Finally working on the invites. Actually the bulk of the work is done. I’ve been slow and sluggish working on things, but I want to get it right.

Other than that, I’m enjoying the summer, in a variety of ways. We went to my familys cottage last week, and yesterday we took a stroll down the street through little India looking for shawls for me and my bridesmaids. I dreamed of dressing like an extra in the Darjeeling Limited – and was nearly convinced to by a lady in a shop who told me: “everyone should wear sari!”

Then we got a snack from a street vendor – fresh grilled corn on the cob smothered in butter, lime juices and spices – amazing!

I would apologise for for the lack of reading material, but what are you doing inside reading this? Get out there, enjoy it too!

I spent an afternoon at the book store (with a nummy gingerbread latte), and solved some of my confuzlement issues – as per usual, I was on the right track all along.

Since I liked his first book so much, I flipped through, and actually ended up purchasing Making Comics by Scott McCloud.

Yes, it’s a book about making comics – not illustration – of course. But I happen to be very interested in comics, and illustration is really just a single panel comic most of the time. I think there’s a lot they can lend to each other. Illustration is non-sequential-sequential art to comics sequential art, if you will. Ok, that was confusing… point is they have a lot in common.

This book talks about everything I could have hoped for, AND it’s got contemporary examples that I actually recognize this time around (O’Malley, Larson, Ware etc) AND it’s got exercises for me to play around with AND it’s got a meaty bibliography at the back AND it’s exactly as pragmatic and irreverent and practical as I’d like it to be.

I especially like how helpful it is when it comes to talking about depicting the things that readers/viewers/the audience picks up on, and needs to be drawn in to an image, or story. It seems to be based on some solid psychology/evidence of what has worked throughout comics history. That’s going to be really helpful, whether I’m illustrating or comicing (And I plan to do both, actually).

I think the only reason I don’t see it recommended everywhere, is that it’s really new – 2006 publishing date, to be specific.

However, I also really appreciated the pointing in the direction of Ed Emberly. His stuff is adorable, and awesome and soooo much fun – I’m probably gonna order some real soon (they only had one book, and it’s cheaper online). He’s gonna be a good distraction and reminder that I don’t always need to complicate things unnecessarily. Simple is definitely best a lot of the time. So thanks for that, Travis.

I am researching books right now. Books of the instructional, non-fictional variety, to be specific. Books in lieu of art school (as previously discussed).

I recall reading Brian Lee O’Malley at some point say how awesome Understanding Comics is (which is a very well respected compendium of basic comic knowledge – done up, rather inspiredly, in comic book format), so I grabbed a copy at the Beguiling this weekend.

It came highly reccomended, and it remains highly reccomended. Good stuff there indeed. Some of the references are getting a little old, but for the most part Mr. Scott McCloud sticks to the classics (Herge, Spiegelman, Tezuka, Marvel) and they hold up excellently.

But now that I understand “sequential art” I feel the urge to sharpen my drawing skills, drastically. So I look to yet more books of the non-fiction variety. Unfortunately, it seems most instructional art books are not terribly advanced, not terribly sexy, and worst of all: pretty hippy-dippy-new-agey at times. Ick.

Here are some of the one’s I’ve seen most recommended, and the reasons I haven’t brought myself to purchase them yet:

1. Drawing on the Right Side
   From what I’ve heard this book steals most of what’s good about it from another, better book, and the rest is bad science – right brain/left brain drivel that was largely disproved years ago. I hate faux-science. I hate it when laymen, without following any actual scientific method or process come up with lame, simplistic theories and expound them for undiscerning housewives. This is why I don’t care for carb-free diets, or self help books.

2. The Natural Way to Draw
   This is apparently the much better and much more thorough workbook that the “Right Side” one took most of it’s exercises from. It’s apparently a classic, and and largely outlines the traditional method of learning to draw – the one most of us who’ve ever taken an art class have already been taught. The problem here, of course, is that in the 9 plus years of art training my little brain has experienced, I’ve likely worked my way through most of the stuff multiple times already. Grids? Blind contour drawings? No thanks. I had my fill in the ninth grade.

3. The Artist’s Way to Spiritual Creativity
   This book is definitely one of the ‘hippy-dippy-new-agey’ ones. It’s even got the word “spiritual” in the title. I’m far too pragmatic for that sort of thing, I’m afraid. I just end up mocking it whenever I skim it at the bookstore.

   Besides, it’s really a writing guide. And I write fine, and quite prolifically. I even have a pretty strong and definite literary voice.

