Syd Barrett in Wonderland for A Circus Mind

Here's a "A Circus Mind" illustration I did a while back. Somehow I hadn't posted it before so here it is! 

I love Alice in Wonderland so I was happy to do this one. Pretty teacups, a teapot, a raven and a writing desk. Here's another Alice piece I've done. I don't often do surreal stuff so it was nice to play around!

 Inked version and sketch:

-- Julia
Portfolio site

Exile on Main Street for A Circus Mind

Starring Mick and Keith, kickin' it in the south of France. I wanted to create a laid-back, beachy vibe and include some bits and pieces of architecture and background environments to give it all a sense of place. 

The Rolling Stones recorded their tenth British studio album in a rented villa called Nellcôte in the little commune of Villefranche-sur-Mer, near Nice. In the upper right I put the distinctive gate that precedes the villa. The villa itself is the building in the background. The pillars and the odd lion-woman statue are also features of Nellcôte. The little village and beach area were inspired by photos of the region. Thankfully, there were lots of picture to use as reference -- I was able to get a good look at the guitar Keith was playing, as well as his striped pants!

My twelfth and last illustration for Ryan Cox's book "A Circus Mind". Here are the other ones I've posted.

Sketch: 

And here is the whole set, as well as the colour palette for the series:

Can't wait to see the finished book! Fellow illustrators Dushan Milic, Zela Lobb, Jacqui Oakley, Andy Potts, and Elissa Parente all also contributing work. Dushan is designing the book too! Very excited :).

-- Julia

Portfolio site

Red Hot Chili Peppers for A Circus Mind

My penultimate illustration in my "A Circus Mind" series! Featuring one of my favourite bands: the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I had their album "Californication" in mind when I was creating this piece. It's been so hot and humid out, so I figured it was the perfect time to share this.

Because the poem that Ryan wrote (he's the dude who set this whole project in motion) concludes with a reference to Hallowe'en I wanted to incorporate that into the image. I felt like Hallowe'en could give the illustration the eerie feeling I sometimes get from RHCP's music. Hallowe'en is a time when the spirit world is said to be closest to ours -- seance!

Fun fact: this is the second time I've depicted a seance scene. The first time was in the New Yorker, for a blurb mentioning an opera set in San Francisco called "Seance on a Wet Afternoon". 

I wanted to do something spooky and contrast that with cheesy Hallowe'en decorations and candy and a modernist California setting. The Chili Peppers have created haunting, melodic songs and more rap-based, testosterone-driven rhythmic work. I feel like they have two sides and I wanted to show that.

I think when most people think of RHCP they imagine them shirtless (and often pantsless!), possibly because of their Simpson's episode or their infamous Rolling Stone covers. I depicted them shirtless because I wanted to show their tattoos, to contrast with the seance setting, and to indicate the warmth and laid-back attitude of California. And of course, if I'd dressed them up in three piece suits they'd be unrecognizable!

Details that it might be difficult to see: The two framed pictures on the wall are renderings of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road album covers (mentioned in the poem), the "chili pepper" lights represents the band's name, the pool in the backyard is meant to slightly resemble the Californication album cover, the building in the distance is an indication of the Laurel Canyon mansion they used to record Californication (also mentioned in the poem), and the bottom right has ants crawling to a weird shape that recalls Dali's painting "The Persistence of Memory" (referenced in the poem).

Left: Original sketch. Right: tighter sketch 

Hope you like it!

-- Julia

Portfolio site

Willie Nelson for A Circus Mind

Here's the tenth illustration in my A Circus Mind series! Good ol' Willie. I'm really enjoying learning more about music through my research for these pieces. 

Willie was initially more of a songwriter than a performer because record labels found his voice too plain. Craziness. He helped establish Farm Aid (which is why I've got him walking by "amber waves of grain" in this illustration). He formed the company Willie Nelson Biodiesel. Willie is very much pro marijuana, so I have the plants springing up in his footsteps. A busy man and an American icon!

It's always fun to use the A Circus Mind palette in different ways. All ten of my illustrations use combinations of these colours (although technically the gradients cheat a little bit). I used four for Willie.

 And sketch! I gave the final a frame to give it a bit of a stained-glass feel. 

-- Julia

Portfolio site

Chelsea Hotel for A Circus Mind

Hotel Chelsea is a historic building in New York. It hosted countless numbers of famous musicians, artists, and writers. One of the more notorious stories connected with the Chelsea is about Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols and his girlfriend Nancy. Sid woke up to find Nancy dead from a stab wound on the bathroom floor and he wasn't sure what had happened the previous night. Drugs were involved and I'm sure that didn't help!

I've drawn them here together with some pretty intense red lighting. I wanted to contrast the lighting with the tenderness they must've shared during better times. 

A couple of distinctive features of the hotel including the vertical "HOTEL" sign and the ornamented iron balconies, which I made sure to depict in the illustration. I also checked out the hotel on Google Street View and saw what the building on the other side looked like and used that as a reference.

