Illustration For Out Magazine

Here's something I did for Out Magazine. The illustration is for a diary by 'Shortbus' director John Cameron Mitchell. In the article, he writes of his experiences at the first ever Russian Gay and Lesbian Film festival at St. Petersburg, Russia; which was ultimately met with protest and police presence.

Here were some of the concepts I came up with. The Art Director went with the first one but I also liked the second sketch because it showed censorship in Gay films in a unique way. Perhaps, I’ll take sketch 2 to final on my own time.

Here are some snapshots of my progress work.


For the final illustration, I took a different direction with the colours. You can never go wrong adding more colours ;)

Thank You

Freelancing as an Illustrator is tricky. It takes a lot self perseverance to keep things running but also a lot of self control to maintain a healthy work balance. For the last few months, I’ve been caught up in work and so I’m devoting November to myself, family and friends and only accepting limited work on the side.

There’s a bunch of new images that I’m eager to share with you all. I made an effort to take snapshots of my progress work so that you can follow along. These will have to wait till next week though, because this post is devoted to all the wonderful people who have kindly volunteered their time and efforts to post about me on their blog. It’s a lot of work but these guys do an good job and some of the stuff they share is quite inspiring. If you have time, do take a look:

Abduzeedo / http://www.abduzeedo.com/



Popwhore / http://popwhore.com/



Nonslick / http://www.nonslick.blogspot.com/



Illustration Mundo / http://www.illustrationmundo.com/



Illustrophile / http://www.illustrophile.com/
Charlene does a fantastic job posting about new talents. Probably the first place that blogged about my work.



Drawn! / http://drawn.ca/



Farmidable / http://www.farmidable.com/



LCS / http://thelittlechimpsociety.com/



Thanks guys, keep up the good work.

Enlighten!

Here's my contribution to the Enlighten! Show happening November 21 at the Helms Bakery Building in Culver City , CA. The Limited edition lamp design is available through pre-orders, prior to the event here. Since the lamps are a Limited Edition, orders will only be taken up until Friday, November 20th. For more infomation about the show, go to www.enlightenshow.com

I went with a sketch of roses I did on photoshop as my inspirtaion and worked from there.


Considering that this was for a lamp design, I wanted to make it as bright as possible so i brought back the red. Here's final illustration:



Here's the illustration digitally imposed on lamp.

Illustration for Canadian Business Magazine

"Foreign Acquisitions Rules are getting Muddier"...
Here's an illustration about the whole controversial sale of Canada’s Nortel to US Nokia Siemens Networks. To which, Ontario-based Research in Motion attempts to usurp the deal for themselves but was not allowed to bid in the recent auction.

Here’s the sketches I came up with. The AD went for the pigs.


The fence (representing the foreign rules between Canada and the US) is weak and broken and so the pigs (representing the company’s assets) are wandering aimlessly. Here is the illustration in progress:



The final illustration.


I later cropped the image so it would fit with the page design. Unfortunately some of the pigs were losted in the process. Here's a scan of the actual magazine page:

Trick Or Treat Illustration for Marketing Magazine

Here's an illustration for Marketing Magazine about two start-up phone companies and how they might change the mobile phone industry in Canada. Both companies are taking a sort-of philosophical approach, claiming communication is everyone's right and that cell phones aren't just rich people's play things anymore. They're going after the 40% of Canadians who don't already own a phone.

Here were my roughs/concepts for this article. I wanted to communicate that cell phones were cheap, affordable and easily accessible for purchase to the public. The Art Director liked the bird's eye view composition with the piñata so we went ahead with that one.



So here's the final. The AD wanted me to use dark muted colours such as greys, blues, and reds to stay consistent with the magazine's colour palette. I don't usually like using greys but I think the bits of colourful confetti carries it through nicely.

Runner's World

Here's an illustration I did a while back for Runner's World Magazine July Issue. It was for their Ask the Expert Column. I had to come up with drawing concepts to demonstrate that pushing a running stroller adds additional training benefits.

One benefit is the strengthening of certain muscle groups. To convey this, I had the wheels drawn like weights. Here are the other sketches I came up with.



I had some time so I worked the composition more.



And here's the final illustration.

Fashion Phobias

Here's a little something for More Magazine's article, "Lets Ban Fashion Phobias". The illustration coveys one of fashion-related condition.. "The Upper arm fear".

I don't have a problem with my arms. But if I were to nominate someone who should be concerned about this particular part of their body... it would be me. I'm quite active so my right arm is noticeably larger than my left.

Karen Von Hahn, author of the article discusses women’s fears about their body imperfections and their self-imposed fashion restrictions due to these fears. It’s a missed opportunity because if done right, fashion can accentuate our feminine attributes. Not to mention, hide our little imperfections.

I’m not a big spender, but I love shopping! And I say we listen to Karen and let go of our fashion phobias :)

Here were some of my initial concepts.



And the final illustration.