This is a sketch I made to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Edmonton’s Sugar Swing Dance Club. It features all of the dance paraphernalia a person would typically see at a Sugar Swing event — dance shoes, water bottles, hats, etc. As I mentioned before, I like drawing letters and gave it another shot here. This was made with ink pens ranging from 0.3 width to 0.05. Sans the text and zero gravity, this is pretty much what Sugar Swing’s lost and found looks like!
You Might Like: Scotch Tasting at Happy Harbor Comics
I’m excited to announce that the 2015 scotch tasting season has begun at Happy Harbor Comics! March 28 brings what will probably my favourite tasting yet: the heroic edition. Tasters must try to guess which famous comic heroes and villains would prefer which scotch, and of course sample it for themselves. Each pairing comes with a collectible card made by one of two Edmonton artists, featuring artwork of the character enjoying his or her drink of choice.
Edmonton’s friendliest comic book store hosts these tasting events a few times a year. Each one features a silent auction to raise money for charity; the event in March will support Team in Training marathoners for cancer research. For a good cause you can treat yourself to some geek-friendly artwork by local artists along with other auction goodies.
There are limited spots, so get your tickets quick! If you can’t make it in March, there are two more events on June 20 and November 7. More details about the event are on Happy Harbor’s website and on the Facebook event page, and you can contact the store to reserve your spot.
Hand Lettering Project
This is a recent typographic piece I made for a friend, and it features hand-drawn letters. I’m trying to get better at drawing letters in different typefaces. This one was made with one gold pen and ink pens of varying widths, with the smallest being 0.1.
You Might Like: LADY GEEKS UNITE
Continuing my plan to expose you to Edmonton’s weird and wonderful subcultures, today I’ll tell you about the meetup group LADY GEEKs uNITE (LGN).
LGN provides a safe, welcoming space where ladies can geek out about comics, games, movies, and other pop culture of a geeky nature. The monthly meetups are usually hosted at Happy Harbour Comics. Men are very welcome to attend as the guest of a lady.
Past events have included board game nights and a screening of the documentary She Makes Comics. I once attended a silent auction for charity, which featured some gorgeous art prints that were snagged and brought home from various comic cons and expos.
Even if you can’t make it to all the events, the Facebook group is really fun to be a part of. The admins post fascinating articles about female artists making a name for themselves in geek-type industries (comics, superhero movies, etc.); I’d recommend joining the Facebook group just to liven up your feed with lady-centric success stories.
Some fun events coming down the pipe for LGN: Just around the corner on March 5 is Drink n’ Draw, a casual night to sit around with fellow artists and draw/write/create while you enjoy a beverage. Next is the She Hulk book club — if you’ve wanted to get into comics, or back into comics, this a great place to start! Read She Hulk Vol. 1 Law and Disorder, then meet with the geeks to chat about it on April 2.
Head over here to join LGN’s Facebook group, or here to check out their blog.
Friendly Reports for the Town of Devon
It’s been a busy time for the Town of Devon, so I have another project to show you. The Town has been developing its parks, culture and recreation master plan, which requires a lot of community engagement. I had the opportunity to design an overall look for the plan that gets applied to all reports and communication pieces; the most recent piece was their interim report. Over the last few months, the Town surveyed residents about Devon’s rec facilities and programming. This report presents the results and was circulated in the local newspaper as well as posted on the Town’s website.
Devon wanted their master plan “brand” to have a down-to-earth, home-grown feel that welcomed residents to participate in plan development. I used the old-fashioned football “game plan” markup to further the idea of a strategy that connects the folks of Devon to arts, culture, and recreation.
Designing the report involved styling various graphs and charts to match the master plan brand, and generally making the content as friendly and graphical as possible. Fun fact: adults in Devon average more than three times the minimum amount of sports and rec activity recommended by the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology.
If you’d like a closer look at the report, you can see it on the Town of Devon’s website here.
Before and After: Logo Edition
Here’s a peek behind the curtain at some concept development I do for different projects:
Sketching is my most preferred method of experimentation and purging crap ideas. When it feels like the idea might work, I leave the sketchbook and proceed to building the design digitally.
The sketches shown here aren’t all the ones I made for each project; sometimes there’s pages of doodles and thumbnails. Some concept sketches are extremely rough, like with the Bal Jam example; from time to that’s good enough to get rolling. Experimentation still happens at the digital stage, so often the final product looks different from what I sketched initially.
Sketch Roundup: New Art Supplies!
I spoiled myself with a trip to Delta and bought a bundle of new art pens. Lately my favourite thing to do is mess around with kraft paper. Both the colour and the texture make a really lovely background for drawings.
Making the chevron doodle was a very zen-like experience. And a challenging one too — precision and steadiness are not generally my wheelhouse.
Can anyone recommend their preferred white and gold pens? Mine are okay, but I’d like pens with a finer point. If you have any tips on art pens in general, I’d love to hear ’em.
Underground Edmonton: Gamepub
A person can live in Edmonton for years and not know about the weird and wonderful subcultures that exist here! So from time to time I like to mention such a group, as it might be up your alley.
Today I’m pointing you to Gamepub. Gamepub is a friendly meetup event hosted by GameCamp Edmonton, an industry group that promotes Edmonton’s flourishing video game development community. At Gamepub you’ll hear speakers talk about game design theory, show off games they’re currently working on, and share the ups and downs of making games. Sometimes you get some cool, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, like when David Chan (Audio Director of Hinterland Games) went out into a blizzard to collect some unique audio for wilderness survival game The Long Dark.
Meetings take place at StartUp Edmonton and usually end with a trip to the Mercer pub downstairs, hence the name Gamepub. Highly recommended for fans of video games, tech, programming, and beer.
Join GameCamp’s Facebook group to hear about upcoming Gamepub nights and other cool game dev news in Edmonton. The next meetup should be at the beginning of March, so watch for that!
Latest Brochure Design – Town of Devon
The Town of Devon wanted a friendly way to communicate its bylaws to residents, so I got to make a handy little booklet doing just that! We used colour-coding and icons to differentiate the booklet’s three sections (home, yard, and neighbourhood), plus tip boxes to highlight the extra-important stuff.
The whole thing is designed to be really easy to navigate and digest, because, let’s face it, most folks don’t love learning about the rules. If you’d like to check out the booklet in full, it’s available here on the Devon website.
Greetings from Victoria
I’m on a mini vacation and decided to make myself a postcard. At the time I assumed that nonstop rain was just a feature of Victoria; turns out that my trip coincided with what the locals call a pineapple express (some kind of tropical weather phenomenon). Sketched with a 0.1 art pen plus a Sakura PenTouch gold pen. Happy with the gold pen, because it gives a really rich, yellow gold!
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