My Hated Book Covers

About twenty years ago I illustrated the covers and interiors for a young readers book series about a talking detective basset hound named Wordsworth. Only well after the series was in print did the editor tell me author Todd Stasser hated my work. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.



All the originals, done in acrylic airbrush colour on watercolour paper, are long gone. But I did have enough forsight to make colour copies at the time. Here are five of the six covers from my hated book cover series...

This Year's Plein Air Paintings - July Trip

I just got back from what's become an annual July sojourn for myself and a small group of artist friends: our annual July plein air painting trip to Whitefish Falls ON, in the LaCloche Mountains north of Manitoulin Island. We had fabulous weather and I got right to it - beginning with this block-in of the cabin that sits across the island from the one we stay in.



I let this one dry for a few days before coming back to it. Meanwhile I made my second attempt in as many years at this driftwood log, which I discovered a few years ago on a rocky little peninsula just beyond our island. My first stab at this piece was a disaster and I ended up painting it over.



This time I think I did a bit better, but it's still not quite a success. Maybe next year I'll try again...

Next day I blocked in my 3rd painting of the week; a new challenge for me: attempting to capture the transparency of water and what lies beneath it's surface.



This ended up being my most successful painting of the week, I think. I'd managed to get the transparency to my satisfaction and was prepared to stop there... but our instructor, Richard Edwards, came by and pointed out that the real challenge would be capturing not just the transparency, but also the reflection on the surface of the water that obscures some of the transparency.



It took some nerve to paint in the cloud reflections. As I brought the brush down to begin covering some of the sunken logs and stones, I thought, "This is where you ruin this painting." But ultimately, it was an important step forward and I'm happy I took it. Progress!

Every year during our painting week we take a day trip to the foot of nearby Willisville Mountain. This year I ventured up the back trail that leads through a lush forest and eventually to the top of the mountain. My goal was to paint the sun-spangled forest floor of the trail - another new challenge for me - in the past I'd avoided scenes like this, too daunted at the thought of organizing all those tree trunks into a viable composition.



The solitude of my location was both resplendent and a little unnerving. There are bears in these woods and the whole time I was there, I kept waiting for the sound of heavy breathing over my shoulder. I smashed this piece out in about two hours and packed up double-quick.



Next time I want to paint a forest scene, I think I'll find a nice spot near home. The only bears we get in the city are on Kraft peanut butter jars!

The last day on the island, I revisited my cabin painting block-in from early in the week. Here's how it turned out after a few hour's work.

Some Classic Gouache Pin-Up Paintings

A few years ago I got very interested in 1950s pin-up art. One of the best illustrators working in that genre was Mike Ludlow, who painted the 1957 Esquire magazine pin-up calendar. Here's a page from that year...





I studied Ludlow's painting technique and then gave it a try myself. Gouache is a tough medium but also a lot of fun. Here's the result of my first effort...




I'm hoping to get back to doing some more of these -- check back soon!

My Kawaii Paintings

A few years ago I became really interested in a type of cartooning called "kawaii" This little green-eyed cat is my favourite, but I did a bunch of other paintings which you can see in a set on Flickr

Marshall the Magnificent!

Here's a little painting I did as a Christmas gift. It's our cat, Marshall, as a Luchador. I did two of these paintings and they were so well received when I posted them on Facebook that people started commissioning me to do similar paintings of their cats!

Plein Air Paintings from the Summer of 2012

Once again this year a bunch of us artist friends went up to Whitefish Falls, Ontario, in the heart of the LaCloche Mountains, to paint 'en plain air.' We stayed at on the island at Bayvilla Lodge... ... which has so many lovely views of the surrounding landscape! But sometimes you needn't look to the horizon for beauty... sometimes it's as close as the parking lot, which is where I sat one afternoon and painted this: Just down the road from the lodge is a wonderfully ramshackle old garage. On the Tuesday of that week I took all my gear down to a shady grove across the road from that building. Three hours later, I had this piece mostly done... Backing up, on the Monday of our week in Whitefish Falls I started a painting of the bay inlet - a view from right outside our cabin on the little island... Above, sketching the scene in paint - below, laying in broad swathes of colour with a palette knife... ... and brush... After about 3 hours, I arrived at a satisfactory conclusion... well, not exactly "satisfactory." Although I wasn't unhappy with how I'd blocked in the scene, the full daylight look just wasn't working for me. So I turned this painting to the wall. That evening we enjoyed a most spectacular sunset. This is the scene I felt I really wanted to portray! I returned to this painting on our last day in Whitefish Falls and painted it over from the memory of that sunset. One other painting came out of our week in Whitefish Falls; this "View to the Willisville Mountain," also as seen from just outside our cabin on the island - except turning to look more to the North. Returning home to Hamilton, I still had the plein air painting bug. One spot I'd wanted to paint for a couple of years now is a farm at the corner of Puslinch Townline Rd and Victoria Rd. So one evening I drove out there and set up in the corner of the farmer's field. The following weekend I travelled back up north for my annual fishing trip with a great group of pals. I spent the Friday night at my buddy Mike's cottage, and that provided the perfect opportunity to do a little painting! Mike has done so much for me over the years that I was delighted to be able to present him with a small token of my appreciation: this painting of his cottage, which he seemed really pleased to receive. Travelling further on up north to the Oxtongue River, to our friend Wade's family cottage, where we have held the fishing derby for many years now, I spent about eight hours over two days painting in a little grove of pine and hemlock trees. This view of the Lovell family cottage is the result. And finally, upon returning home to Hamilton once more, I painted this view of a storm sewer - that's right, a storm sewer. It's in a tiny, forgotten meadow near here... so jarring to see it in the middle of such a beautiful, natural environment... I've wanted to paint it since last year. Last Tuesday I did! Today (Saturday August 11th) I'll be bringing these paintings and quite a few others I painted last summer to the Locke St. Art Market, 211 Locke Street South, Hamilton, Ontario If you're in the area and have some time, please drop by and say hello!

