Flowery sewn shirts!

Here's an exciting development! These are three shirts that I made for the christmas Market Collective. They are each completely one of a kind. I randomly printed the pattern on the shirts, in a different location and formation on each one. Then I chose some floral fabric that I thought would go well, cut out some individual flowers and then sewed them on! Lots of fun!

Two of the above shirts have sold already, but I've got some more done up! Fun!

I did some custom pieces for a couple of ladies who saw my work at a festival this summer and wanted different colour combinations and different quotes.

Monkey Unicorn Pullovers

These are some experimental sweaters I've recently done. I had a great time using the new fabrics I got at a sale a while ago. There's a church near me that has a yearly fabric sale where all the members bring in fabric they no longer want, and all proceeds go to Grandmothers in Africa. There's a whole basement full of fabric with lots of old ridiculous things that you wouldn't be able to find in a store. And great bargains!!

Anyways, to make these one of a kind sweaters, I first silk-screened the silly creature onto the plain fabric, then sewed together the plain and complementary patterned fabric, and then sewed that onto the sweater itself. Time consuming. I really like how they turned out though! 

I want to adopt one for myself, but I'm having trouble deciding which one I like the best. I kind of want them all... 

More Quotes

I was selling shirts and art and cards at the Market Collective at the beginning of December, and made up three new quotes on fabric. I even sold two of them! And I have a stack of wood waiting to be wrapped in fabric and several pieces of fabric that are ready to go. Lots to do!

Oh man, sewing on the flower in the first one was pretty tricky. I'm really impressed with how it turned out. If you look closely, that white line around the edge is the thread. Done on a machine. Very slowly and carefully....

More Quotes on Fabric Art Dealies

Here's a couple more experiments using silk-screened patterns and sewn on elements to capture the mood of some inspirational quotes. Fun stuff. It's fabric stretched over a 8x12 inch piece of 3/4 inch plywood. I can see many directions to take this kind of thing. So much to do, so little time....

My Head Is Filled With Song: Part III

Here's the third piece for a series I'm working on called "My Head Is Filled With Song."

This one is for Wilco's "The Late Greats." Man, what a good song. My only complaint is that it's not long enough! And what awesome lyrics: "The best song never gets sung, the best laugh never leaves your lungs, it's so good you won't ever know, and never hear it on the radio."

I've noticed that I almost always create images that have a light background and dark foregrounds, so for this one I wanted to try switching it up and have a dark background with light foreground objects. Fun stuff.

FABRICS!

I love fabrics and have been using them more and more in my work and have started to amass quite a collection. I went to an annual sale at Woodcliff United Church and walked away with two HUGE bags of fabric for a ridiculously good price. All the fabric is donated by people who have leftovers lying in their basements and then all the proceeds go to Grandmothers in Africa. Very neat. And check out all the awesome fabric I picked up! I can't wait to use it in paintings, and on shirts and for random sewing projects! YAY!

Promotional Piece

This is a promotional piece I'm printing in postcard from and sending out to people who will see it, like it, and then hire me! That's the general idea anyways...

My goal is to send one out every fours months-ish. Each one will feature a quote that I find interesting or inspirational and my visual interpretation of the quote. Fun stuff!


Oh yes, and I thought it would be neat to show some process on this one.

I start out with a very rough sketch just to get ideas out. Yup. Pretty amazing drawing skills displayed on the first sketch. Then I do a nice line drawing in pen. Which I then scan and add colours to and play around with in photoshop to get some idea of what I want to do.

In the colour comp for this one, there's a bit too much going on and not enough contrast, so I fixed these things for the actual final painted version which is acrylics for the background, fabric, and gouache for the "drawn" part. And that, is how it's done!

My head is filled with song: Part 2

SMASHING PUMPKINS: 1979

Eesh. Posting every week is tricky. Okay, so here's the second one of the series I'm working on. Man! I love this song! Who doesn't! So good to drive to! Sooooo, yeah. I experimented a bit with using fabrics as a main element and gluing stuff on and whatnot. It's colourful that's for sure.... Keep on the lookout for another in the next couple of weeks!

My head is filled with song: Part 1

FLEET FOXES: Tiger Mountain Peasant Song

I've recently been working for a painting company (yes, houses, walls, solid colours...) to generate some income, and have been finding it tricky to make time anything creative. To get things flowing again, I've started a project for myself. Every two weeks, I'm going to try and make an album sized illustration based upon a song that I really like or has affected me in some way. The first one is inspired by the Fleet Foxes' "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song." It's a neat image, but I think it could reflect the song a bit more. I don't think the illustration quite has the same feeling as the song does... I will do better on the next one!!! AHA!!!

The light of the moon!

As in Edward Lear's poem, here are the owl and the pussycat going to sea in their beautiful pea-green boat.

Illustration Friday - Frozen

A silly painting inspired by perhaps my favourite thing to eat. ICE CREAM!!!!!!!!

Chicken and Fish

This is just an experiment based on a silly drawing from my sketchbook. It's painted with gouache. I kind of forgot about it. I suspect it's something I will be using more often in the future!

TIKI!!!!!!

This is a panel I did as part of a friend's installation in which he turned a gallery into a tiki room with a bar and a stage and bamboo and anything else you could possibly want. I foolishly left it til the day before I needed to have it done and stayed up ridiculously late to finish it... Oh deadlines... I rather like how it turned out. Very silly.

Surfing-ho!

This is just a silly surfing poster. I like surfing.

Art Attack Apron

I did an apron for the silent auction at art attack this year, and had much fun sewing on eggs and ridiculous little drawings in thread, all related to food of course...