Guide Of Souls - Nigel Quarless

This character is a Psychopomp or "Guide of Souls" - a mythic figure responsible for providing souls with safe passage to the afterlife. In Jungian terms, the psychopomp acts as a mediator between the conscious and unconscious realms. I thought developing a character based on that idea would be a great way to start visualizing a new world that I'm developing.

The basic idea of this project is to re-interpret the archetypes of the Monomyth from the mythic imagination of a people that have survived ages after our current civilization has collapsed. If humanity reverted to primal levels of culture and reason and mythology regained it's necessity to the human psyche, what would the myths be? How would a neo-primal culture interpret mythical archetypes in a post-collapse world? What would their creation myths be? What would their heroic myths be? What mysteries of existence would their myths express? What stories would they tell to explain the remnants of our decaying civilization?

These are the things floating around in my head to inspire me going forward with this and this Guide of Souls will hopefully help lead me to the unconscious realms where the creativity for this new project lies.

Pretty heady talk for what's basically a proof of concept.

Fox & Phoenix Released

Just a quick post to mention that Fox & Phoenix was released today! The cover illustration was a pleasure to do. Beth Bernobich crafted a richly detailed and inspiring world with compelling, complex characters and a unique vision of magic powered technology that hooked me from the beginning. The fine folks at Viking Press did an amazing job on the jacket design and it presents the illustration very nicely. It's a brilliant book all around and I'm proud to have been a part of it!



I'd hate to post without some art, so here's a little sketch from the other night. I'm still following random inspirations and procrastinating settling in to long term projects!

New Life

Whoa, Fall already?!

I've been working on a few projects over the summer...some graphics, a picture book and sketching/conceptualizing for a new body of personal work. It's about time for an update so I dusted off an old sketch and spent a few nights on it.



Before I get too dug in to some of the long term projects I'll be working on over the winter, there may be a few more of these fun pieces coming...

Wereworld Cover

Here’s my latest book cover for the North American hardcover release of “Wereworld”, an awesome novel written by Curtis Jobling and published by Viking Press. I’ve been anxious to post this for a while and since it’s now available on Amazon and cropping up here and there, I thought I’d put it up!

I really enjoyed the creative process on this, particularly since the Art Director wanted to develop a new look for the North American release. He wanted something more graphic and atmospheric. I also really enjoyed the wide composition the wraparound allowed for and there’s few things I enjoy painting more than a dark, foggy forest with a shadowy mythic creature and a hero thrown in for good measure!

The book will be on shelves in September and I enjoyed it cover to cover. Plenty of action, a richly detailed world, interesting characters and a story that hooked me from the beginning!

* Edit, August 10th, 2011 - Well, it looks like this won't be the published cover for the NA release of Wereworld after all. The AD let me know the publisher went with a different approach for the cover. This was still a great experience and the AD was happy with my work, so that's good...I'm just a bit disappointed that my work won't be out there on the shelves.

Mixed Bag Mythography III

I’ve finally managed to update after a few months... been busy on some projects that I can’t release just yet. What I can show is this piece I did for fun during the down-time in between jobs.

I love African masks and thought they'd be great inspiration for a Mixed Bag Mythography piece. This mask is mostly inspired by the styles of the Igbo culture from Nigeria. The character is a kind of priestess or shaman inspired by Obeah, a form of folk magic and sorcery practiced in the West Indies of Igbo origin. What exactly she’s doing with the mask I’m not sure of, I'll leave that for you to decide.

As far as updates go... I'll have a piece published in Spectrum 18 due out in November. I always feel honoured to have any work selected to be shown amongst so many talented artists and this year is certainly no exception.

I'm a little late on posting this news, but I've also got a few pieces in the "Gorilla Artbook" published by the fine folks at CFSL Ink. Gorilla Artfare is an online community of artists that I've been a part of for over 5 years now. It's an incredibly talented group and I've made many great friends there. Last year, the talented Aurelie Neyret spearheaded a book project with work submitted from all the GA artists and the Gorillas went all out on making it happen. Thanks in particular to Aurelie, Victoria Maderna, Federico Piatti and the folks at CFSL. The book is beautifully designed and laid out and filled with awesome work from start to finish. You can check out a preview and order it online at cfsl-ink.com

That's it for now, thanks for looking, I’ll be posting some more work and projects soon...

Chromag Bikes- Bear Rider

Chromag Bikes is a Whistler B.C. based manufacturer of high end mountain bike frames and components. I was recently inquiring about some parts for a new bike I'm building and ended up talking with Ian Ritz, the owner. He saw some of my work and thought I might be able to bring an idea of his to life and this graphic is the result.





I did the graphic based on Ian's idea and then worked his existing branding in to ground the image. This version has been printed on 24"x36" posters and a simpler 2 colour variant of it using halftones for the shading was screen printed on T-shirts.

I've been a lifelong mountain biker and it was great to have my obsessions of art and biking come together like this. Ian was great to work with and it was a fun project all around.

Isis

Here’s a new personal piece that I’ve been working on sporadically over the last few months. I started it way back in June and although I initially put it down, after getting swamped with work and life it ended up being my go-to piece for the shorts breaks I’ve had in between projects when I was too burned out or uninspired to start something new.

Although I kept the working title of Isis, it’s not too firmly based in Egyptian mythology. The figure takes some inspiration from the classic depiction of Isis but from there I mixed up the symbolism a bit and tried to evoke a visceral sense of the cycle of life, death and rebirth.