A New SiRobot Painting

Here's a little digital painting I did a couple of weeks ago based on Simon's robot character design.

 

 I did this in about two hours in Corel Painter. Hope you like it!

Super Simon Sunday: Robots & Ogres!

Its been quite some time since I posted any of Simon's work. For those of you who were wondering, "I wonder what Simon's been drawing lately?" Well, here are some recent drawings.

A New Magazine Cover Illustration

This month I was commissioned to do a cover for Mac Times magazine, McMaster University's Alumni Association magazine.

The client asked that I create something that would convey the idea of many generations of a family being McMaster graduates. They mentioned that a "family tree" of graduates was something they'd like to suggest... so here are a couple of thumbnail concepts I came up with based on that theme.

They liked the one on the left.

 

One sunny Sunday last autumn I had taken a bunch of photos while out walking the dog over at the golf course, and these photos served as inspiration and visual reference for the look I had in mind for this illustration.

I really wanted to try to get a bit of that gorgeous Bernie Fuchs "sunlight filtered through leaves' quality in this illustration. When I Google Image Searched Bernie Fuchs, this image came up.

Perfect.

I began roughly painting the base colours in Corel Painter. I used the Oil Pastel tool to lay in the beginning of my colour scheme.

 

 Here's how it looked after I'd 'painted' in the base colours, building up some tonal contrast.

 

Next I began adding filtered light (à la Bernie Fuchs)...

 

... and textured the whole thing with one of my favourite Painter tools; the Scratchboard Rake.

Final touch: some "lens flare" effect (although NOT using an actual Effects filter - just oil pastel).

 

 Here's the graduation cap (or "mortar board") painted in a separate file.


 

The finished piece, after dragging in, resizing and rotating many copies of the mortar board.

 

Here's how the finished piece with text in place looked once the magazine was printed!

You can see more of my editorial art here and some of the other magazine covers I've done are here

Painting 'en plein air'

Last summer I went up to the LaCloche Mountains with some artist friends.  We stayed in this little place called Whitefish Falls and spent a week painting 'en plein air.'  Actually, my friends spent the week painting... I spent the week starting and abandoning paintings.  By the last day I'd really produced almost nothing of value - and then I managed to squeak out these two small oil studies in one day.





They were done when our group went out to Willisville to paint on location.  I was actually pretty happy with them and wished we were staying longer.  It was my first time painting landscapes, first time painting with oils... and because of my schedule back home in the real world, that was it ...



... until last month, when we all went back to Whitefish Falls again!  This time I was determined to sink my teeth into painting - inspired largely by the discovery of the work of Albert Pucci in a couple of old Grumbacher "How to Paint..." books I had found in a used bookstore earlier this summer (you can read about Albert Pucci on my other blog, Today's Inspiration).   As well, I've been following the progress of a couple of friends, Michael Cole Manley and William Wray, who have been doing some fabulous, inspiring landscape paintings over the last couple of years.

Anyway, things started off quite well... on the first day I managed to get one painting done.




I spent about four hours on this, which was done mostly with palette knife, a technique I was really curious to try after reading the lessons in the Grumbacher books.



Day two (Tuesday) and I'm starting on my second painting, using a burnt umber ground like the one Pucci uses in one of his lessons.  Initially I included the bass boat  you see just beyond my artboard... but I was struggling with this piece, getting more and more frustrated.  Ultimately, my friends advised me the boat was the problem. They said the painting needed a dose of "Boat-be-gone."



So I scraped it out and went with just the natural features in the scene.  This was met with hearty approval from my ' painting advisory committee' and I have to agree.  Sometimes you need to edit your scene or else, as our instructor Richard Edwards explained, you get a painting that actually has two or even three paintings crammed into it.



I passed this old rusted bulldozer every day on my way to get the morning paper at the variety store. Finally, on Wed. morning I went out at 6 AM and sat down to paint it in the rising sunlight. By 9 AM the light was gone so I planned to come back the following morning and finish it - but we had cloudy weather both Thursday & Friday morning. I hope to still go back in and work on this further. Interestingly, it was particularly well-received by a lot of the husbands of the women who were in the painting class!


This is a tough read, I know... its the view of an old abandoned hydro generating station built right into the cliffside on the opposite shore of a waterfall (which is not visible in this angle). The cliff is made of multi-coloured stone and part of the back interior wall of the station is exposed cliff face. Very cool, but probably looks very odd in my painting.

We spent the morning on top of Willisville Mountain, which is to the left of this scene, picking wild blueberries. So I only had about an hour and a half to whip this up. Looking across toward the tiny hamlet of Willisville.



That was my last effort up in Whitfish Falls.  The next day I drove to my friend Wade's family cottage, near Dwight, Ontario, on the Oxtongue River for our annual fishing derby.  I painted the piece below over about three hours on the Saturday afternoon of that weekend.



Oh yeah, and I won the derby!