Holiday Card!

Sometimes I paint a card or draw pictures for the Holiday Season. And sometimes I get inspired to do a theme for the subject matter, but most of the time, it's just random stuff.

Native American Editorial.

This piece was acrylic and gouache on cold press illustration board and was painted rather large. Working larger on certain compositions are usually a tedious process, especially, if the piece is not particularly exciting. I tend to get bored easily if I'm not into the painting. This was an editorial assignment from the client depicting a cave dwelling of a native American tribe called the Anasazi. It was challenging to not show the people in their everyday activities as to not offend or make assumptions of what they look like. Growing up in Canada, I have a certain respect for the original Americans that lived here before the settlers came.

Something New, Something Old.

Here's another sample that was done in the bullpen at the illustration studio back in the day when I was an apprentice. Again, it was inspired by the old magazine story art of the 50's and 60's. I found it while cleaning out the storage area in my apartment. This was acrylic on cold press board.

Experiment in Traditional Mixed Media.

Taking an image from my sketchbook, I picked a drawing of a couple of trees as my subject. I applied a layer of gesso on cold-pressed illustration board with a broad brush and then drew the image on top of it after it dried. I then laid down a warm wash of color (gouache) for the bark of the trees. The second layer was the green mixed with black for the outline and leaves. The third was the mask for the inset image. And the last layer included a cool blue wash (acrylic) over the rest of the painting. I lifted the mask and exposed the warm inset image. The last step was to touch up the darks and lift the paint with a wet brush & cloth for the highlights on the bark. Looking back, this technique could be translated into Photoshop and Painter which I'm exploring now!

One More Old School Illustration.

Back in my art school days, I did a painting that featured Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers in front of a classic car of the 1920's and 30's era in the Coles Phillips' fade-a-way style. I used gouache & airbrush.