Fish Tales

 6/6! I completed my goal for this semester! There is reason to celebrate folks!! perhaps with sleep...

This one kinda hits home with my love of drawing the fantastical and whimsical.  For me, it illustrates the way in which our usually fast flowing streams of consciousness peacefully drift into a simpler world of dreaming.

*Funny Note* - When i started colouring and texturing in Photoshop, I thought "what colour should I make her hair? Oh maybe orange to match the fish... OH MY GOODNESS I PUT A FISH TAIL BRAID ON THE GIRL, AND IT LOOKS LIKES ITS SWIMMING WITH THE FISH.  Fantastic mistake.

Close up:

By accident, i flipped my screen, and I really like it horizontal as well.. Thoughts??

December Greetings!

As we leap into this years cold, wet, hopefully snow-filled December, this reindeer wishes you the best of what the season has to offer!

Tea Run

I think i may have had a little too much fun with this one guys.  I'm continuing my series on escaping inwards, but perhaps with a more comical twist on this one. 

Tea Run  (please let me know if you have a better title..)  is about escaping through imagination.  It illustrates how we escape times of stress and times when we feel trapped, by letting our imagination run wild.  When unhindered and purely free our imagination can transport us far from our reality.  

Also a little thank you for everyone you came down to visit me at the Emily Carr student art sale this part weekend.  I did extremely well and sold most of my wares, huzzah!!!

All Hail the Squirrel Queen

I have a lovely little illustration for you this week!  I developed this from a small doodle in my sketchbook in my free time.

If you are attending Emily Carr's Student art sale from the 22nd-24th, then perhaps you will find this little queen on a card ready for a new home! I'll be volunteering friday night from 4-8:30 so come by and say hi!

Also there a couple photos of me preparing some prints/cards/journals :)

Fox Trot

4 Down! This illustration is a continuation on my series on Escaping Inwards.  The images i'm creating for this series depict the places we go within ourselves in an attempt to cope with what we cannot control in our lives.

Fox Trot is a depiction of ones longing for something that is not in existence yet.  Something that either 'will be' or 'might not be.' It holds the plausible in perfect tension, with the dreamlike fantasy.  We see elements of the dreamer (the woman) as well as the personification of all the variables (the fox).

Take a look at the previous 3 i've done here : http://jvanderlinde.blogspot.ca/2013/10/thoughts-and-dreams.html

A Tree Pattern

And now for some recent pattern making I did for my surface design class.  These are mixed media, drawn in several layers of ink, and combined, texturized and repeated in Photoshop.  One of these days I'll put together a process post of how i do my work.  Its a relatively simple process, but when I try to explain it to people, they often get confused.

Anywho, From top to bottom, I have the original shapes, an arranged motif, the original but repeated, and a different color way.

Happy Tuesday!

A Fishy Dance

It's lovely squeezing in some personal work this semester. And of course, I can't resist slipping some hats on these nonchalant fishies! 

Thoughts and Dreams

I am extremely pleased about these pieces folks! This is the first installment of illustrations in my self-directed VAST 400 class. The series focuses on Retreating Inwards. The images depict places we go within ourselves in an attempt to cope with what we cannot control in our lives. More to come :)

Imagine shows how we will escape into a safe place where we know what the ending will be.

Bird Heads is how we try to change ourselves to fit what other people expect.

Drifting Memories is about retreating to a peaceful place of reminiscence.  It illustrates that bittersweet feeling which taints even the best memory because you are remembering something that was good, but now its gone, and that makes it a little sad.

These prints will be for sale at Emily Carr's Student Art Sale from November 22nd-24th.  And perhaps later on my Esty Site :)

- Imagine -

- Bird Heads -

- Drifting Thoughts -

Good Afternoon Fall

Firstly, I apologize for my extremely long absence from blogging.  Sometimes when you landscape full time for the spring/summer, you feel dead most of the days and your fingers want to fall off.  However, now I'm back on track, and I hope to be posting regularly. Look forward to some exciting illustrations in the coming months! 

Which begins NOW, with an extremely unhappy owl (who oddly resembles my morning facial expressions...)

Owl Deer Art Toy

Finished a toy design project this week. We had to use 3 wooden objects and make something out of them (we could add whatever we wanted to on top of those objects like fabric, sculpy etc. I decided to create my Owl/deer creature who I've drawn and used in older illustrations before:

So here are some photo's of what I did! starting with the base mode, i sanded down the main block and used wire surrounded by Sculpy to make the antlers.  I made the wings, feet, ears, and beak in sculpy:

 Leading to the painted version, I just used normal acrylic paint:

And to the HATS!! no beautiful creature like this could be complete without a few stylish head toppers!!

The hats are made out of leather, felt, and ribbon, that surround the other wood pieces I had to use...

All in all, I had fun :)

THUG LIFE.

Hello to allllll who actually look at my blog haha. Hopefully you'll enjoy this bull i drew for a children's book project this semester.  He is pretty sick, if i do say so myself :) The other pages I have posted are a few of the rough dummy pages for the book. Enjoy!

Drawn in Graphite, Textures and Awesomeness added in le Photoshop.

Half Title Page: 

Children's Folk Tale - Character Sketches

My assignment is to illustration a folk tale.  For this project I chose an English folktale from part of my British Heritage called, How Jack Went to Seek His Fortune.

The full story can be found here :
http://www.worldoftales.com/European_folktales/English_folktale_5.html

Here are my initial character sketches:

 I'm not to fond of the bull/yak so i think i'll redo him

Woodland Sea Adventure

After a grueling night of about 6 different attempts to try and illustrate this cover with only traditional mediums for my professional applications class. I failed haha..

Soo at 9:00pm I went back to good ol' graphite and ink :) dull but reliable. Around 2am I finished, and decided that I would go ahead and color it digitally because I wasn't happy with just the black and white. Not sure if I'll be marked for the color one, but I'm satisfied that i ended up with something colorful and textural :)

Photoshop, i love you.

Editorial Smooth Roughs

Progress: finished the smooth roughs and defined the characters a bit more. 

 I kind of imagined them as a group of critters that all needed to get somewhere for some reason, and how else would they get there but in a folded paper boat?? Anyways, the final image has to be done by the end of the week, so i better start to ink this sucker!

MANTAGE.

Sooo.  This is what i do in my spare time.  I make posters of my awesome friends; Jack, Nick, and David, who fight Grizzly bears in their spare time like a boss.  Shout out to leah for the title name and advice, and mama lamb for helping me with composition.

Urban dictionary definition of mantage:
Mantage: is a montage consisting of manly, testosterony activities that only the grittiest, manly men can manage.

In this case only bear wrestling.

Cover Assignment: BLAB roughs

After two weeks back at school, I'm finally starting to get some stuff done! Here is some of the process work for my Ilus: Professional Application class. The assignment is to create a loosely narrative cover (part of a larger narrative), for the publication of BLAB.
Throughout this class professional illustrators look at our work in addition to the teacher, which is super cool.  For this assignment, Ryan Heshka gave us some great feedback and advice!  I will be going ahead with idea number one, so keep checking for updates:)

Inspiration Board

 

Thumbnail roughs and text treatment: