Visions of an Icon

On Saturday, June 14th, the Lillian H. Smith Library in Toronto will be hosting The Sequential Art Symposium '08, which features a stellar line-up of talented comics industry people doing panel discussions in the afternoon, followed by the Joe Shuster Awards ceremony at night. As 2008 is the 70th anniversary of Superman, this event also features the Visions of an Icon art show, featuring 70 different Superman pieces by 70 different Canadian comics artists, myself included.

My favourite thing about Superman has always been the transformation he makes from Clark Kent. He's this bumbling glasses-wearing nerd, but he's got Superman inside of him, who comes bursting out now and then. It's not hard to see why that's made a strong connection with generations of young people. So that's why I chose the image I did:

I also decided to go with a distinctly 1938 version of the character, both to honour Joe Shuster and because my favourite version of Superman is the original. Before the supervillains and mad scientists came along, Superman was just a guy who roughed up wife-beaters, slum landlords, and other Depression-era lowlifes -- and took great delight in doing so.

So come out to the event on the 14th and check out the other pieces, too. I'll be there signing books all day, then presenting the award for Outstanding Canadian Cartoonist at the Shusters afterwards. It's going to be a lot of fun...don't miss it!

New Stuff

Here at last is the second of the pieces I created for the Nelson Education's illustrated dictionary. I won't walk you through the whole process on this one, because it really changed very little from concept to rough to final art. They seemed to feel like I got it pretty much right the first time. Enjoy.

I Sure Wouldn't Want Anything Nailed Through MY Five-Hole

It's been a few weeks since I last updated with new illustration work. Mostly it's because there hasn't been any. I've been up to my neck in researching and scripting Two Generals, which is coming along nicely (thank you for asking) but which hasn't really given me much to show as of late.

That changed in the last couple of weeks, though, as I briefly changed gears to participate in a project that the fine folks at Nelson Education have been putting together, an illustrated dictionary for kids that features comics by a virtual who's-who of Toronto-area comics artists.

The page I was asked to do illustrates the word "jargon". Here's each stage of the process:

First, a quick rough based on Nelson's script:

You'll note that I showed all the players on the ice in the first panel. This was because the script made clear that it was important to demonstrate that one of the teams was short-handed (down a player). They liked the rough, but felt that panel one was too crowded with so many characters in it. I suggested that we show the scoring team as being short-handed by putting one of the players in a penalty box, which they agreed was a good solution. I made the change in the tight pencil version:

That got approved, so it was on to inks:

Then, finally, colours and lettering:

I'd always intended to put some kind of brand name on the goalie's stick in panel 2, but when it came down to it the client found it distracted from the dialogue in that panel. I agreed, and replaced it with stripes that don't draw the eye as much.

The client was happy enough with this one that they asked me to a second one for the same project. I'll save that for later in the week, just so that it won't be another month and a half between posts!

Recent Illustration Work

Here are some images I've cooked up recently, the first for an article on "green homes" in Seattle Magazine, the other for a Design Edge Canada article about the unintentionally insulting language that clients sometimes use with designers and other creative freelancers. Enjoy!

More New Illustration

While I wait for a couple of new comics projects to gear up, I've been taking a lot of magazine illustration gigs that have come up recently. Here's a couple of favourites, including a holiday-themed piece for Baltimore Magazine:

...and a few retro-style spots for the popular Canadian children's magazine, OWL:

Yes, I Draw Motorcycles...

Sometimes good illustrations come from the most unlikely concepts. Carpenter Magazine recently asked me to come up with an illustration for an article about union negotiations with the new Harley-Davidson museum that resulted in the high-end mill-cabinet work being done by a UBC signatory.

Clearly the most interesting thing about that rather dry business concept is the fact that it was for the Harley-Davidson museum...so I took it as a perfect excuse to draw a motorcycle! The resulting illustration is one of my recent favourites, and was a good way to add some much-needed drama to the story.

Creating a Cover

When I began this blog, I wrote that I'd be posting more sketches and work-in-progress stuff, and so far I really haven't been doing that much. In attempt to change that, here's the step-by-step process of how a recent magazine cover assignment went down:

The cover was for an issue with various Christmas-themed articles, so for my initial sketch I went with a classic--if somewhat generic--holiday image. While the client liked the feel of it, they decided they wanted something a little more focused on gift-giving.

