been working on lately.  This one was a lot of fun; a portrait of Ping Fu, CEO and co-founder of software development company, Geomagic.

She was so much fun to paint, with her bright accessories and jewel-toned hair highlights!

For the next while, I'll be doing a monthly job with Spirit Magazine, (Southwest Airlines' inflight), illustrating the figures featured in the business section.  I'll post the others as they're published.  Very exciting!

January 3rd 2013

Happy New Year, everyone!

My new year has started off very well so far; I spent some time over the holidays with family and friends, travelled around with Chris, and got a much-needed break from work for a couple of weeks.

Now, we're both back to it, and I'm feeling refreshed.

I stopped in to Kid Icarus a few days ago and signed and picked up a new print!  I've been talking about this particular print for a while now.  It was used to help Kid Icarus in their fundraising efforts for their new location in Kensington Market.  (You can view the video of my interview with them, and working on the painting, here).  I painted this back in the spring; and in early winter, when Kid Icarus was settled back in to their new space, I worked together with them to get the print looking just right, (and it does!  I'm very happy with this print!).

It's called 'Running Hare', and is now available on my website.