coffee break

felt marker

sketched while sipping a vanilla bean latte at the Starbucks in Chapters.

wacom 01

digitally drawn in photoshop using a tablet

larger image

first attempt with the wacom tablet. just playing around. feels weird to draw with a pen, but have to look at my computer screen to see what i'm doing.

this is a cathedral in fredericton, new brunswick. photo from my trip this past summer.

mistakes that look good

colored digitally in photoshop

was playing around in photoshop and accidentally moved one of the color layers, and went "hey, that looks cool!"

guest artist

tablet in photoshop

this is the fine handiwork of my friend Debra. playing around with my brand spankin' new wacom tablet! wheeeeee!!!!!! *many many thanks to mom and dad* :D

yes i am spoiled.

merry christmas!

felt marker

sketch from church yesterday.

inkling

felt marker, ink wash

larger dragon!

this was what came out of my head from the ink splotch that occurred on the page of my sketchbook after this sketch.

magi

felt marker

Sketch from church tonight. We have been walking through the christmas story, tonight's focus was on the magi (aka the three wise men). Also watched clips from the movie "The Nativity Story" (?) One of the clips had one of the magi trying to convince the other two to go with him to follow the star - he seemed to be the big faith guy, and the other two were more skeptical. Then in a later clip the star appears all dramatically above where Jesus is born, and the big faith guy goes to the other two - how is your faith now? or something to that effect. I liked the interpretation of having the skeptical magi, makes the story more relatable. I never really think about those details till someone or something spells it out for me.

also - sorry for the lack of blogging. People have been mentioning the lackage - which is totally ok. It's kind of encouraging actually, cuz sometimes I wonder if people still look at this thing. I do have a bunch of sketches I will post, just been too lazy to do the actual posting part. :P I made a little goal for myself, which I may as well share for accountability - to draw every day. Don't know if that will happen, but I will try. Would like my drawing to improve, and the only way to do that is lots of practice. Cuz it tends to get crappier the less I draw. wah.

sunday sketch

felt marker

My response to one of the worship songs at church tonight.

It's been nice to just sit and take in the worship services. Last month i was helping with the powerpoint presentation, so that requires a bit more attention. (I like helping out too, but it's good to just "be" at church too).

bridge over troubled water.....

ink wash, ink, felt marker

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playing around with ink washes on saturday night. I don't do much ink wash or watercolor painting, so it's not the best thing in the world, but I had fun. And I ended up with a cool looking ink blotch on the next page of my sketchbook from the ink bleeding through the page. So that will be fun to turn into something....

liquid church

pencil & colored in photoshop

Sketch from last sunday church service. Craig talked about the idea of "liquid church" - that church is not just on sunday morning/whenever your service is, it is wherever and whenever you experience worship or spend time with God. Church could happen when you meet with a group of friends, or go for a walk in the river valley. Church is more fluid and mobile than the static building that you meet in.


pencil

shadow

collage, felt marker

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this was me getting my feelings out about a week or so ago. It's about feeling alone in a crowd of people, or not really fitting in. Not fitting in is sort of a good thing, means you don't always "follow the crowd". But can be a lonely journey sometimes.

charcoal and ink

maritime sketches

here are some sketches from my trip to the maritimes this summer. Drew in my new travel sketchbook, which is really small (7 inches by 3.5 inches), and a different format than what i'm used to. All are in felt marker.


on the way to St. John, New Brunswick




drawn while waiting for the ferry on Deer Island, New Brunswick


stopped to sketch on one of my bike rides through Fredericton (NB)


went to PEI also. Lots of farms where you could see the ocean at the same time. Very strange but cool for someone from the prairies.

in no particular order

pencil


pencil/felt marker

One of the many geese I saw while walking around Beaumaris Lake.







felt marker

some random sketches from YC this past weekend. I also did some face paint on a couple of the kid's faces, that was fun. "A new medium", as Mel put it.

a visit from the tooth fairy

digital (painted in photoshop)

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This is my visual interpretation of a creature from Magik Beans, a story one of my friends is writing online. He came up with a pretty strange description of a tooth fairy, so I thought it would be fun to try to draw one. The tooth fairy is in this chapter, if you want to read it (I would highly recommend!). Here's an excerpt:

Eostre looked down at the thing on her shoulder, and turned into the light. Lara gasped. The creature reminded her of an armadillo, with the series of ivory colored plates all along it's round body, but it was nearly spherical, aside from a bloody bony fin jutting from the top of it's back.

"Pachik?" Eostre said gently. And at her voice, just like an armadillo, it stretched out it's body. Lara could see better that what she had thought were bony plates were teeth. Dark eyes looked at her from underneath a ridge of incisors. It opened a ridiculously large mouth, which was filled sharklike, row upon row, with human teeth. Lara gaped.

"A tooth fairy," Eostre explained. "Pachik came to collect my tooth when I broke it off, and I asked him to do me a favor instead of leaving me money. I got him to rip through my restraints. Pachik," Eostre said turning her head toward the tooth fairy again, "I need you to do my another favor, for which I will repay you. I need you to take money to the place this girl sends you, in the amount she writes down for you."

Pachik snorted and leaped down from Eostre's shoulder onto the coffee bar. It skittered across the counter, it's little claws clicking on the hard suface. Lara jumped as it got close to her.



ink, drawn with a comb

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Here's another one. This one just had to come out. This is the crazy one.

