PRO TIPS FOR MILWAUKEE MAGAZINE

I contributed another spot illustration to this month's Home section in Milwaukee Magazine. Had fun illustrating this little downtown neighbourhood. Great working again with art director Kathryn Lavey on this!

IMAGINARY MAP

I had the great pleasure of working with art director Laura Callaghan again in creating this map for the latest issue of Oh Comely magazine, a gorgeous British publication. The current issue has a feature about illustrated fictional maps.

I have to say that I struggled a bit coming up with a concept. I'm so used to doing hours of research about a city and plotting out all of the landmarks that when I was faced with the prospect of creating virtually anything, I found the freedom a bit paralyzing. Visions of pirate ships and mermaids and other cliché things like that kept running through my mind and I knew I wanted to push past these and create something quirky and weird.  This concept came to me at the eleventh hour and I had a ton of fun sketching it out once the idea popped into my brain.

I was thrilled to find my copy of the magazine waiting in my mailbox when I arrived home from work yesterday evening! Aside from Oh Comely being such an all-around beautiful publication, the feature included some fantastic maps by some amazing illustrators (including recent illustrator crush Charlotte Trounce). I'm honoured to be included amongst such great company.

ILLUSTRATION OLYMPIAD: DAY FOUR AND FIVE

Playing a bit of catch-up on the illustration a day concept. I enjoy drawing corgis is silly glasses. Watching women's vault now. It's nuts! Ladies sitting down and stepping out left and right. I feel like I'm jinxing them by watching somehow. Getting excited to watch mens 100m dash later! Bolllllt.

P.S. Speaking of adorable silly dressed up corgis, the summer Mini Boden catalogue had some great illustrations.

ILLUSTRATION OLYMPIAD: DAY THREE

Here we go, day three!  My eyes were a little bigger than my plate last night when I decided to draw St. Paul's Cathedral in a frenzy after failing at drawing corgis for a half hour. So here is your belated day three illustration. St. Paul's Cathedral was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and always reminds me of Mary Poppins.

For some reason I didn't go into St. Paul's on our whirlwind tour of London in high school. We went to St. Paul's but while the rest of the group was inside, Anna and I explored the square out front. I remember being fascinated by the simplicity and repetition of these buildings:

ILLUSTRATION OLYMPIAD DAY 2.5

Got a little overly ambitious with today's Illustration Olympiad drawing. It's about half done—can you guess what building it's going to be? Full illustration will be up tomorrow night! Goodnight everyone (or good morning London). 

ILLUSTRATION OLYMPIAD: DAY TWO

Is it sad that I'm impressed with myself for keeping this up for three whole days in a row?

I've visited London once for about six hours when I had a long layover at Heathrow on a trip to Italy in high school. Luckily, they let us out of the airport to do a bit of exploring. We managed to pack quite a bit of sight-seeing into one afternoon. One of the things I remember most is how interesting the pigeons looked, though. They just looked more beautiful than North American pigeons.

ILLUSTRATION OLYMPIAD

After watching hours of Olympics coverage this past weekend, I hatched a plan to create an illustration for every day of the games. Partially as motivation for finishing my London map, partially to justify the exorbitant amounts of time I am spending in front of the tv. I'm calling it the Illustration Olympiad. Here are my illustrations for Saturday and Sunday.

The cauldron lighting was one of my favourite parts of the opening ceremonies on Friday. One of the coolest cauldrons I can remember. (Second favourite—making Lord of the Rings jokes during the forging of the ring).