MegaHappyFunLand

The first book out of Kid Can Press’ ‘Have You Ever Seen’ series has just been published. “Have You Ever Seen a Duck in a Raincoat” is a fun, colorful, learning aid for 4 to 7 year olds. It’s a sort of non-fiction / picture-book hybrid, designed to be an exciting, entertaining way to get them learning young. Oh, and I painted it.

Here’s how the people at Kids Can describe it:
“The Have You Ever Seen? series uses lighthearted human-animal comparisons to teach primary-level children about animals. Each informational picture book features a variety of animals familiar to children, such as lobsters, eagles and whales, and compares human and animal activities. With read-aloud, friendly text and bright colors, each book also contains an activity suitable for home or classroom to summarize the lessons learned. Have You Ever Seen a Duck in a Raincoat? compares human clothing, footwear and headgear with the equivalent animal adaptations. Have you ever seen a lobster in a helmet? No? That’s because lobsters don’t need helmets because they have a hard shell to protect their heads and bodies.”

Book number two is set to be out soon, and book number three is in the works.

If you’d like to pick up a copy you can do so here - I get a better cut if you go through the link

Here are some spreads to look at until you get your own copy (wink face again)

Opening night has run it’s course and after a moment of respite I am back at the easel. I’d like to thank everyone for coming out and helped in making Roxane such a success. The feedback so far has been great.
For those of you who would like to understand the concept farther, here are a couple links to sites who have more words to say about me than I do: jeff szuc on ‘things of desire’, and jeff szuc on ’she does the city’.
Also, for those of you who couldn’t attend, some photos from the gallery.
The show continues to run until May 10th at O’connor Gallery.

For months now I’ve been working on my super-top-secret project, keeping the specific details from all, save that it involved identity theft, portraits of people I don’t know by someone who doesn’t exist, and Facebook.

The basic process involved creating a fake Facebook account for a non-existent person (Roxane Xeres), and then making as many Facebook friends as possible (315 to date). Roxane and I then made art work about these people - my own being contemporary traditional portrait paintings, and Roxane’s existing as documentary art. The show also contains one collaborative piece created by both Roxane Xeres and myself.

Show runs April 14th to May 10th, 2009
@ O’Connor Gallery
145 Berkeley St.
Toronto, ON

OPENING RECEPTION THURSDAY, APRIL 16th, 7:30pm - 10:30pm
both artists in attendance

I’ll have more photos and follow up after the opening night.

I’ve just finished up this self promo-piece to go into a compendium book being published by my agent. I’ll be making nice little promo bookmarks out of it soon so let me know if you’d like one.

the super mega happy fun land piece

I just finished this little piece of holiday cheer. Merry Christmas.

Christmas carols

A lovely little book is on the poetry shelves of your more literary bookstores everywhere. Angela Szczepaniak, a fan since my days of selling prints at Butler’s Pantry, contacted me and asked if she could use one of my paintings for her poetry book.

A new self-promotional extravaganza and exposé into the methodology of the illustration process, I give to you, MegaHappyFunLand, the painting.

As always, my pieces stem from a scetchbook brainstorming process which at best just barely rises above being indistinguishable scribble to anyone other than myself. This piece is no exception to that rule as you can see from the preliminary rough (and by preliminary I actually mean my cleaned up third or fourth draft).

From there I scan the image and enlarge it to a more workable size - bigger but still fitting on an 8.5×11, which I then repeatedly trace/redraw until everything is right. This finalized sketch is once again scanned and enlarged - this the concept rough.

and from there I clean it up to this.

Then it’s just a matter of printing it out full sized, tracing it to board, roughing in colours, and spending a couple days cleaning it up.

blocking in colour

still roughing out the colour

cleaning it up

Once it’s all done and I’ve scanned it, pieced the scans together and corrected the colours I should have the final up.

In a continued bout of charitable behaviour on my part, I’ve contributed a T-shirt design to a fund raising event this weekend. The “Farm Feast” event is set to raise money for a couple of local organic farmers who can’t pay their bills. It’s being organized by a group for which I do web design work and all proceeds are going to the young start-up farmer couple. Without much more to say on that front, the T-shirts look great.

Eat Me Im Local shirt for the Farm Feast event

An exciting change of pace this weekend -and by exciting I mean many long tedious hours spent sitting on a chair playing with my iphone. I decided to lend a helping hand to my good friend and alter ego jeffrey Andrew today. His artwork has been sitting on the shelf (literally) for the last little while as he’s been dwarfed by the staggering success that is jeff szuc. This weekend however he’s been brought out of storage by a tip from an old friend and former curator of a now defunct gallery. A free of charge space has been awarded to him at the Toronto clothing show (an event which draws ten thousand people over the course of the weekend). And so here I sit…

the chair on which i sit

The feedback has been glowing, the attention lavished upon, and the sales hopefully forthcoming. As every non-artist knows though, we do it for the love of art (and the women).

Oh and lest I forget, the true joy of trade shows, the bounty! I acquired a lovely little nudy, ‘Lester the pervert’, made by Paula Dawn, the afore mentioned former curator of a defunct gallery and fellow art-shower. This, in addition to a t-shirt by Forty-Seven & Empire.

Oh wonderful, benevolent me. I’ve just completed this piece for inclusion into the ‘love exhibition’. Proceeds from the event will go to ‘Nomads’ which I’m sure raises money for some very worthy cause or other. The show’s date is set for October 30th with the silent auction following on November 9th at Gallery 1313. I think I’m partly participating in this because I was looking for an excuse to hang out at Lonsdale gallery -the drop off location for artwork and a very swank establishment in forest hill village though as well as a supporter of some great, very low-brow art. Lonsdale gallery is the Canadian representative of both one of my favorite artists, Ray Caesar, as well as one of my favorite teachers from my art school days, Jerzy Kolacz.

Stolen Away piece for the Love Exhibition

The sub-theme for this years ‘love exhibition’ is ‘masks’. Intended to explore the way in which we portray and relate to each other in relationships. I went with what I think is the less literal interpretation of masks by hiding the faces -despite how we portray ourselves through what we say and do aren’t we always the owner of secrets?

working on the love show piece