Kara bends

More life drawing with a china marker.

side eye specialist

portrait sketch

Somehow he looked like a Polish officer, ready to throw on his kurtka and ride out against the Russians. Or Prussians. Or Austrians...

all my virtues

Drawn from life with a Copic brush pen, in around ten minutes.

autoritratto

I drew this self-portrait many years ago, from a mirror in a bedroom in Florence.

4 heads and 1 hand

Each drawn in a minute or so at the Arts Project in London, Ontario.

Chat & Chateau

I made this for the 2015 In the Round fundraiser at Graven Feather in Toronto, which runs until the end of November. Each participating artist received 3 plywood disks, the size of a CD, to embellish as they pleased.

The picture was inspired by one of my favourite childhood illustrators, the amazing Peter Spier. His books enchanted me when I was young, and to be honest, they still do. His simple but evocative landscapes, inhabited with happy children and sparkling architecture, inspired in me a desire to see a world I was too young to even know existed.

My illustration ended up more sombre than its inspiration would suggest - but that often happens in my drawings. But hopefully someone will look at it and wonder where that road leads.

How long must I wait?

Drawn from life at the Arts Project in London, Ontario, with a Pentel brush pen.

get right with me

at the stars

The Field House, Compton

Long evening shadows across the fields of the Surrey hills, in England. The Field House of the title is a late Victorian pile, just visible through the trees.

I drew it with a fine Pigma Micron pen, and a Copic brush pen.

Hypnos

“Apropos of sleep, that sinister adventure of all our nights, we may say that men go to bed daily with an audacity that would be incomprehensible if we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of the danger.”

So wrote Baudelaire, in the translation read by H. P. Lovecraft sometime between 1919 and 1922. It inspired a creepy gem of a short story, which, although it displays some of the faults of Lovecraft's prose (but thankfully not of his personality), is also evocative, sinister and in its own way perfect. You can read it here. It's very short.

It's Halloween, hence this picture. It is on display in Toronto at the Graven Feather, 906 Queen st. West, November 5th to 28th. For the last two years, I've illustrated terrifying tales from history - this one is merely from literature, and therefore less frightening. You can see the others here and here.

I didn't try to represent a precise scene from the story, but rather suggest its events. Here is a body contorted in nightmare, its identity effaced by the placid mask of the Greek god Hypnos, or Dream.

lonely all these years

come as you are

lassitude

life's long wait

Barbara in your face

stand around sam

cameron

that body