These are some initial quickie sketches, to jot some ideas down.




Pencil sketch for the tooth fairy.

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clouds

felt marker, arcylic

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Sketch from church at the Gathering last sunday.

finding books

whee! my computer is now updated and is a Tiger!!! woot! and i can actually see websites the way they are supposed to look, instead of all wonky which is what Explorer does on a Mac. i like Safari! can you tell I'm excited? :) so far... so good.... *knocks on wood*

in other news, I went to the Edmonton Journal Book Sale today, which was very fun. Really cheap books - hardcovers are $2 and softcovers are $1. It's still on on Sunday if you want to check it out.

You sure find some interesting books at these things. I found an archiac manual for Illustrator, which i thought was quite hilarious (yes I'm a big geek, if you can't already tell from my excitement over upgrading OS). There were some pretty good photo books tho, so I picked up a few of those. If I didn't already have all of the LOTR books, I could have picked up the whole trilogy for $3. Throw in the Hobbit for $4.

here's some of what I picked up.

"Green" by Benjamin Zucker - art/typography book

"The Practical Guide to Calligraphy"

"The Lions of Al-Rassan" by Guy Gavriel Kay - reading another book by this author right now, and am enjoying it so far, so thought I would pick this one up too.

"The Woodsman's Daughter" by Gwyn Hyman Rubio - an advance uncorrected proof version

"Lost Kingdoms of Maya" National Geographic - very nice big photo book

"Monographics" by Kyle Cooper - a neat little book on the design of film titles and credits (which I love)

"The Illustrated Man" by Ray Bradbury - very happy when I found this, I read a lot of Ray Bradbury in high school.

"Let Me Tell You a Story" by Tony Campolo - I like this guy's speaking, so I'll give one of his books a try.

and my new favorite title ever....

"The Professor and the Madman - A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary"
I just couldn't pass up that title.

banqueting table

felt marker

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Went to The Canopy on sunday morning, to check it out. The worship band did the song "Banner Over Me is Love" to the tune of "Kiss Me", I forget who the artist is for that song (Sixpence None the Richer?). It sounded pretty cool, although you wouldn't think so at first. I love the theme of this song, to me it says that everyone is welcome to "the table". God welcomes everyone, regardless of where they come from in their life.

His Banner Over Me
Kevin Prosch

He brought me to His banqueting table,
And His banner over me is love

I am my beloved's and He is mine,
And His banner over me is love
Yes, His banner over me is love

We can feel the love of God in this place
We believe Your goodness, we receive Your grace
We delight ourselves at Your table, oh God
You do all things well, just look at our lives

His banner over me
His banner over you
His banner over us
Is love

some stuff

Check out this dude's Lenten blog. Very cool. LentenBlog


pencil, inverted in photoshop

Discovered a quick way to draw a hand on my online travels.



pencil

Drew this a couple weeks ago. I like the drawing, but not the position of the legs. Lets just say, um, they are in an odd position. Time to whip out the vellum paper and do a quick change-up.

rage against God

felt marker

This drawing is based on Psalm 2:1-4, 9:

Why do the nations so furiously rage together? And why do the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth rise up, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against his Anointed. Let us break their bonds asunder and cast away their yokes from us.

He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn; the Lord shall have them in derision. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

From what I gathered from the sermon on sunday, these verses talk about the people wanting to break away from God, and rejecting him. "Let us break their bonds asunder and cast away their yokes from us." That's basically what I was trying to say in the drawing. One of Metallica's CD covers was the inspiration for the fist (that's sort of what I was picturing in my mind anyway). My fist looks pretty tame compared to that, now that I look at it. Needs more clenching action.

bird in color

pencil crayon

Same bird sketch as below, this time done in color. Discovered vellum paper, after another artist friend was talking about it. It's like a gourmet tracing paper (i know that's a weird adjective), you can trace your drawing and the paper is brighter and not as flimsy as tracing paper.

yay! I'm back!

Welcome back to the blank page! I think I had blogger withdrawal for a while there. Decided to start from scratch, rather than pull all my hair out trying to post at my old blog.

A couple new sketches up for your enjoyment.

free like a bird

felt marker

Most recent sketch from church. Inspired by the song "Obsession", which I believe is by Delirious?

What can I do with my obsession?
With the things I cannot see
Is there madness in my being?
Is it wind that blows the trees?
Sometimes you're further than the moon
Sometimes you're closer than my skin
And you surround me like a winter fog
You've come and burned me with a kiss

chorus:

And my heart burns for you
And my heart burns    

Verse2:
(repeat for whole verse)

And I'm so filthy with my sin
I carry pride like a disease
You know I'm stubborn God and I'm longing to be close
You burn me deeper than I know

I feel lonely without hope
I feel desperate without vision
You wrap around me like a winter coat
You come and free me like a bird

chorus:

And my heart burns for you
And my heart burns    

revelation 1:12-16

charcoal

Started reading Revelation last weekend. Revelation has lots of strong imagery in it, so of course it's going to get some creative juices flowing. This is inspired by Revelation chapter 1:12-16. I'm planning on attempting a painting, so this is one of the sketches to start fleshing out some ideas before I hit the canvas. I kind of like how the sketch turned out tho, very bold, like the feeling of the person described in the verse. In your face.