Tree again again!

It's been a while since I blogged, mainly because I was off gallivanting around Melbourne, Australia visiting my family and meeting my gorgeous niece Ela.

But I'm back in Vancouver with the Olympics party in full swing. As soon as I got back I became re-captivated by those bare trees - again!

I know I should be drawing the athletes, the crazy crowds downtown or the snow-less slopes but all I can look at is those gorgeous dwindling branches... I just want to hug them! They must be anxious for spring to come (which by the way looks like its almost here).

So, here's another, well, tree, this time on a great big new sketch pad using conte and charcoal. Done on the studio floor.

Illustration Friday - Wilderness

It's been a while since I drew something for Illustration Friday, but this week's topic of wilderness coincides with some illustrations I'm working on for an article about wild Australian bush food.

For now I am just experimenting with the style and materials - I have chosen pencil, water-soluble pencils and ink to create this drawing of a wild lime, also known as desert lime.

Mmmmm.

On the cover!

This month I'm very excited to see the new December issue of Alive come out - a logo that I designed for the Alive Awards has been published on the front cover!

When designing the logo I tried to think of the word "alive" and the products that the awards are for - natural health products. So this is how I came up with the concept of 'being alive' - I wanted to capture that feeling of joy and vibrancy of good health. The idea of a figure leaping with confidence and excitement came into my head.

I sourced a number of reference images and then sketched a silhouette. After scanning my sketches, I used Adobe Illustrator to trace the outlines and simplify the image. There was a number of revisions - maybe three to four pages with 10 concepts per page, before we settled on the final design, above.


The Alive Awards spread also features 17 illustrations that I created for each category! It is very exciting to see them all in print, in stores, in people's hands. Grab a copy this month for a very good read.