With fall coming at us at a crantastic speed, this piece is about that last summer bike ride. You know what I'm talking about!

I have been playing around with nibs lately and wanted to try to develop a piece with nib and brush. Gotta say, I really like the level of control I can get with these babies! Also trying a more direct approach to painting which I rather like.

I keep being like 'oh man I should scan some stuff in' but then I think 'or I could draw!' and guess which one wins out?

Some recent ink shenanigans - I forgot how much I love a good nib! (also: did you know you could spellcheck the word "shenanigans"?)









See larger versions on my flickr stream!

A quick portrait from life drawing. See big size here!

I have some new things to post but before I do, here is a small cache of experimental sketchbook drawings I found on my hardrive:







I love to draw like this in my sketchbook but find it really hard to blend this type of drawing with my portfolio style. Although I really like both styles the two seem to be at odds.

"failure is just the beginning" - Miranda July

I'm working on another big drawing: Bikes! Houses! Flying! It's very exciting.



Big here!

While I was drawing this I was thinking "gee I think Mina will like this one".

And here are some gesture drawings from the very recent past.



Big here!

Gesture sketches from the last two days, various refs. I can't wait for life drawing tomorrow!





See big here!

Some life drawing from this morning and from last week:

I really enjoy Jeffrey Decoster's sketchbooks. His drawings are just amazing and so much fun to look at.

International Man of History

This is a birthday present for Phill, one of my very, very best friends. He's an amazing photographer and probably one of the coolest cats I know.

Life drawing from Sunday, a head:

Life drawing from this evening, this was a good session! I had such a good time I feel like I floated my way home.

There are bigger things coming but they're under wraps for now, hence the recent lack of posts. Here is a grab bag of stuff for your eyes!

An unfinished exercise, trying to 'dress' a referenced pose. Kids have this very specific way of fidgeting and I think I caught it well in this one!



And here are some creatures from the sketchbook:



And a quick gesture sketch of my nephew playing with playdoh

Because I'm like perpetually hiding under a rock I've only just discovered this awesome picture of me and Erica Moen from at TCAF this year! If you read webcomics you probably know about Erika, she's has her fingers in many comic-related pies (err...) and is currently arting Bucko with writer Jeff Parker. Murder, bicycle riding and a robot-laptop, how can you go wrong?



AWW YEAH. She has said some very flattering things about me on her blog which let me tell you are totally all true. But seriously, she is a sweetheart and a damn good comicker so if you don't read her stuff already you need to get on it.

"What a pause does is remind us of the passage of time" - Jennifer Egan, writer of A Visit from the Goodsquad, on this Sunday's edition of Writers and Company on cbc radio.

I love this quote, because Egan is a writer I imagine in my head that she's talking about commas. The idea of a tiny comma on a page being a signifier for something as meaningful and conceptually fluid as "the passage of time" is just lovely. Also I'm reading a Visit Fom the Goonsquad.

Life drawing from this Sunday, the model was really fun, every pose came with bonus crazy facial expressions!

The blog The Temple of the Seven Golden Camels has a lot of useful and interesting drawing advice, check out this post called Design and Drawing: Simple vs. Complex. I'm working on a complicated drawing right now that has a lot of elements and I'm struggling (in a good way) to balance all the elements while maintaining some kind of visual harmony/organization.

I did this piece of fanart for the talented and all around swellGuy Davis creator of the comic Marquis, about a morally questionable demon hunter in a fictional, upside-down 18th century world. His demon characters are some of my favourite going and the man has some serious inking skills. I had the opportunity to see his work in person last year and it is beautiful.

My favourite character from the Marquis is Hell's Courtesan, probably because she has tentacles for hair. Her complicated tentacle hair made me think of Oiran who were high ranking prostitutes in 18th century Japan. So I took her on a little trip across the globe! Maybe a little presumptuous of me but when the mood strikes..



Click here to see the larger version!

Some thoughts on drawing and negative space

I have always loved mark-making that is concise, when the artist is able to articulate the idea of an object with minimal noodling. To me this type of drawing is like a well-executed magician’s trick, a bit of sleight of hand – from far away the object resolves but up close you can pick apart the two or three well placed lines used to make the trick convincing.

I think the key to simplicity is being able to draw with the negative space, always keeping in mind what each line says about the space around it.

When I was in high school I struggled through some Lao Tzu and although I can't claim to have understood a lot of what he wrote there was one passage that I still think about all the time when I'm drawing because to me it's all about the usefulness of negative space:

Thirty spokes joined at one hub;
emptiness makes the cart useful.
Clay cast into a pot;
the emptiness inside makes it useful.
Doors and windows cut to make a room;
emptiness make the room useful.
Thus being is beneficial
but usefulness comes from the void.

From the sketchbook, first my sweetie Audrey!



Second this texturey drawing:


Third an exercise in "barely there" drawing: