Digital Scrapbooking

Hey blogoverse! Long time no type!

I've been busy over here, making my biggest work of art - a baby in my belly! I'm due around May 1st and know the little one will provide a lot of inspiration for my work. Tyrone and I are super excited.

Not only that, I've also been working on getting my Scrapbook design store going. Digital Scrapbooking has a huge following. It's basically like the traditional cut and paste physical scrapping.. but everything is done digitally in photoshop. I make the elements and papers and people purchase my kits to capture their memories. It's fun, and allows me complete creative freedom.

Here are some examples of my kits. To see more visit my store at Scrapbookgraphics.com

Robowatermelon

Another robot for the monthly giveaway. This little guy loooves watermelon. Too bad about the rust!

Robotic disco inferno

Here's another robot who comes equipped with his own dance party. These robot paintings are fun little exercises inspired by my nephew Owen. He goes crazy over them! I'm curious to see what's going to happen when Pixar's Wall-E is released. I'm sure his room will be overflowing with merch.

Robot and kitten

Not even big angry robots can resist the cuddly love of a cute widdle kitty!

This mini-painting was created for my March 31st facebook group giveaway. There's still time to get your name in the draw - visit Alana McCarthy Illustration Group for more details.

I love doing these paintings. They give me an excuse to create some work for myself. They also help to expose and promote my work to a brand new audience.. and sell some prints in the meantime. Speaking of prints, if you loved some of the past paintings, but weren't the lucky winner I will be making them available as prints and selling them at the conventions this summer.

2008 See me at the...

June 7 - 8 MoCCA Art Festival 2008 - Puck building, lower Manhattan, NYC

July 12 - 13 Paradise Comic Convention - Holiday Inn on King, Toronto

Aug 22 - 24 FanExpo - Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Toronto

Sept 28 Word on the Street - Queen's Park, Toronto

Box Lunch Promotion

My rep, Three in a Box, has an editorial and book publishing promotion coming out called The Box Lunch. The theme of the promo is "duality." For my spread I decided to focus on parallel universes, and put it in the context of a children's book.

I would love to do more children's books. The last one I did was in 2006 for Scholastic. It was about the carousel in North Bay and how the whole town came together to create this gorgeous hand-carved carousel. It was really labor intensive, but so much fun.

I frequently drop by the children's book section of Chapters. There are so many inspiring books there. My favorite at the moment is a wordless picture book called Flotsam byDavid Wiesner. The imagination and creativity that went into the creation of the illustrations and story is just mind blowing.

Observational drawing - Deadwood style!

I miss observational drawing. I haven't done any for so long. So I took a bit of a break from my assignments and picked up my pencils.

Tyrone and I just finished watching the first season of Deadwood. I love the costumes, characters and palettes. I've never been one to get into westerns, or period pieces, period. But I'm really digging this show.

I did a bit of re-watching and decided to draw Seth Bullock, played by Timothy Olyphant. Not only is he VERY easy on the eyes, but Seth also hails from my 'hood - Etobicoke, Ontario! (I wonder what Etobicoke was like back in the 1870's)

In the background is Alma Garrett the widow and the orphan Sophia. She's a bit of a homewrecker but I was totally rooting for them to hook up. Can't wait to see what the next season has in store.. especially when Seth's wife arrives to the camp.

February's giveaway painting

Lately I've had a lot of assignments with choppy water or stormy skies. I've really enjoyed them so I decided to repeat these themes in my Facebook group giveaway painting. Poor little mouse.

The princess and the peacock

Here's a new promotional piece. I had a bunch of peacock reference from a trip to the zoo that I had been itching to use.

January's draw painting

I decided on a muted, limited palette for this month's painting giveaway. I've been watching the WWII series "Band of Brothers" which has a very grayed out tone during battle scenes. It's also been so bleak and sunless so far this winter I thought I would draw some inspiration from my surroundings.

Holiday Portraits

Here are two portraits I was working on in a last minute Christmas rush. The first one is of my 3 year old nephew Owen. He loves my "Robot and Bird" image and is big into Thomas the Tank Engine. I decided to put him in a fantasy world where the robots make the trains and play by his side. Owen's reaction to the portrait was the best. He was so confused. He would stare at it, then walk away, then walk back to stare some more. Too much to take in at once I guess. Then he pointed out that Toby (boxcar in the middle) isn't real because I forgot to paint the number 7 on his side. Oops! Guess when playing with trains is your entire life these little details matter. I promised to bring my paints along the next time I visit and fix it for him.