Sketch #2 focused more on the gift...but the client wanted something even more overtly about the gift, and less overtly Christmas-y.

Sketch #3 was the winner. I managed to avoid the more obvious trapping of Christmas (the tree, stockings, etc.) while still making it clear that it wasn't simply a birthday by keeping the boy in his pyjamas. With this sketch, I finally had an approval to move on to the final art.

As always, I enlarged the approved sketch, tightened it up significantly, and inked it.

Then, it's onto the scanner and into Photoshop for colour and effects. One more assignment down!

Christmas in July!

It felt a little odd to be working on Christmas-themed illustrations in the sticky July heat, but that's exactly what I've been up to this month, producing several illustrations for the holiday gift guide in the upcoming fall/winter issue of Carpenter Magazine. You just never know what you'll be doing next in this business!

Old Illustrations, Part the Fourth

More illustrations from the vaults:

A giant squid and loup-garou, from a Kayak Magazine article on Canadian monsters.

From Cottage Life's "Puttering section," an item on how to use wooden fence lattic to keep your vehicle from getting stuck in the sand.

A cover I did a couple of years back for The Ryerson Review of Journalism's feature story on crime reporting and the Mounties. Below is the printed cover with text design in place:

New Illustration Work

Here's some brand new illustration work, images that I finished just last week for the Rogers Group of Funds Annual Report:

Killing the Aliens, Loving the Aliens...

This has appeared several places online and in print, so it might as well be here, too. It was my audition piece for Tek Jansen.

Everyone who saw this piece loved it--except for Stephen Colbert, who couldn't stand it. Which is understandable, as no one likes a caricature of themselves. So, as I've explained in several interviews lately, this isn't actually what the book is going to look like. The Colbert team wanted something more serious, not as cartoonish and design-heavy. Something that plays it straight, like he does on the show.

Still, I quite like this illustration. I post it here for posterity, and for anyone interested in how the book has developed.

(And no, I don't know when the first issue is finally coming out, so please stop asking me.)

Beckett + Schulz = Hilarity!

Another one from the vaults: part of a series of comic strips I did last year for The National Post, celebrating the 100th birthday of playwright Samuel Beckett. The adaptations were written by J. Kelly Nestruck, and drawn in the style of classic strip artists by yours truly.

Old Illustrations, Part Trois

Continuing my efforts to bring the best of my back stock to the new site. These ones aren't even all that old, really...in fact, one of them is from this year:

From Cottage Life's "Puttering" section.

Part of a large window display for Christmas 2006 at Toronto's The CD-ROM Store. The art was later auctioned off for various charities.

A recent illustration for Design Edge Canada.

Old Illustrations, Part Deux

More work from the old portfolio site:

Funky retro travel labels, from a cover article in The National Post.

This advertisment for Wiley&Sons attempted to dress up some otherwise dry scientific manuals.

From the Toronto Star, for an article about about the trend toward "macho" cooking memoirs.



An ad for The Beaver Magazine (it's not dirty, it just sounds like it is...) which was running an article on the Beryl G incident, a fascinating but little-known Canadian murder case.

Old Illustrations

I want this new site to be a constant update of whatever's coming off my drawing table at the time, but I also want it to serve the same purpose as my old portfolio site, by providing a record of what I've worked on in the past. To that end, here's some of the work that appeared on the old site, with new comments:


This was one of the first illustrations I did when I made the decision to leave my old job in the art department at a local communications company, back in 1999. It was meant to be an album cover for a friend's band, but they never did get around to actually recording it. It made a fine self-promotional piece, though.

I don't know what it is about this girl in the cafe (which I drew for Computer Source magazine a few years back,) but more clients than I could tell you have directed me to, "make it look like the girl in the cafe." Thus, she's been an almost constant presence in my portfolio.

One of the player characters I designed for the now-defunct PokerNOW.com.


The above two illustrations were done for Atlanta Magazine, one of my most loyal magazine clients.