New Secret Project ...

More to come ...

SpeakEasy's Comic Book Show

I will be participating in the upcoming SpeakEasy's Comic Book Show! I'll be showing original artwork, as well as large full-colour prints from Shock Effect.

Time & Space:
Thursday November 6th, 8pm-Midnight
The Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen West
Second Floor Lobby

There will be a ton of awesome Toronto comic talents there, so check it out! Here's the official scoop:

Toronto is home to some of the best known comics artists in North
America. We have an active and vibrant community putting out some of the highest quality comics to be found anywhere. The SpeakEasy Comics Show features an eclectic mix of Toronto’s talented comic book artists - from those who do newspaper strips and political cartoons, to underground comix and mainstream superhero comic books! The event promises to display an exciting cross-section of the comics community here in Toronto, as well as a glimpse into how good comics are made. As the old cliché goes, there really will be something for everyone.

-J

Spy-tastic!

I recently had some new work in a gallery show with my illustration collective from school, One Track Hand. The show was called "Mirror Mirror," and the theme centered around the idea of "alter ego."

So I took the opportunity to try some new things, and did a couple of mock 1960's spy movie posters. I started by coming up with a loose story and a title, then trying to come up with poster elements and colours that would fit with that story.

I was pretty happy with how these turned out, and I'm almost certainly going to be using some of the new techniques I developed in my future work.

Enjoy! -J

Fragment Press ...

I forgot to post this stuff, but after the MoCCA convention in New York, my indy comic book Fragment that I put out a couple years ago got some press ...

The Comic/Gaming/Manga/Technology podcasters GeekNights reviewed by comic on their show. You can take a listen here: GeekNights

Also, the comic weblog Neilalien listed Fragment as one of five comics to check out from the show. You can take a look at his post here: Neilalien

Also, I've got some big news coming up in the next week, so be sure to check back soon! Exciting!

Cheers -J

Some Recent Work ...

I apologize for the gaps between posts - things have been busy ... plus, I need to wait until the illustrations are published before I can post them.

I've been doing a lot of work for Dallas CEO (or D CEO), which has been pretty fun. The art director lets me do some interesting stuff that wouldn't necessarily get approved by other magazines.

Case in point is the illo above. It accompanied an article on how CEO's need to defend themselves against politicians who had been essentially badmouthing big business. With one of my sketches, I went with a "slings & arrows" idea, and that's the one he approved. It was a lot of fun to draw!

I also recently did a large (half-page) portrait of Simon Fuller for Billboard Magazine. At the time, he was about to be presented an award for his achievements, so Billboard did a feature on him. The magazine was also full of ads taken out by various studios, recording agencies and individuals congratulating Fuller. Also a pretty cool job.

I'll try to post again sooner rather than later :D

Cheers -J

Canadian Family

I recently did a batch of illustrations for Canadian Family. The article was on "amazing moms", so they wanted to show a bunch of superhero moms. The image above is the final for the full-page illo.

These are the sketches I sent the art director for the full-page. The had pretty much worked out the ideas for all five of the images, and for this one, they wanted three super-moms rising up together. For the one, I wanted to get a bit more dynamic and superheroic, rather than simply rising up - and that's the one they ended up choosing.

These are the finals for the four quarter-page illustrations. I thought they turned out pretty well. As I mentioned before, most of the ideas were determined beforehand, so I just had to figure out how to translate it into an illustration. The sandwiches one was mine, though :)


These were the sketches for the quarter-pages. Rather than do multiple compositions for the ideas they'd already worked out, I just gave them a bunch to choose from, including my own ideas, and allowed them to choose the four they liked best.

A pretty good job overall. I really enjoyed the full-page, particularly, as it was really fun coming up with the poses, and creating the characters

American Illustration

I was just recently notified that an illustration of mine has been chosen by American Illustration for their web gallery. Although it isn't as prestigious as being selected for their annual print publication, less than 3% of about 7500 submitted images are selected for the web gallery.

Being recognized by American Illustration has been a goal of mine for a while, so I'm pretty happy about it! The image that was chosen was an illustration I did back in November for Business Week, for an article on workplace safety.
-J

Giant Patriot ...

Just did this pic for the Miami Herald, for their Superbowl coverage, which came out today. The story was, of course, the New England Patriots going into the game undefeated againts the New York Giants, who surprised everybody by making it to the Superbowl in the first place ... and not really an even match.

It was a bit of effort getting the sketches where the editors wanted them, but in the end it turned out really well.