Here are the other Circus Mind illustrations I've done!

And sketches:

-- Julia

portfolio site

Andy Warhol for A Circus Mind

 Another for my series of illustrations for "A Circus Mind" by Ryan Cox! This one has a kinda different colour thing going on than what I usually do. I'm always trying to figure new stuff out! There are a lot of portraits in this one, from Mick Jagger to Edie Sedgwick and Holly Woodlawn in the front, to Candy Darling and Gerard Malanga in the back. All of them were fixtures in Warhol's studio The Factory. I added some little background details to indicate that's where they are. I saw lots of pictures of the interior of The Factory and there were a lot of pillars wrapped in tin foil and the odd ladder :P.

I offset the colours a little to represent the silkscreen process, as well as to add a party-like atmosphere / garishness / uncomfortable vibration. I suppose I depicted Warhol the same way I feel in similar situations!

I focused on post-shooting Warhol, and how withdrawn he became after the incident. Even before the shooting it seems like he had a detached view of life -- but after, he said "Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television." Warhol had to wear a surgical support wrap around his torso, which I made sure to include. He died a year after his shooter did. He had spent the rest of his life afraid she would try to kill him again. I wanted to contrast the bright colours and fleshily-coloured people surrounding him with what he may have felt like on the inside. Warhol always seemed colourless to me, even in colour photographs. 

Here are the sketches!

-- Julia

portfolio site

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band -- for a Circus Mind

My latest illo for Ryan Cox's rock n' roll poetry book A Circus Mind (see the other illos I've done for this project here)! Clearly, this one is total Beatlemania and more specifically that peerless eclectic conceptual album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". Lots of Beatles trivia and imagery in this one!

Prints of this image and more on my Society6 shop.

Naturally I had to incorporate those iconic satin miltary-style uniforms, down to the Ontario Provincial Police  patch on Paul's. As a proud Ontarian I couldn't miss out on that!

The "Sgt. Pepper" name was inspired by Beatles' road assistant Mal Evans asking what the "S" and P" on the little packets accompanying their meal meant -- Paul jokingly responded "Sergeant Pepper". Here's a great read about the album, taken from a Paul McCartney interview. So of course I had to include actual salt and pepper.

There was once a rumour floating around that said John Lennon composed "With a Little Help From My Friends" on the piano with his middle finger after injuring his forefinger: Not true! Still, I added that in for fun. And the song was briefly titled "Bad Finger Boogie", for what it's worth. He's also holding a kite to refer to the song "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" which doesn't have much to do with actual kite. I stuck rain and lightning behind John because I wanted to contrast his more moody personality with sunny Paul. And I couldn't resist the classic imagery of someone flying a kite on a stormy day. 

Ringo is holding a revolver because the album previous to Sgt. Pepper was "Revolver". In his other hand is a marshmallow pie, recalling a lyric in "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". Sgt. Pepper features a lot of Indian instruments, so I stuck a tambura behind Ringo. 

Paul is reading one hand on a tabla (an Indian drum). He's got the Kellogg's Corn Flakes rooster over one shulder because that cereal inspired the track "Good Morning Good Morning". By John's right elbow is a jelly baby. That popular British candy was thrown by fans onto the stage because it was reported that George Harrison liked them. "With a Little Help From My Friends" originally had a line that went "...throw tomatoes at me" but that was revised after the band feared they'd be pelted with tomatoes the same way enthusiastic fans threw jelly babies at them!

George has got a parking meter beside him which symbolizes the eponymous traffic warden of the song "Lovely Rita". The fern and the french horn are callbacks to the original album cover. A true masterpiece!

Tight sketch:

  

Initial concept sketch:

-- Julia

portfolio site

Pete Townshend for "A Circus Mind"

Here's my sixth illustration for Ryan W. Cox's "A Circus Mind" book. Check out the other ones here! All the images in the book will adhere to one colour palette, you can see what some of those colours are if you check out the images I've done so far. Prints of this image and more available on my Society6 shop page!

This illustration is for a poem called "Pete Townshend" and is set in swingin' 60s mod London, more specifically Brighton Beach. The background wood texture is meant to resemble the famous boardwalk there. And who can think of The Who without their rock opera "Tommy"? So I incorporated some pinball motifs as well. For some reason I purposely put the red pinball bumpers in front of the wiry bit that snakes around on the left side. I realize it doesn't make sense but for some reason I like it that way! In fact, this entire image doesn't make much sense -- I think illustrating these poems is really freeing me up from being so literal with my illustrations. Feels good!

Townshend is credited as one of the first musicians to really incorporate distortion into music, which is why the Union Jack is cracking while his guitar spits sparks. And lastly, he's best known for this signature windmill move so of course I had to include that!

  

The initial sketch is pretty sketchy!

