Business Cards

Like I said before about themes popping up intermittently through my work after years of absence, here's some bright colourful buildings that I've created recently.













These designs actually came out of the background for my recent Steampunk stencil. And fun fact, they're also business cards! Back in November for the Steampunk show I wanted to have business cards on hand. But between scrambling on getting the stencil itself done and the frustration of trying to get a website up I didn't make a deadline to get a design done and professionally printed. So I figured I'd do something a bit different that the printer wouldn't have been able to provide me with anyway. I like the idea of how the cards can be displayed all together to create their own cityscape. The only problem is that when I wasn't handing them out personally and they were just on display, people didn't realize they were business cards. I'll have to think of a solution to this display problem. Aside from blue and green the cards themselves actually fit within standard business card dimensions. Amusingly, the blue and green were the most popular and I ran out of them first. The sad thing is that since I just printed these off my home PC on card stock, the fine tips get bent up pretty quickly and smudging and water damage claimed a handful. But good news! I think I've found an affordable way to have this concept professionally printed and I should have them in January. I decided I wanted to create a few new designs and scrap some of the originals to create a full spectrum rainbow of buildings.


I originally tried to tie in each building design with an emotional drive that corresponds to the colour, but that theme kinda falls apart. Bonus points if you know where the inspiration for this comes from and can spot design elements hidden in a few buildings that reference it.

Robotic Tea Party!

This is a piece I just created for a Secret Santa dinner party with some other art school grads. It combines some of my favorite things: robots, tea, mustache, bow ties, and general airs of sophistication. I'm thinking a series of charming robotic socialite vignettes would really add to the decor of some opulent tea house. It's a possible series I'll come back to soon.

What is old is new again! Water Colours! pt. 2

Again, here's a playful water colour I did some years ago.


Looking at this I notice how I've learned a few things about water colours and painting these past few years. Strangely, or maybe not, I'm not sure what other art schools are like. But at the one I attended, it didn't seem like it even occurred to most of the teachers that some sort of variations of painting techniques should be taught, or explained in some way. So up to this day I'm really learning something new with every new painting I do and supplementing that with library books on techniques and looking at other artist's work. This doesn't actually sound too unusual or bad when I type it. But those art teachers could have said, "oh by the way, there's such a thing as masking fluid, you might want to look into it, it's pretty awesome."
What I really find interesting about this particular piece is how I made it so many years ago in relative isolation from other work during that time, and how it ties into current themes I'm interested in.

What is old is new again! Water Colours! pt. 1

So here's an illustration that I did quite a while ago, and unlike most older work which fills me with a deep shame and embarrassment, this I still find charming in its own way.

This was actually one of my first experiments with overlapping ink drawing on a textured wash of watercolour. It's a good thing it turned out well for me or I could have neglected this sexy mingling of mediums. This specific piece came out of a combination of overlapping events. First, was a highpoint of fascination with anatomical prints, such as Gray's Anatomy. Second, a drawing assignment where we had to pick an object to draw 40 times over in different ways and viewpoints etcetera. Thirdly, I'd recently had my wisdom teeth removed and they were sitting around on my desk in a little plastic box. I'm pretty certain I almost copied this tooth composition exactly from a print I came across, just changing the shape/ type of tooth. But I still think it's great, and maybe I'll get back to doing more of these someday. If you know any dental offices looking for art I think something like this would be amazing. It'd definitely beat lame ass prints of Orcas jumping and coastal sunsets.