The other portrait is of Rosie, my brother's girlfriend's dog. She commissioned me to paint it as a gift for my brother since he's totally in love with the friendly lab mix. I tried to amp up the colour in the piece to make it more interesting and allude to her lively, happy personality.

Winged cat

This is the image I painted for the giveaway on my facebook group. It's a 6 x 6 " acrylic on canvas with 1.5" stretchers.

I was struggling over what to paint. I wanted it to be something that would appeal to everyone, since I had no idea who would win. Then after getting frustrated, I thought: "Hey, they're getting a free painting.. they should be grateful no matter what the image."
.. and then I painted a cat with wings.

Kid's party gone wrong

This is a new image I cooked up for a calendar promotion that my rep, Three In a Box will be releasing in the new year.

The Boy and the Crow

This painting was a gift for the wedding of two wonderful people Willow Dawson and Ray Cammaert. The theme for their celebration was "The Boy and The Crow." Which I later found out worked off Willow's last name - Dawson meaning son of daw (Jackdaw) Ray being the boy.

I stuck with a two tone palette of burnt sienna, ultramarine and white. I laid down a neutral grey tone in the background and then worked the highlights and shadows up from there.

Cat Lady - B&W

I'm in the midst of coloring her, but here's an inked cat lady. After all the comic conventions I've been attending lately I thought I would try my hand at some traditional ink drawing. As for the subject matter - with a new kitten running around here (bringing our cat total up to three) I sometimes feel like a cat lady.

TCAF this weekend!

This weekend is the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. I'm so excited to be in it again, along side my partner in crime, Tyrone McCarthy and the members of SketchKRIEG! Best of all it's FREE ADMISSION! Put on by The Beguiling it features a not to be missed lineup of some crazy huge names in comic arts. It's being held on Saturday and Sunday Aug 18 & 19 in the Old Victoria Building, U of T (Northeast corner of Queen's Park.)

I'm working away on having some mini original paintings to sell like the little 4x4" guy up there. One thing I learned from the Fruitopia job is that I can get a lot of painting done in a day if I just focus.

Drop by and visit. All the info is on the link above. It truly is an amazing festival with a little bit of something for everyone.

See you there!

Fashion Illustrations

Now for something completely different.

I've got a bit of a knack for loose watercolor fashion illustrations. Once in a while a job pops up for this type of work and I get called upon to switch styles and mediums. It's a nice respite from the tedious layering of acrylics. The speed and quick decisions needed for these type of images is liberating yet restrictive at the same time. One false stroke and I need to start the whole painting over again. It actually took me a few shots before I loosened up enough to get the look that the designer wanted.

These four were my favorite out of the twelve.

Quite possibly the cutest thing I've ever painted...

Here's the final for the pet portrait of Ludlow. It's full of tooth rotting sugary cuteness! I'm really happy with how it turned out - and so are the couple I was commissioned by (phew!)

Teddy bear picnic

I was recently commissioned by a friend of mine who is a fabulously talented artist as well - www.samanthasandbrook.com - to create a portrait of her pet dog Ludlow. Rather than the usual pet in front of bland background Samantha had an unusual and imaginative request to paint her puffy toy pup at a formal teddy bear's picnic. Ludlow, looking like a stuffed toy himself, looks right at home among the bears.

I began by sketching out some different possibilities for the composition. Sam and her husband settled on their favorite two and suggested combining certain elements from both of them. From there I worked up a linear. Samantha requested mainly neutrals with pops of color. Since I'm used to working in a high contrast colorful palette I decided to do a color linear. This lets me check that she likes the color, as well it gives me a reference to print and stick to while I paint.

I'll show the final 16 x 16 painting once I'm finished.

Kitties!

Here are some cat studies for a self-directed project I'm working on. Just a little something to keep me busy when I'm between jobs. These are character studies. I want the style of the cats to be somewhere between real and cartoony. I took the liberty of coloring a couple of them in Photoshop, just for fun, and to make my sketches a little more interesting.

YeeHAW! Redneck Games!