For a change, I'd like to post someone else's work that I've been admiring lately. (Okay, admiring is putting it lightly; I'm a little obsessed with it).
A friend had told me to check out the Rose Bakery book, How to Boil an Egg, a little while ago because she thought I'd like the watercolour illustrations throughout it. She wasn't kidding! It's always nice to find new sources of inspiration, and this was quite the gem.
They're painted by British artist, Fiona Strickland. She mainly paints highly realistic botanical illustrations, but made the most incredible, highly rendered paintings of food for this book.
Fiona, you're a marvel.
I was contacted by Brooke Manning a little while back to create signage for the shop she'll be opening here in Toronto a little later in the summer.
She sent me some pretty fantastic reference to go from; a 1928 cover of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, which I used to hand-letter the name of her shop, Likely General. She also asked that her sweet Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Ellie, be included in the design. I ended up having a ton of fun both painting and lettering this project for her, and was excited to see it all up on her new website, (even the favicon at the top!).
Above is the painting that she's using for her site, and below; the line drawing is what she's planning to use for her stamps. I was really happy with the way everything came together.
Her sweet little Roncesvalles general store will be opening in August of this year, and I'm thrilled for her! Yay, Brooke!
Today, it's rainy and grey, so I'll share a little painting I did of a husky recently that cheers me right up.
Posted above are a few more of the portraits I've done in the past few months for the business section of Southwest Airline's Spirit Magazine.
The first is of Marc Schoen, Ph.D., Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCLA Geffen School of Medicine; the second, of John Mackey, co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, and the last is of Penn Jillette, of illusionist team Penn and Teller.
Back in March I was asked to create a set of illustrations for The Walrus, for their 'Miscellany' section. I've worked with the magazine for years, but have always wanted to do the illustrated treatment used for the beginning section of the magazine.
A favourite series of mine from years ago was done by my friend Lauchie, which you can view here. He even won a gold medal at the National Magazine Awards for his work.
I was given the task of coming up with a theme that would run through the series of illustrations, and I thought it would be fun to illustrate a 'supermarket' theme. I painted the type in the style of an Honest Ed's hand-painted sign, an editor's note on green organizations like Green Peace using green produce, the letter section as an envelope of coupons and the contributors section like a carton of eggs.
Happy May!
I'd like to share some unpublished work today. I've been excited to post this for a while now.
It's from a job I completed at the end of the winter, and was unfortunately cancelled after it had been finished. I was really happy with the way these little paintings turned out! And the last image is of a pattern I was asked to make using pieces of the images below.
