Category Archives: Artwork

First attempt at a cover for The Lonely Little Fridge!

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Pen-and-ink artwork before colouring with watercolours. Complete with ink blotches!

This is my first attempt at laying out the cover for The Lonely Little Fridge. The artwork is india ink over pencil sketches on paper.

Because the artwork was largeish (2 panels 8.5 inches square, plus a 0.25-inch spine between), I scanned it in five pieces using VueScan. Then I opened all the pieces in Photoshop and assembled them into one image there. Because the linework is so sparse, Photoshop’s auto-align function didn’t have enough to work with, so I aligned by hand and used the auto-blend function to smooth things out. Then I used Levels to expand the dynamic range, smashing light greys toward white and dark greys toward black.

IngramSpark provides templates for each size and type of cover they offer. This cover will be case-bound, with a page trim size of 8.5 inches square. One of the templates is an InDesign file, so I built the cover on it, inserting the artwork and text on layers between the ISBN layer and the layer with guides and printed info.

Once I get the artwork coloured (via Viviva watercolours), I will scan it again and do this all over again!

Backing the Etherington Brothers

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1378058646/how-to-think-when-you-draw-book-4-reprinting-sold-out-books

I just backed this art book printing and reprinting project!

I kept seeing bits of the artwork copied into places like Instagram, and I didn’t know where it came from. But then I stumbled across the book reprint project on Kickstarter. And that led me to the source, the Etherington Brothers out of England:

https://theetheringtonbrothers.blogspot.com/

The website has hundreds of little segments giving tips and tricks on drawing and writing topics.

Another cover!

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A first test of the cover for “Little Lost Lamp”.

What happens when a lamp id shipped to the customer and then forgotten?

This is the short eight-pager I hope to have ready for TCAF in the first week of May (whether or not I take part in TCAF).

TCAF lives! Am I audacious enough to exhibit there?

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The physical TCAF at the Toronto Reference Library in 2018.

I got an email recently that TCAF, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, is happening this year… online! The physical version of TCAF has been one of the highlights of my year, but of course recent events have forced changes. After it was cancelled in 2020, TCAF will be online in 2021.

The deadline to apply was Wednesday March the 3rd.

I applied. It’s a long shot, but what the hey.


Working on the door prize

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The book launch party for Nineteen Tales will have door prizes, and as one prize, I’m doing a drawing of a scene from my story. I’m starting with experiments and reminding myself how I draw… important artistic note: the water colour goes on before the india ink…

The next day: test drawings for the door prize. ?

One drawing is watercolour and pencil only, the other has india ink added.

This is the same technique I’m going to use for my story Parts.

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