We Are Future Homesick

Unofficial pictures of the (currently) unfinished Traded Stars book. You can see it in person at the

2012 Sheridan Illustration Grad Show.

Thursday April 19th at the Glass Factory

99 Sudbury Street Toronto.

You can also see the story continue at www.tradedstars.com

(hand model/ photographer: Rachel Idzerda)

Portrait assignment stages

Some roughs, test inks, and linears of Stephen Hawking and Neil Degrasse Tyson, followed by the final portrait of Neil Degrasse Tyson.

We Were Both Broken in Our Own Way

I don't generally like talking about the influences and the meaning behind art pieces - and I'm not about to go into much depth on a piece by piece bases - but I owe a lot of credit for the next series of illustrations to some pretty specific influences (other than the normal influences from life). So I felt it was acceptable this time to share a little information.

Ever since Arcade Fire's album The Suburbs came out I've had the desire to ground a series of artwork even more in regular life. The influence can be seen as early as the piece with people walking around Toronto on a winter night, and the one of people at a bar having some drinks. Now the real beginning to the next series of images is the girl in her room studying. That piece is really a prologue to these ones because that unnamed girl comes back for a couple of these new pieces.

So if it began with The Suburbs, this small series of illustrations really started taking shape when I heard Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues and later became fully formed when Death Cab's latest, Codes and Keys came out. While Arcade Fire brought on the desire for drawing the youth in real life, Fleet Foxes helped me break out of the Suburbs mentality, but Death Cab is what brought it all together, particularly these lyrics:

And if you feel just like a tourist in the city you were born
Then it's time to go
And define your destination
There's so many different places to call home
Because when you find yourself the villain in the story you have written
It's plain to see
That sometimes the best intentions are in need of redemptions
Would you agree?
If so please show me

I'll be posting a new image every Monday for the next four weeks at least to make sure I keep all this regular. Well I've already written more than I'm normally comfortable with, so enjoy and I appreciate you reading.

Walking Up The Hill Tonight

I Know We're Little Boats In The Great Big Sea

Did this on Saturday, liked the black and white version so I included it in the post alongside the completed piece.

To Never Regret Means You Have To Forget

Did this in about an hour, hour and a half a couple days ago. Don't want to get rusty over the summer.

Our Futures Were Written With Crayons In Colouring Books

The assignment: Draw a Cowboy.

Non Sum Qualis Eram

First and foremost; breaking my (for the most part) strict song-lyrics-as-blog-post-title rule for this one, but it's a book quote (easily wikipedia'd) that was too perfect to pass up.

Anyway...

This half of the semester in my Life Drawing/ Painting class, I made a proposition to a friend of mine, Jaime, that maybe he and I could work on a single piece one class. Well we enjoyed doing it, and decided to take that a step further; we worked on that same piece together for seven weeks, always building on top of what we did the previous week. As well, each piece had to stand on its own at the end of the day.

This is the product of that experiment:

My Name Is You

I was wearing a Superman shirt as I painted this. Also, by this point, it is equal parts paint and photoshop

I'm Recession Proof; I Work To Relax

Finished, Process...ish and Detail

Really, What's a Bigger Man?

Some life drawings from my class this semester. The first two are fair sized, the last two are about 3 feet tall, give or take a bit. I must say, I do enjoy working oversized.

Phantoms in the Courtyard

100th Post

Party Poison

Jump Juice

The Design

So Far Around the Bend

I Arrived With No Shoes

What I should have handed in as

'The Perfectionist'

I was bored today, putting off homework, finished watching The Inbetweeners (very funny) so I thought I'd actually get around to colouring this drawing in.

Heaven is Only in my Head

The Celestial Bodies.

Handed in an assignment, didn't much care for how it turned out. So I worked on it a little more, just tweaking a few things here and there. This is now the final piece.

Tired Eyes

The image from yesterday is part of the background in this piece, but it's completely lost by the copy. So that's awesome, but I can't complain because I designed it after all.

Your Feathers Are Tattered and Furled

Because you can't see it well enough in my final piece.

Which isn't actually done yet...

What We Invented I Am Now Ending

Handed in this piece of Zeus and Atlas for an interpretive illustration assignment; OVERheard/ UNDERstood. Well I handed in - for all intents and purposes - an unfinished piece.

This is the finished one.

An intentionally misunderstood conversation, mine was;

- So you broke it and now it's my fault?

- No, I'm just saying if you couldn't fix it, I deserve some sort of compensation.

A play on the word 'fault' and someone who feels they might deserve 'compensation' for their time.

Departure