Beginnings and Endings: "Jack White" for a Circus Mind

My latest piece for "A Circus Mind" is complete! This one was for a poem called "Jack White". The poem mentions Meg and Jack jamming in an attic, so I came up with this idea that they'd be surrounded by imagery from their songs and albums. I thought it'd be fun to depict Jack as a devil figure, tempting Meg with the drumsticks. I put flames licking at his boots and gave him a Southern feel, a gambling-man look with a blood red guitar. Author-poet Ryan requested Jack have a pensive look. Hope I pulled it off! Here are some of the other images I created for the book.

Prints and more of this image available on my Society6 store!

I enjoyed stuffing this illustration full of White Stripes references. There's a poster with red and white blood cells on it (for their White Blood Cells album), an orchid (from their song "Blue Orchid"), the attic light was made to look like the one from the album cover for "Elephant", the painting resembles the artwork of their "De Stijl" album, the elephant statue is another reference to the album "Elephant", the legos from the music video for "Fell in Love with a Girl", buttons for "Hardest Button to Button", and the attic window, mint candies, and the ball on the elephant's trunk all refer to the band's famous red-and-white swirl graphic. I put the snake in to go along with the theme of temptation.

The White Stripes broke up this year. One of the first indications of this was a dead goldfish image that was posted on their official site. I put a dead goldfish (and the skull) in the illustration to acknowledge this -- in every beginning there is an ending and nothing lasts forever.

I'm a pretty big fan of the White Stripes. I love their minimalist, authentic approach to music. And I LOVE LOVE LOVE that they have such a strong visual identity. Red, white and black. The candy-swirly thing. It's like what I was saying about the Wizard of Oz, how Oz has certain colours strongly associated with it -- ruby slippers, yellow brick road, and emerald city. Colours really resonate with me.

When you scroll down and see the process work, you'll see how I just kept adding and adding stuff and refining the drawing. The initial sketch is pretty darn crude and somewhat embarrassing :P.

Dark Side of the Rainbow

Two more weeks left to go on Ryan W. Cox's "A Circus Mind" Kickstarter project! Here's another illustration I did for the book for a poem entitled "Dark Side of the Rainbow". Prints (and more!) of this image available for sale on my Society6 shop page!

For the Society6 t-shirt I've altered the image a little -- faded away the bottom a bit so it melds into the tshirt colour and added the bottom to the lowest falling brick for added effect.

This is my second Wizard of Oz-inspired illustration. I did the first one for UPPERCASE Studio's Work/Life 2 book. I have a lot of love for Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy, so I couldn't resist illustrating Ryan's "Dark Side of the Rainbow" poem. I really wanted to capture an ominous, dream-like feeling while keeping the image looking kinda storybook. I think the red linework gives it a bit of extra kick!

Here's my initial sketch. Sometimes I like to use grey tones to get a better idea of how an illustration is going to look when it's done. This sketch was done with my tablet.

And here's the sketch I did by hand. This is an extra step I'll do occasionally when the digital sketch requires a bit more finesse before I head to final.

One of the reasons I love the Wizard of Oz so much is that there is such a strong sense of colour throughout that story. The yellow brick road, the ruby slippers, the emerald city... Even the four countries that comprise Oz (Gilliken, Munchkin, Winkie, Quadling) have colours associated with them. Love it!

A Circus Mind: "David Bowie"

Who doesn't love a dash of Ziggy Stardust? I created this image for Ryan Cox's book "A Circus Mind". Ryan has created a Kickstarter Project for his book, click here and check out the fun stuff you can earn by donating!

I love the opportunity to play with a new way of working. I don't usually do a lot of decorative stuff or general weirdness. What better time to get a little weird than with a glam rock Bowie?

"A Circus Mind" is a collaboration between me, Zela Lobb, Dushan Milic, and Andy Potts. And author Ryan Cox, of course! One of the fun ideas we had to make the images work together was to use a fixed colour palette. The more of these illustrations I post, the more you'll notice that the same colours are being used in different ways. I'm such a big palette junkie that having that part of the job taken out of the equation frees me up from labouring over minute colour adjustments. It's liberating!

Sketch:

"Lucille" on Jazz and Draw

"Jazz and Draw" is a blog created by Philippe Debongnie. It's a great space where jazz and the images that were inspired by it can be enjoyed together. Phillippe has featured my illustration "B.B.'s Lucille" on his blog, and I couldn't be happier! If you love music and art, visit "Jazz and Draw" and tell M. Debongie I saw hi!

B.B.'s "Lucille".

I'm excited to report that I'm collaborating with author Ryan W. Cox and whiz-bang illustrators Zela Lobb, Dushan Milic, and Andy Potts on a project! It's called "A Circus Mind" and it's pretty darn cool. Ryan's written some poems inspired by great songs, musicians, and bands. One of which, "B.B.'s Lucille" I've had the privilege of illustrating.

Here's the story of B.B.'s Lucille, as told by B.B. himself. It's lovely stuff.


In the sketch I had ghostly images of two men fighting in the smoke, but I decided to simplify the image.

Ryan's book has many, many poems in it so it will be awhile before the project is done -- But it's shaping up to be quite a journey!