Moving!!!

Hello!

I just wanted to announce that most of my blog postings have moved over to my Tumblr!

It can be found here: http://kimdraws.tumblr.com/

Talisman Energy T-Shirt Designs

 

Mad Scientist!

Some backgrounds I've been working on recently!

Some Thoughts

Some illustrations I did for Swerve and modern cat this past weeks! Things have been a little crazy lately due to the city flooding. Calgary was flooded last week by the Bow and Elbow rivers and everything's turned upside down. Luckily, my home is just up a hill from the flood zone but many homes in my community and many others weren't so lucky. My heart goes out to those who lost homes and suffered damage due to the flooding and thanks to the city emergency crews, city workers, a fantastic mayor and wonderful Calgarians for keeping things under control as best as they could! Also thanks to the aid that came from outside of the city. Hopefully Alberta will get back on it's feet soon.

Keep on trucking.

An other illustration for Modern Dog at the bottom and at the top is a mystery for now! I'm participating in Light Grey Gallery's In Place show that opens up August 16th! I'll have more information on this soon and more images of the final artwork once the show is up and open. Prints of my work and many other talented people will be available for purchase.

Going to the Gym...

Here's a look at some of my process when it comes to creating crowd scenes or in this case a puzzle for ChickaDEE.

First I start off with a basic layout based on the client's requirements for the puzzle. It's super rough just to find composition and perspective. I do a bunch of these little thumbnails. Once I find one I like I scan it in and blow it up to full size and then print it out. Of top of that I'll start roughing in bodies of characters, and refine them up a bit more with a layer of tracing paper on top. Once they've been placed and their general actions decided on I'll then lay another layer of tracing paper over top and then refine the drawing more.

Now everything should be looking good! The next step is scanning and taking the whole thing into Photoshop. Once scanned I'll make a few adjustments I can see are needed then send the rough to the client for feedback. I'll make their adjustments as required then it's on to colour!

Usually I have an idea of where I want to take the colors but I always do thumbnails just to see how it will work. Sometimes, depending on the project, I'll add a step in between the sketch and colour, which is a black and white comp to figure out lighting. In photoshop I'll do a painting under the drawing, and flip on and off the line work to see how my colours are working. In the animation it only shows one color rough, but it takes at least a few (sometimes more) little paintings to figure out what will look good for the project. I'll keep this rough up in a separate window when I do the final illustration for reference.

With the sketches done and the colour figured out it's onto finals! I flat out all my colours in Photoshop then start refining them up and shading them with different brushes in Photoshop. I usually keep a desaturation layer on top so I can be sure things are reading okay in tone as well as in colour. Sometimes I'll make minor adjustments to the colour along the way if I find it's not working as I thought it would. After some hours of painting the final illustration is complete.

Hope that made sense!

Testing, Testing 1, 2, 3.

A piece I did to test out for a project. Didn't end up working out in the end but it was still fun to work on! Oh yeah... and there's a new background thrown in there as well!

Weddings and Mr. Clean

It's always fun to do illustrations for people's special days! Here's a piece I did for Matt and Teri for their special day!

And a piece for for Swerve with Mr. Clean...!

Art Auctions

Hey Guys! Here is some work I did for Swerve Magazine this week! Be sure to pick it up in this week's Calgary Herald if you are in the city.

The Wedding Party

My childhood friend Colette is marrying her love, Tom (who happens to be a very talented artist), this month ans asked me to do some drawings of the bridal party for their website. I was happy to do so!