Sketches from the lastest Ill'n life drawing, halloween style (Ill'n is the illustration club at Emily Carr).

etching project.

This is our third etching project. This one we used soft ground. Soft ground is really, really, really sensitive - meaning if you accidently touch it or something brushes against it, the ground will lift off and get etched. So you can accidently etch your fingerprints, for example. I have a lot of background textures on this print that I didn't really want (like paper towel), but it looks cool anyway. I also used hard ground on this plate too (the smaller, thin-lined drawings around the edges of the print).

Soft ground is super fun tho. You can etch virtually anything. I started my plate by pressing shrimps (didn't really work) and dried fish into the ground. Kinda gross but fun at the same time. The fish textures came out really well, I was pleasantly surprised. The big shrimp was drawn onto the soft ground with a charcoal pencil. I love that you can get gestural line, and a wide variety of line with the soft ground.

etching (soft and hard ground)

fresh meat.

Typography project for Digital Illustration. I'm finding I'm enjoying this class; it's a combo of design and illustration. I'm starting to be OK with sitting in front of the computer for hours on end again. I think I needed that two-year break of virtually no computers being involved in my art-making process. With the exception of silkscreen - that involved a little bit of computers.

For this project I thought photography would be the best solution for my idea. I think it turned out pretty well, thanks to some photo help from a school friend. :) I especially like how the "H" turned out, it looks very organic.

This is the original photo I took.

snakes & ladders

Latest project for etching class. We had the theme "snakes and ladders". The first thing that comes to mind is obviously the board game, so I looked up the history of the game, and became quite interested in what I found. It originated as a Hindu game around the year 1200 AD, and sounded like it was used as a teaching tool to teach children how to live a good life. The snakes symbolized vices, and the ladders symbolized virtues; making one's way across the board symbolized life (in life you come across things that help you and hinder you). The game has a whole list of virtues and vices (interestingly the "vice" list is waaaay longer than the "virtue" list); I picked two - knowledge and murder.

etching (hard ground)

First time using the acid bath, kinda intimidating at first, but after the first dunk it was OK. First you apply a "ground" to the copper plate, then you draw on the ground, exposing the copper underneath. When you put the plate in the acid bath, the part of the plate that is exposed gets etched (the metal gets eaten at and grooves are formed in the plate).

etching & chine collé

I really enjoyed the chine collé. The process is kinda slow (well, printmaking in general is SLOW), I think that's why I like it so much. :) The chine collé is the application of japanese paper (or any kind of paper, we were shown with the japanese paper) to the print. I liked it because it's a way of adding color, but you're only printing with black ink.

etching & chine collé

I also played with dyeing the japanese paper. In the bottom pic I didn't dye the whole piece red, I left some brush strokes.

rocktober

Latest Dr. Sketchy sketches. Theme was "rocktober", complete with live music! Live music, beer and sketching = good times.

This first sketch looks a little more like "anime-tober" than rocktober, but oh well. :)

itty bit of breathing space.

A tasting session of what I have been working on in september.

These first two are prints from my etching class. I had forgotten how messy and smelly the intaglio printing ink is. But I still like it. :) This is my first time using copper as a matrix. A good challenge.

drypoint

drypoint

Paintings for editorial class. Two paintings in a (supposed to be, ha) series of four. The image transfer on the braille one didn't quite work out as I had hoped. Next time I shall be smart and use photoshop. I mostly just wanted to try the image transfer technique, it's pretty fun.

acrylic & image transfer

acrylic & image transfer

My finished icons for digital illustration. Worked my butt off on these (mostly the iron man one) but had fun and learned a lot.

digital