Macleans obituary piece

Here's another obituary illustration I did for Macleans. It's not for their most recent issue, just one I hadn't got around to posting yet!

It was for a Buddhist man from Laos who escaped the Communist regime with his family and immigrated to Montreal with the help of Christian missionaries. He later moved to BC and worked at a mushroom farm. My dad told me that a lot of Japanese people got their start in Canada working on mushroom farms in BC, too.

On either side of the pillars I recreated a Laotian textile crab motif that symbolizes bountiful harvests.

Happy Birthday Emily!

So the birthday card I mailed to my sister on July 4th finally got there yesterday. It was domestic letter mail! Argh. Anyway, it's a little tribute to her mage character in World of Warcraft. She can conjure all types of tasty foods, cake being one of them. Pretty nice trick!

Sometimes I wish I could actually incorporate watercolours into my professional work, but I can never make it look quite right. One day...

Here is some more of my ridiculous Warcraft fan art.

Japanese thank-you card

Thought I'd post this after Japan's stunning, incredible victory in the FIFA Women's World Cup. I made this thank-you card for my Japanese relatives after they visited Canada during the summer. Thankfully they all live on the other side of Japan and weren't directly affected by the earthquake and tsunami and my mom was able to enjoy a mini family reunion with her siblings.

I used a few Japanese floral motifs on the card. Here are a couple more examples of more of that kind of work.

A really terrific and exciting soccer match. And it restored my faith somewhat that shorties can compete with the big boys and girls!

"Dorothy in the Poppy Field" print selected by Society6

Just a quick note -- Society6 chose "Dorothy in the Poppy Field" to be included in the Society6 shop. I can vouch for the quality of their prints, having ordered an "Umamihime" print of my own!

Urban Decay Naked palette vs. my collection

Another quick little make-up sketch this one for research and comparison purposes!

Argh. I'm not made of stone. The first time I saw Urban Decay's famed "Naked" palette in-store at Sephora, I jumped on it like a cat onto a catnip mouse. And I had gift cards so I only really paid $20 for it! I've played around with it a bit and whipped up this chart on the colours it has vs. the colours I already have, and... The results are inconclusive.

It seems like one way or the other I have dupes for half of the colours already, but they're spread across a number of places and here they are in one easy-to-travel-with palette. And the pigmentation and texture are nice... Basically, I'm trying to convince myself not to return it to Sephora and get a nice big gift card back.

Any thoughts?

FontStruct, my new best friend

Click the type below to enlarge!


When enlarged the type looks a bit fuzzy because I had to save it as a jpeg so it could be looked at up close. But trust me, it's a TTF and razor-sharp!

Happy Birthday and Congrats!

Here's the card I did for my boyfriend for "Happy Birthday and Congratulations for Getting into Med School". We've got Calgary Tower, the Saddledome, the weird rotating ring sculpture in front of the Telus World of Science, the famous(?) foothills, and the mountains, which you can see on a clear day. Also the University of Calgary Coat of Arms which is where he's gonna be learning how to doctor.

He's been in Calgary for two years working on his Masters of Neuroscience which he's going to turn into a PhD, and then do a PhD/MD thing. I'm super proud of him!

I also attempted to bake my mom's famous chocolate mousse cake for this birthday, but because Calgary is about 1,048 ft above sea level it came out kinda dense. At least, that's what I'm gonna blame it on!



Today we went out with our friends to this Japanese restaurant and another customer was celebrating their birthday. The wait staff launched into the obligatory "Happy Birthday" ditty and then immediately followed with an inexplicable rendition of Lionel Richie's "I Just Called to Say I Love You"! So when we got back to our place and served the cake with candles on top, we did our best version of "I Just Called to Say I Love You" :D.

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day! And/or Happy Early Yankee Fireworks Day! Confession time: This illustration is the finished version of one of the sketches I submitted for the National Post job that the art director didn't pick. I'm not one to toss a good sketch, so I decided to work it up on my own time.

Instead of making it another June illustration, I swapped the roses and honeysuckle (June flowers) for waterlilies and larkspurs (July flowers) and added fireworks to make it even more July-like.

Here's the initial sketch:


Reworked pencils:


Inked:


Hope you like it!