illustration

Sketchbook ~ Go Away You Owls

| kirsti

Go Away You Owls | pen & ink

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Go Away You Owls | pen & ink with digital colour

The drawing is from the archives (10 years ago – 22 and fresh out of school); the digital colouring is fresh (in the last week – pushing 32..).

This post is for Fiona who I know checks in on my blog for the sketches despite her dial-up. Which is such a lovely compliment. And I’m sorry my sketch blogging has been so spotty recently, Fiona. So here are two images. (Sorry! It’ll be a little dial-up intensive but I hope it’s worth it).

Fiona wrote a lovely review of her book bag haul from the CWILL BC Spring Book Hatching this past weekend. Looking for Loons was one of the books. Thanks Fiona!

And more great Looking for Loons news – my friend and former agent now literary consultant, Leona Trainer, wrote to tell me that LfL is listed as one of the Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s Best Books of 2008! I need to track down a physical copy of the journal as the list doesn’t seem to exist on line – or at least it has eluded my google-assisted snooping and my rock-turning on the ccbc site.

Happiness is…

| kirsti

Happiness is...

…new books for Christmas.

It was a booky Christmas. I gave some books, I got some books, and I just couldn’t help myself… I bought more than a few for myself in the process. We are now officially experiencing bookcase overflow.

Gift books from the top:

The Last Wild Wolves – Ghosts of the Rainforest, Ian McAllister, Greystone Books – I first saw the documentary and then some weeks later came across the book while Christmas shopping. I immediately bought it for a family member’s Christmas present. As it turned out, my mum had also bought me a copy. This is a beautiful book full of gorgeous photographs documenting the unique behaviour of a population of genetically distinct wolves. But, as it seems with any fabulously untouched ecosystem in this world, this place, along with its unique wildlife, is being threatened by human industry. The author Ian McAllister was interviewed on the Quarks and Quarks holiday book show on December 15th and he touched on this issue at the end of the interview. I am always amazed at how biologists can maintain their composure when discussing the possible demise of the corner of the earth where they have spent so much time studying, and in this author’s case, living. It must be incredibly heart breaking. It is from where I am sitting, hundreds of kilometers away in the city where the largest predatory mammals around a with unique hunting behaviour are cat-eating coyotes.

Play Pen – New Children’s Book Illustration, Martin Salisbury, Laurence King Publishing (there’s a review here with some images from the book). There are lots of inspiring illustrations and biographies in this book. It’s also nice that the illustrations are shown in page format with the typography. This book does make me a bit sad that we don’t have access to the more ‘brave’ European-style books here in Canada.

Jenny Saville, Simon Schama. Sensual paint. Brave, beautiful, loose, form-building, spontaneous-yet-intended brush strokes. Enough said.

Process Recess vol 2, James Jean. Some lovely draughtsmanship in this one.

I’m looking forward to putting aside some time to really get into these.

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Birdman

| kirsti

Untitled

Adobe Photoshop CS3 | Photographs | Textures

This is a digital illustration for this week’s Illustration Friday theme, Trick or Treat. I’m trying to get back into creating little illustrations each week as a way of experimenting with different mediums. Illustration Friday is a great excuse. This is my first one in a long time.

The image is a build-upon of a digital sketch I did over the top of a photo I took of my boyfriend in his Hallowe’en getup last year. Some of the wings and claws and bits and pieces are from photos of dead birds I’ve taken over the years. The pile of bones once belonged to a squirrel who went a little funny before finally dying under the pampas grass in our front yard one summer. I had plans of putting it back together once it was in bone form but after collecting up all the bits of it the following spring, down to the teeny-tiny toe bones, I decided that I am happy to leave it in a jumble in a box on the shelf. A portion of a crab shell makes up the base of the crown and textures came from a handy texture book/cd we bought recently. I created custom brushes to paint in bits here and there.

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