   And of course, I am an illustrator (who sometimes writes) not a writer. I understand that it might help me ‘embrace my creative side’ and every-time I decide “no way, not for me,” internally, I find myself looking at it again just to see why so many people highly recommend it… But the same people who recommend it also like Sark a whole lot. And I’m not a fan. She’s like a middle age women’s answer to R. Crumb (who I’m not a fan of either. But I respect Crumb more. At least he’s a bit more irreverent).

   Basically, I just wish there was something along the lines of this book that would allow me to keep my street cred (“The Indie Way to Being Cool,” maybe…? Yes…? No…?).

   But above all else, this book DOES NOT teach you how to draw good. It doesn’t teach you to draw, at all. It’s not, actually a drawing manual. So all this is moot. Nope. No good.

4. Creative License
   Again, this one is a bit too self-helpy for my liking… and a bit unfounded… and too inspirational: You can do it! Hang in there!. With some (as in very limited) drawing advice thrown in.

   I like Danny Gregory, I really do, he’s a nice guy and a good illustrator, and a great blogger – but I’ve read a good chunk of his blog, and I’m not sure there’s much in this book I couldn’t glean from the blog itself. Or that there’s much left for me to learn from him in general.

   From reading his blog, I’ve found that he doesn’t seem terribly open to change or advancement in style or technique. I’ve often read him railing against those who would dare to tell him that he could improve himself in one way or another. And I just don’t think that’s the attitude I want right now.

   I’m a highly critical person. I beleive in constructive criticism. I thrive on lots of in depth discussion and nit-picking. I mean, my boyfriend reviews Sorkin on Ain’t it cool, for goodness sake. Besides, there seems to be far too much discussion of WHY to draw, and not nearly enough on HOW to draw, and that’s what I’m really aiming for. More instructional, less inspirational.

So, anyone out there got any better ideas?

Or am I just being a stubborn, snobby, stick-in-the-mud?

(All in all, I think for now it seems like lots more life drawing is the way to go.)

california final, originally uploaded by beth maher.

A few years ago (shortly before I met Liam) me and my family took a trip to California, and drove down the coast from San Francisco, all the way to San Diego. There are signs posted all along the highway that say “panoramic vista.” Every-time my dad saw one, he made us stop the mini-van and get out to see it. It became (one of many) family jokes.
“Oooh! Look! A panoramic vista!”
I painted this for him (acrylic paint on a small canvas), based on a picture I took at one our many stops.
I have uploaded to flickr pictures I took of the progressive stages of this painting, as it was being painted. Starting at the under-painting and working my way up to this final work.

Fall has pretty much begun, and things are picking up speed. I have fielded many crafting invitations, and I hope to get doing that again.
Liam is going to be gone A LOT, which I’m ok with because we spent WAY too much time together the last few months. Not that I’m ready to throttle him or anything, but we’re running out of topics of conversation.
On Monday’s he’s at the school being the hot young writing TA. The rest of the week, he’s the hot-shot young intern in Toronto.
We’re gonna try to move and find a place downtown. Nothing too soon, just keeping our eyes open.
The magazine is in that block of clubs, restaurants and new media firms found in between Spadina, Queen, King and University. If you know Toronto, you know what I’m talking about. So I’m hoping we find something around there (no farther north than Bloor). I hope we can find something that doesn’t involve the words: ‘waterfront’ and ‘condo’. I don’t think we could afford it any-ways, but I wouldn’t want it even if we could.
I just picked up a neat book: Jack Hamm’s Drawing the Head and figure. It’s a bit dated. But in a good way. All the girls have permanents and high heels, and the men wear suits and lack genitalia. I kind of love it.
I’ve been looking for a way to brush up on my figure drawing. It’s hard to find books that are actually helpful. Most of them assume by memorizing anatomy and staring at renaissance paintings you can learn it all.
This one’s a bit different. Not only does it have that awesome retro appeal, it actually tells you all the nifty little proportional tricks of the trade that all the pro’s know, and refuse to share. Best of all it was cheap.
I would still like to be able to track down (and then be able to be afford) a book of nudes for figure drawing. I’ve seen a couple, but they’re limited and expensive. I wish I could take my first year life drawing class all over again.

I spent my long weekend up at my cottage. For those non southern ontarians unfamiliar with the concept, I am referring to my family’s cute little hundred year old log cabin a few hours north of here (quite close to algonquin park, actually) on the banks of a cute little spring fed lake carved into the Canadian shield.
It is actually the inspiration for my last illustration Friday entry. The view from my dock at night looks very much like that little illustration.
Of course it was kind of chilly, and with me getting over a cold I spent most of my time inside.
Thankfully I had to find something to entertain myself with, so I got some drawing done. My new project is to go through my brand new copy of fresh fruits and draw lots of harajuku girls with a ball-point pen in an old notebook of mine. I was colouring them in with this brightly coloured conte I had with me, but now that I’m home I’ve switched to crayons. Conte just doesn’t cut it when you’re drawing with a Bic in a lined notebook. Too classy.
I want to practice drawing human forms and faces a little more, and those crazy fruits kids are a pretty distinct place to start.
I’ll post pictures when I get the energy to put batteries in my digital camera.

