Macleans' Latest

Here's my latest for Macleans! This fellow was a loving father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather. He grew up during the Depression and picked blueberries to can for his family. He met his sweetheart in the 60s -- she with a beehive hairdo, he with an Elvis pompadour. Much later, when the couple was caring for ten grandchildren, he would make them porridge and toast every morning before school. And even later than that, he'd take his beloved wife to bingo every day. 

I always jump at the chance to illustrate food. I'm fascinated by what people eat and why they eat it. I have the official Game of Thrones cookbook. My personal work often centres around food. I'm a little obsessed!

iPad version:

Sketch:

 This one ended up very close to my original sketch. This isn't always the case :P.

-- Julia
Portfolio site

Renovated Conservatory

Click the image to see as intended and not moire'd weirdness!

After I drew up a floor plan for my mystery house, I realized the conservatory as I had it wasn't going to work. I flipped the room around and redid the whole thing. Kept the comfy couch, side table, garbage can, and lamp. Waste not want not -- Furniture isn't cheap!

I'm happy I was able to do a contrasting-tile floor for the conservatory. A childhood of staring at my sister's Clue board game taught me that conservatories have tiled floors. 

I'm also pleased do to some moodier lighting. I might dial up the moodiness in some of the other rooms. Gives a nice, eerie ambience :). 

The old conservatory:

I enjoy the "Le Chat Noir" poster. Hopefully I can squeeze it into another room! It's hard to stop tinkering with all the rooms and improve them as I get better at this type of art. Onwards and upwards!

-- Julia

Portfolio site

Latest Macleans illo on newsstands!

I'm not sure how I would do these illustrations if I didn't have access to the wondrous internet! I try to do as much research as possible to get visual references for places and things that are mentioned in the articles. 

For example, the fellow who was in this frame met his future wife at the Millionaire Drive Inn. I was able to find a picture of its iconic sign (the classy waiter/chef with the frosty mug and burger) and include it in the illo! Another subject was an author and I found the cover art for some of her older, less known works and incorporated those into the frame. And for a young track star, I went to the Nike website and found the shoes she was wearing in her photo. 

The spot illustration for the iPad version: 

Sketch:

Yeah, my bagpipe was pretty rough. And let's not consider that sad-looking car :P.

-- Julia
Portfolio site

Wedding invite for a friend

I was happy to get the chance to do a dual-portrait wedding invitation for an old high school friend. The idea was to have them look like they were riding on top of a double-decker bus with a favourite landmark behind them.

Best wishes to them!

-- Julia
Portfolio site

Two new rooms. Introducing wallpaper!

The art for my adventure game is going full steam ahead. Here's a tea room / book nook I did! I looked it up and they indeed had hot plates in the early-ish 1900s :P.

When I was back in Toronto I was marvelling at the wallpaper in my parents' house. They first put it up when they moved into that house almost forty years ago and I've loved it for as long as I can remember. Not many people use wallpaper any more and I think that's a shame! This inspired me to add wallpaper to some of the rooms I've been creating. 

And here's the poster in the tea room I reproduced with glorious pixels. I get a real kick out of doing that!

Check out this fairly garish bathroom I've done. Again, another Art Nouveau poster on the wall:

 

The hair was pretty challenging...

-- Julia

Portfolio site

Pet memorial stones

 My uncle's dog died suddenly and my mom wanted me to paint a memorial stone for him like ones I've done before. After I'd completed this stone (for Mei, who died in July)  my mom wanted me to restore Leo's stone, which looked like this:

I painted this just four years ago! Poor thing :(. It hadn't occurred to me to spray these things with a coat of clear acrylic. I got the idea while painting Mei's stone, so now I had to do the others!


Here's Leo's stone all nice and restored. After I took this photo I sprayed the stone with the clear acrylic so hopefully it'll last a little longer this time.

Here are all the cats that have come before! Poor Sparky died first, seven years old or so. She had heart problems. The unnamed cat we called Shiro, he was a feral cat that hung around. He had the loveliest colouring. We managed to capture a couple of his siblings while they were still young and take them to an animal shelter. While we like cats, huge feral colonies aren't that great if you love birdwatching! 

None of the other stones were as worn away as Leo's. But now with the protective coat on top, none of them will be!

-- Julia

Portfolio site

A lady's shoe in fourteen pixels

Here's a lovely walk-in closet to accompany the boudoir I made! Everything's a work in progress but it feels really good to be slowly developing the entire house. The first rooms took ages to create but I think I'm finally getting a handle on the process.

The matching boudoir:

Today I found out about an awesome artist who's been using Microsoft Paint to create works of art. Hal Lasko is 97 years old and used to be a graphic designer (he specialized in creating letterforms by hand). He's long been retired but still uses his discerning eye to produce terrifically pixellicious work. His family showed him how to use Paint a few years ago but he really took to it! The program's ability to magnify segments of an image for him to work on help tremendously because his vision is failing. Here's a video of this inspiring fellow!

-- Julia
Portfolio site