Freelance Graphic Design from Edmonton, Alberta
Today I’m posting a few random sketches I’ve made lately. Still enjoying Copic markers, still only have the three colours.
Just to give a little context: the top guy is from when my husband was sick for a week. That’s pretty much what he looked like. The happy shopping cart was inspired by my trip to the shopping cart graveyard.
Dear video games, I will love you forever. 
I was really excited to get chalkboard signs for the ballroom last month. Not only do they make great signs, but they also dress up the big, bare walls and give a friendly vibe. Below are some of the signs we made and my attempts at chalkboard art!
We made the boards using chalkboard paint so we could have them nice and big.
The first order of business was getting a timetable in the lobby so students can easily see what classes are happening. When I took one freshly-painted chalkboard for a test drive I found it quickly started to look grungy. Chalk dust washed everything out. Then my friend directed me to this wonderful tutorial for using chalk as paint. I wiped the board down with Coca-Cola (works like a charm!) and started over.
To make the paint all I had to do was grind up the chalk and mix the powder with water. A long time ago we got an old-timey mortar and pestle as a gift; I didn’t know what to do with it then but it sure came in handy here. In paint form, the chalk is concentrated; and once it dries, it’s extremely vibrant. Huge difference between the original table I drew vs. the one I started painting.
The painted board is so much easier to read! Need to work on my lettering though.
The next project was to make a menu for the bar. But while the menu was getting finalized, I doodled a little Valentine design for fun:
Then it was menu time. My lettering had improved a little bit by then. Around this time we also settled on an official name for the bar: Corner Pocket Cafe. Corner Pocket is a song by Count Basie, a musician who gets regular play at the ballroom. The name also fits because the bar is neatly tucked away in the corner of the building.
“We have Twizzlers?!” exclaimed our office assistant. Now that people can actually see what we can make, maybe we’ll push more drinks! An important lesson: everything looks far apart when you’re painting up close. But when you look at the menu from a distance, it’s very compact.
I absolutely love chalkboards as a signage solution. They’re cheap to make, and it’s fun if you’re an artsy type.
My friends. You probably thought I was joking when I said I’d turn my recent afternoon ramble into a photo essay. But that would be a wasted opportunity. It’s not every day you find the place in your city where shopping carts lay to rest.
Birkley and I were out for a walk when we stumbled on a little ravine in Capilano. That in itself was a surprise — I had no idea we were seeing just the tops of trees behind the skate park on 98 Ave. It’s a cute spot to explore on it’s own. A path in the snow led us to the bottom, but there are no paths other than that; be prepared for some mild trekking.
A short distance into the ravine you’ll start to see lonely shopping carts.
Unmistakably a Wal-Mart cart. I don’t like it there either. But so sad!
Over half a dozen of these poor guys. Why do they all end up in this same area?
And here: the rare and elusive red cart.
While I don’t feel the need to write a TripAdvisor review, this was a pretty amusing discovery. Here’s one more picture, which I took because it looked like these carts were waiting for the bus:
The other week, something very cool happened at the family business: one of our regulars brought his art class to a dance! Andrew, an art teacher at the U of A, sought to give his students a fun and unique opportunity to study humans in motion.
First he made them take our drop-in dance lesson. They seemed pretty nervous at first, but after a while I heard lots of laughter in the ballroom. So I don’t think the experience was too harrowing! And dance-wise, they did great. Actually, after a while I noticed that a lot of these classmates were meeting each other for the first time during the dance lesson — even though they’d had a few classes together by now!
Andrew is the gentleman in overalls, by the window. Watching. Judging. (just kidding!)
After the dance lesson they settled in to do some drawing. But a few of the braver students did some social dancing for a few songs. And when some of them were asked to dance by our regulars, they graciously accepted. Some were more comfortable in behind a sketch pad, though. I get it — dancing socially is an acquired taste for some!
And thus went the night. It really was wonderful to have a bunch of artists in the room capturing swing dance. Attending a big University can make you feel lost in the shuffle, so I love how the dance caused these students to meet and actually connect with each other. And man, I’d count myself lucky to have their art teacher! We all remember that one teacher who went the extra mile to create an unforgettable learning experience; Andrew is that kind of teacher. So glad he introduced these students to swing dance — hope some of them keep on dancing!
Every year the family business Sugar Swing puts on a roaring New Year’s party, and my job is to promote it! There’s a different theme every time, and this year we sought to recreate Manhattan’s hottest night club in the 30’s: The Savoy Ballroom! The Savoy is where jazz legends like Count Basie and Chick Webb battled their bands — and where swing dance was enjoyed and developed.
I designed a bunch of marketing pieces, but there are a couple things I liked best. My favourite was the above photo banner. It features an image of an actual Savoy dance in progress. This banner served as a fun backdrop for guests to take photos and selfies. Here’s what the whole thing looks like:
Another piece I was quite happy with was the poster. More so than the banner, this shows the vibe of the event.
There’s a hint of Art Deco happening in the border and colours; however, in the fonts and dancing figures I wanted to capture the more abstract lines and shapes of jazz culture. So by fusing the two looks I aimed to borrow the swank of Art Deco (because it was a fancy New Year’s party) while acknowledging the roots of swing.
To finish up, I’ll leave you with some Blue Steel:
Hello friends! Just a simple post today to say Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you. This is my little coffee shop sketch…so festive the sketchbook acquired a halo somehow (??).
And I haven’t forgotten about you, people who get sick just in time for the holidays! Here’s another lil’ sketch, which I made for a friend who was fighting a nasty chest cold. May everyone’s lungs be pink and happy this season.
