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.

Fox & Phoenix Cover

Well, after an extremely busy few months I'm really excited about this post - a cover for a brilliant young adult novel titled "Fox & Phoenix" by Beth Bernobich.



I was approached by Jim Hoover, an art director at Viking Press who thought I'd be a great fit to illustrate this southeast asian inspired world where the people have spirit animal familiars and the technology is powered by magic flux.

The concept was to have the two main characters and their familiars entering a bustling city filled with people, lights and magic and being a bit overwhelmed by it all. I put the characters into a dark, narrow alley that almost feels like it's going to close in on them, played up their distinct personalities and brought the city to life with lots of atmosphere and bright neon signs.

I really enjoyed getting my head into this world and bringing it to life and working with Jim was a real pleasure. This was a super fun and rewarding project from start to finish and I'm really happy with the result. It's scheduled for a Fall 2011 release and I can't wait to see it on the shelves!

Gallery Page Added

Hey hey...I've been crazy busy at work for over a month, so I haven't been able to finish any personal work lately. I did, however, put a selection of my finished work from 2007 to present into a Gallery page. I've been adding alot more work-in-progress stuff and sketches lately, and it's bogged down the blog a bit for anyone who'd like to get right to the goods, so now it's all in one place, HERE.
You can also access the Gallery by clicking the Gallery Link in the top right corner of the home page.

This image is an old one that got tweaked a bit before I submitted it to Spectrum. Turns out it's the one they chose to publish in Spectrum 17.

White Widow

For some reason, "White Widow" got in my head, so I did a sketch inspired by it over a couple nights this week. I may take it further, but would probably end up liking the rough better as usual, so we'll see...

Finished Up...

Spent the weekend finishing up and tweaking a few pieces.

Hard to know when to call this one finished... it's a bit minimal in tone so I didn't want to overwork/ overtighten.



I put this one away a little too early to feel good about it for long... now I think I've done all I can do with it.



I was okay with where this was at, but while I was in the finalizing mindset a gave it another hour or two to fix a couple things that were bugging me.



click the thumbs for a larger image from Flickr. That's all for now...