I made this monitor stand for my day job so that I could hide my Wacom tablet underneath until needed. My first attempt was on pine and so of course it warped. [duh]. This one is plywood with rounded corners and more decoupage with my current  fav’  –  ‘Lady Mechanica’ by Joe Benitez 

I bought several extra copies so I could do stuff like this. Some would say sacrilege! but having read and owned literally thousands of comics over the decades, I hate hiding them in boxes. This stuff is meant to be  appreciated and my admired. 

Decoupage

I’ve found making comic art boxes to be quite relaxing lately, but I’ve become a little obsessed . I’ve actually made a dozen or so, but end up giving them away. People like them, but producing one box is rather expensive, so not sure how long this additional hobby is going to last or where I’m going to put them all.

I tried varnish, but actually have had some reasonable results with “Mod Podge”. The secret seems to be pre-treating the surface and lots of light sanding between coats followed by quick application on the wooden surface. I do all the surfaces so the boxes can be displayed from any direction.

I’ve tried scatchin’ my initials into work for years, but only recently came up with this mashup that I can, at least temporarily, be at peace with. Roughly styled on the Greek ‘Phi’. Now onto new biz cards.

via GIPHY

Happy holidays to all and the best wishes for a prosperous 2016.

via GIPHY

This animated gif was made several years ago for a client for a PowerPoint slideshow. When I put it on my old web site I actually got several hits and people from the US and England asked if they could use it. Well by all means, please do. And if anybody out there is looking to use it, go ahead, just drop me an email and mention your country. I’d kind of like to map its progress.

An old friend had a big anniversary and wanted a crest for a silver jewellery box and this is what we settled on to have engraved. It’s an Illustrator calligraphy brush tip for their initials and the years in a simple sans typeface (Benton).

The last couple of years, infographics have captured the attention of marketers and designers alike. This has been quite the learning curve. I’ve tried to include some form of graphic action into mine, whether from image, texture or text, it is simply directing of the eye to convey the message.
It’s a tricky thing and I sometimes wish I could go back and readdress the scale of the images or weight of the text, but really, you have one shot. The numbers have changed the moment you publish and it’s time to completely start again.
Sometimes it’s faster to convey an idea by image. People don’t always read the message as much as get the feeling of the message’s importance. The colours have to be carefully chosen to blend with or avoid politics.
The quick impression and the visual adhesion of the concept to the viewer are fleeting. You have a fraction of a second to grab the attention of the viewer, if they even come across your message aside the thousands of images we see every day.
The infographic is a summation of ideas and numbers into a quick sale to a fickle and fleeting public.

On the marketing site, CREA.ca, is my montage of various houses from across Canada. It was an interesting exercise. Besides the vectored houses and buildings, I even pushed the trees into vector, then back to Photoshop to crisp the edges and colours. The trees reflecting in the windows added to the realism.The diminishing colour contrast gives the depth. I’m hoping I can work on the next version for the next update, with a little more time for composition. It was a mad rush to get this one done.

Another site I get to work on is the CREA Café.

Here’s a little slideshow to amuse this Halloween. Sound on and scroll down a bit so as not to miss the opening ‘boo’.

I do work for The Canadian Real Estate Association doing web and sometimes I get to do my illustrator thing.

Mostly Illustrator vectoring buildings the with some Photoshop to fade and blend, I work the pieces into shape and then into place. The maps were all redrawn in vector to allow for easy perspective adjustments as smart objects in Photoshop assembly. This one is no longer used, but was on the footer of the realtor.ca site for a couple of years. It repeated along the bottom edge to allow for larger screens. It was dropped with the new 6.0 version of REALTOR.ca, but had over 2 years of exposure.

It was re-purposed for a blog on the NEWS2Me newsletter, entitled “Let it Shine”, with glowing pushpins.