Last week I wrapped up one of my favourite projects ever: illustration for a pair of shoes! They were a commission from my dance friend James, who gave them to his girlfriend for Christmas. (She already got her shoes so I’m not spoiling anything!) All the images were hand-drawn with permanent fineliners. I’m super happy with how they turned out and will show & tell a bit of the process below.
The shoes to be decorated were a pair of white canvas Keds — which are favoured by swing dancers, including James’ girlfriend Sepideh. After chatting a bit with James about what Sepideh might like, I sent him a couple concept sketches. We felt flowers would be well-received, with the occasional bunny throughout:
Not wanting to mess up the shoes, I drew on them with pencil first:
After pencils came the inks. Drawing on canvas is tricky because the inks tend to bleed. It was a careful and zen-like process. I wanted the design to look delicate and intricate, so the individual elements are pretty small. A fun challenge was adding Sepideh’s name — in her native language, Farsi. I used a tiny 0.1 marker to help me capture the various accents and width changes in the characters.
I’m sad to be finished this project! But delighted that I got to do it. Sepideh’s part of a professional dance team, so these shoes might actually appear at one of her gigs! In the meantime, I’m tempted to doodle a pair for myself…
It’s been a glorious, busy fall season and I’ll wrap it up with a story. It’s a story of a rabbit that hopped its way across every medium to finally settle on a t-shirt.
It started when I drew a picture for a dancer friend and mailed it to his home in Sweden as a postcard. This picture was of a stylized rabbit that doubled as prairie landscape — a very Albertan subject he might find interesting. It was drawn with a Staedtler fineliner pen, then X-Acto-ed out of my sketchbook.
I later decided to use this illustration to help promote Sugar Swing’s Lindy Harvest; it’s a swing dance camp run by our family business which itself has a rustic, Albertan theme. Then I discovered my dance friend was hired to teach at this dance camp — and found it pretty funny that he’d arrive and see his rabbit everywhere!
And the rabbit popped up quite a lot. He landed on web banners, posters, and postcards as I worked on material to advertise the event. But my favourite iteration of all was the event t-shirt.
In the dance scene anyway, event t-shirts are a very tough sell. Dancers accumulate t-shirts at an alarming rate, and it takes a lot for them to buy one after regular event costs. So I had my work cut out for me this Lindy Harvest: design a tee that hopefully people will like!
The resulting t-shirt featured good old prairie rabbit, but in a wrap-around design. The front half of the rabbit was on the front of the shirt, and the back half on the back. Initially I wasn’t sure how doable this was print-wise, but my printer did an excellent job making the vision happen. For the garment itself I picked a soft tri-blend material with a modern cut. The shirts were available in heather red and grey. I’d say the project was a success because we managed to mostly sell out!
Coming up with wearable t-shirts has been my biggest design challenge in the last few years. I’m at my sixth shirt design, and still learn something new every round. For now at least my rabbit gets a break!
A look at how the sausage is made! I’ve talked about how you often need three different design programs to create one design project (and that post is here). This post shows what that looks like — with diagrams!
A graphic design is made of components that are layered on top of each other. Each component is made in a different program, and can contain a bunch of objects or images in itself. I’m not talking about the creative process here — this is the technical view of how a design comes together. To demonstrate I’ll use a poster I made recently:
Your design can have three components (but sometimes less): raster images, vector images, and text.
Raster Images
Raster images are pictures made of pixels, like photos. And if it’s made of pixels, the program to use is Photoshop. This is where I made the background for the poster. The tools and features in Photoshop mainly focus on creating visual effects, whereas its text and drawing tools are very limited. The image gets saved and placed as a graphic in another program.
Vector Images
These are graphics that aren’t made of pixels. There’s a sophisticated explanation for it, but I always tell myself they’re made of math. Anyway, Illustrator is the program for making vector graphics. In this example, they’re the candy shape and the fancy letters. Illustrator mostly features tools for drawing and manipulating shapes, and has little in the way of text layout and photo editing functions. The words had letters weaving around each other, and I needed Illustrator to make that effect.
Text (and simple objects)
At some point in the process designers combine all of their graphics together and add text. The program for this is InDesign. Its features are low on visual effects and drawing tools, but heavy on tools that make text look nice and coexist with images. You can conveniently make simple graphics in InDesign, which I’ve done here for the circles. The graphics made in the other two programs get saved as files and then placed in this program, like inserting clipart in Word.
And you’re done! Or not. The actual process is not quite so linear as I’ve laid out here. Designers often jump around, finessing each piece in its respective design program. Also, some projects might not need all three design programs; an ad might just have a photo background and not need Illustrator for vector graphics. But this is generally how a design gets assembled.
Edmonton has a gorgeous fall season, and I suggest you take advantage by wandering a special neighbourhood you may not know about: the Westmount Architectural Heritage Area (WAHA).
I discovered this spot when a friend and I took a quick detour off 124th Street to see her childhood home. WAHA exists because of its high concentration of historical houses — and their owners’ dedication to preserving them. Some homes even have a plaque out front detailing a bit of history.
These homes mostly showcase the Craftsman and Foursquare architectural styles, which were popular from the 1910’s to the 1930’s. They’re extremely quaint; you’ll see a lot of columns, gabled roofs, and rambling porches. Even if you’re not an architecture nerd, these houses are really pretty to look at!
Apparently young professionals flocked to Westmount during the 1910’s, as it was the cheapest yet nicest neighbourhood in Edmonton at the time (while nearby Groat Estates attracted wealthier families). It’s come full circle! According to Avenue magazine, yuppies love Westmount’s vintage homes and aren’t afraid of the upkeep. (It doesn’t hurt to be blocks away from the city’s favourite artisan bakery, Duchess.)
If you’d like to learn more about Edmonton’s historical buildings, this website by the Edmonton Historical Board is actually really fun to explore. Have a giggle over the aptly-named Brutalist buildings.