Argh. I used to scoff at the concept of texture. I would see other people obsess about it – fashion designers, antique dealers, faux finishers, and of course my fellow artists and illustrators.
I was all about colour and form.
I did not care for texture.
Now all of a sudden I find myself obsessing over just how in the heck this dude manages to squeeze the most beautiful water-colour, gouache, ink and chalk look-alike images out of lowly little Adobe Illustrator. I mean, I’ve been really trying, really hard to replicate stuff so that it looks like it has a human touch to it, like it was created using traditional medium. I’ve even gone so so far as to re-introduce myself to the real stuff, but this guy comes along and makes me feel completely inadequate.
So if my interpretation of Black and White for illustration Friday seems a little simplistic, it’s because I spent a long while just trying to get the textures to look halfway decent.
I have come to believe that Steve Mack is either a liar, a magician or a genius. Or he at least needs to share his techniques. With me, preferably.

Wow. I feel like I haven’t done this in forever.I almost didn’t do this one, as Penelope herself beat me to the whole birds/worms concept, but I pushed myself to do it anyway. Our interpretations are sufficiently unique.
I got the inspiration for this yesterday afternoon. We were driving around the beautiful wine country we are surrounded by (Liam was dropping off resumes for seasonal work at the wineries). As I was waiting in the car, a little black bird swooped down into the vineyard, then back up past the window with a wriggling, sqworming little worm in his mouth.
My first thought was “Ick!”
Then “Hmmm… Neat…”
And then came “A-ha! Nourishment!”
I worked away at this one, adding, subtracting and re-colouring until I was 99% happy with it (I don’t bother with that last, intangible 1% – otherwise I’d never get anything done).
I think the main reason why I use the computer for the majority of my work is the degree of control I can yield over it. I will occasionally drive myself crazy, but for the most part (if I really work hard), I end up more pleased with the end result because I can alter any little thing that bugs me right away.
I sometimes feel like I need to be drawing, and sketching in “reality” more, and I probably do. But the truth is that one medium is not so different from another.
I’ve been told my grandmother (who was also an artist) thought a good artist is not limited by their medium. A good artist (according to her) could pick up a wax crayon, a sable brush, or a burnt stick and be able to create.
While we all admittedly have our own comfort zones and niches, I think for the most part, I definitely agree.

But I have been buried under work of late. That infamous Very Big Project is taking up all my time. Which I don’t mind actually.
I’m working mostly in black and white, very clean lined, but cluttered with gradients, and a lot of grey filling in the empty spaces. I didn’t like the way that looked – too lazy and muddy looking. I looked back at my original drawings in my sketch book, and realized that they looked a million times better. They’re just black brush pen on white sketch paper, no fancy gradients to be found.
So I’m keeping the illustrations just to stark black and white, thick, line drawings and recreating the shadows and texture by hand. Which I’m much more happy about, but is definitely a bit more time consuming. Stark black and white just works so much better graphically. It pop’s right out at ya, which definitely what I’m going for with this work.
Stark, pop, graphic and dynamic. Definitely some good hints as to what I’m working away at.

There is too much to do, and not enough time to do it. I’ve been trying to get work done on the Really Big Project, but this week has proven to be much too busy. It would figure that now that I have alternative work to do, the editors have finally realized that having a illustrator on staff is a useful resource.
Ton’s of requests for illustrations this week, and more to come.
While I appreciate actually having to do my job, I feel like its left me behind where I should be.
I’ve managed to get a little done today, and I will probably work on the RBP into the night (such is working freelance). However, tomorrow afternoon I leave for a regional conference in Windsor. So that pretty much cancels out the weekend.
On the upside, I really seem to be getting into the swing of things.
I’ve run out of ink for my favourite pen, and I haven’t gotten the chance to run out and get another (especially since the variety I use just so happens to be a rare and unpredictable thing to hunt down) so there’s been no more sketching, but there has been a lot more experimenting with gradients and transparencies in Adobe Illustrator.
I seem to be at a spot where the infamous disadvantages of 3D rendering simply aren’t important anymore. I’m just looking for a way to apply clean and minimal texture to something, without resorting to fiddly Photoshop filters and brushes. I’m very happy with the way this stuff is turning out.


The Birdie got printed in the paper this week, but there was no space for the Fishie. They were both originally in black and white, but I colourized them. I also turned the bird into a robin in celebration of the fact that today, though rainy, actually makes me feel like spring has arrived.
I’ve been putting off mentioning it for fear of scaring it away. But I think it’s safe to say that the warmer months are upon us.
Woah, and the sun just suddenly came out to confirm my suspicions.
Alas, I am stuck inside by the cold glow of my laptop screen.
Back to work I go.

I am a chronic avoider of sketching. I have to be pushed into doing it. This is why I am trying to participate in Illustration Friday every week, it gets me working. Not that working out illustrations on the computer is really the problem.
It’s getting a real pen on real paper.
I don’t lack confidence, or inspiration. I just don’t draw.
I occasionally feel guilty when talking to fellow artists who have spent their days, their entire lives, with their nose stuck in a sketchbook. I get a little rusty from not being in constant practice, but for the most part I’m not bad at all.
The way I rationalize it is that I am an observer, rather than a recorder.
I am the type of person who will sit and look at something for a very long time, soak it all in, before I start work on it. I pay attention to the things around me, the colours, the shapes, the light, the surfaces.
I’ve heard that that’s the way the ancient Japanese painters worked. They would contemplate something for a very long time, years even, before picking up an implement. That is how they created such precise, graphic and minimal images. They had studied there surroundings for so long they could condense things down to the most absolutely necessary detail.
I think it also has something to do with my near-sightedness.
Which sounds odd, but I’ve also heard somewhere that being near or far sighted can have an very real effect on the type of art a individual produces.
I believe it, because I am very focused on the foreground, the small details, people and objects. Which makes sense if you think that when I take off my glasses, that’s all I can see.
Working on this Very Big Project means that I have to literally go back to the drawing board.
And the weird thing is… I’m enjoying it. Doodles, storyboards, sketching and re-sketching the same elements over and over again until I’ve perfected them… I don’t mind it at all. And best of all I can actually see improvement in the confidence of my lines and shapes over a few pages.
I may just have to change my tune about this whole drawing thing.

I re-worked that last Illustration Friday entry a bit more. I really wasn’t happy with it. It was calling me out.
I went back to the original Illustrator file and tweaked it a whole bunch. I carefully meshed in complex gradients and added a whack of transparency’s to give it an almost photographic look. I’m impressed that I did it all in Illustrator.
Not quite a 3D rendering, but I hate the way those look anyways. They are impressive from a technical standpoint, but they manage to suck the life right out of even inanimate objects not to mention what it does to living things.
I’m very pleased with this now. It is, yet again, a bit of a departure from my normal more cartoony style, and a lot more time intensive due to the huge file sizes and dozens of tiny pieces. So I don’t think it’s something I’ll do often.
It’s just nice to prove I can toss out something realistic looking.
That’s not usually required at the paper, since we print very low resolution on newsprint. A simple vector cartoon is usually what will look the nicest in print.
My little brother went home yesterday. He whined about being bored while he was here but I know he had fun goofing off with Liam, and playing with the cat.
We had a almost entirely pet free home while we were growing up (except for a few carnival prize goldfish that lasted a few weeks, and a unsociable gerbil that we mostly ignored) so any friendly animal is a novelty for us.
However, I have a mounting stack of work to get to.
I love being busy with illustrations to do, but I need to get to it.

I am very happy that penelope is now posting the illustration friday topics on friday, so I can work on them on the weekend. This way, I actually spend my time doing something constructive on the weekends, and I don’t let it interfere with my real work.
This is my “bloom.”

I went with a diffent style this week.
I’ve always had trouble painting flowers realisticly for some reason.
They always come out too fuzzy and soft.
So to replicate paint, I tried out that vector/photoshop combo that’s so popular.
I made the flowers in illustrator, and gave them some pretty gradients. Then I opened up photoshop and texturized it with a filter or two. Then I went in with the paint brush and the blur tool to loosen it up a little.
I am happy that I was able to replicate my painting style digitally, but I still managed to make the darn things fuzzy and soft.
This is why I stick to vector cartoons… Oh well, it’s pretty anyways.

Usually I don’t care much when celebrities die. Occasionally I do. Hunter S. Thompson was a genius (irregardless of his controversy), and his death is tragic. He did so much for journalism and writing, especially the radical kind that we as student journalists are supposed to uphold. I knew we (at the Press) had to acknowledge him somewhere. So I did my edcomic this week as bit of a tribute to him.

On the more technical side of things, I just realised that my edcomic characters look very Flintstoneian. I think I’m OK with that actually. Its better than South Parkian (which I hear about them way, way too often).
This is not actually the print version. I wasn’t happy with it, so I tweaked it a little. I spent forever on it yesterday, wanting to get it just right. I wish I’d give myself more time to do these things, but then they very often wouldn’t be timely (which is critical for an edcomic).