Inspired Inspirations

The thing that keeps me going as an artist is inspiration.  Feeling inspired is what gets us all moving on new projects, and when you aren’t feeling too inspired, your work tends to stagnate.  I’ve been working pretty hard lately, trying to get a couple of new projects off the ground, and the main thing I’m having trouble with is keeping my art as art, and not work.  Even though I’m working on my art harder than I ever have before, I still want it to feel like fun, and not work.  For that reason, I’ve been tracking down new inspiration, pretty much daily, to try and keep myself in a positive mindset.  So here is what’s keeping me inspired these days:

Electric Zombie
The works of Kyle Crawford a.k.a. The Electric Zombie.  Kyle has done so much great work, for so many great bands.  His effort is definitely inspiring, and the results it has produced are even more so!  This site is my main go to right now when I feel uninspired.

Bad Religion – 30 Years Live
Bad Religion releases a free live album to commemorate their 30th anniversary.  Bad Religion is my favourite band of all time, and this album is a stellar performance with songs from every era, from How Could Hell Be Any Worse? right up through The Empire Strikes First and New Maps of Hell.  This is the soundtrack to my life right now.

30 Days of Night
The art of Ben Templesmith, combined with the storytelling of Steve Niles.  Great inspiring work here, and Templesmith’s art is way outside the realm of comic book norms.  I picked up the first three volumes recently, and rewatched the excellent flick starring Josh Hartnett.

The other thing I’ve done to stay inspired was purchasing a smaller size sketchbook (8.5″x11″ instead of my usual 11″x14″) and forcing myself to do at least one marker sketch every day.  Some have been terrible, some are the best work I’ve ever done, but the important thing is that I keep inspired, and keep drawing.

Edited: May 29th, 2010

Urban Landscape 1.0

Lately, I’ve found myself very inspired by all the gritty urban landscapes Toronto has to offer.  Whenever I see someone selling paintings of picturesque woodlands, or lighthouses, or lakes, I always wish I could make a living doing that, only cooler.  My attempt at this starts here, with my very first urban landscape painting, which is of Toronto’s very own St. Patrick Subway Station:

Not as grand as you expected, right?  Well, I hope not anyways, because that’s just my initial sketch.  This whole urban landscape painting thing is really new to me, and it was certainly a process.  I learned a lot doing it, and although I’m very happy with the final results, I can’t wait to start on a second piece with all the knowledge I have from the mistakes I made this time.

So, I decided to do this painting on an 18″ x 24″ balsa wood panel.  I decided on using acrylic paint and coloured pencils to accomplish the look I was going for.  The main thing I wanted to capture was the grime and dinginess of St. Patrick Station.  Here’s an early shot of the painting where you can see some of that grime coming together:

For most of Toronto’s subway stations, this would be pretty accurate, however, St. Patrick Station is a pretty horrid shade of green.  I think it all used to be the same colour, but the grime has a way of dulling it in spots, and so it is inconsistently green now.  For that reason, I wanted to give the subway panels just a hint of green:

At this point, things are starting to look pretty good as far as the actual subway tunnel is concerned, so I turned my attention over to the giant pillar on the right.  It needs to be green (really, really, green), and a lot dirtier.

As you can see, the station is now unmistakably St. Patricks.  The next thing I set out to do was to finish the signage.  This was accomplished using coloured pencils, and I tried to match the font as well as possibly could.  Interestingly, most of the signage in the TTC uses its own custom font.  There are certainly exceptions, for example, anything lowercase is usually either Helvetica or Gil Sans, but anything all in uppercase (station names, for example) is a custom font that was obviously commissioned by the TTC some time ago.  There appears to be two weights of this font in use right now, and after a bit of research, I found that the font is officially called “Subway Font” and appeared in the original stations at their opening in 1954.  Unfortunately, no one seems to know who the original designer was, or exactly when it was designed.  That said, I did my best to attempt to duplicate the fonts by hand:

As you can see, I also added in the beginnings of a soda can, some texture on the ground, and my own SKATE tag.  At this point, only the signage lettering is coloured pencil, although that will change soon.  The lettering was quite the challenge, but I think I captured it especially well in “St. Patrick”.  From here, it was just a matter of putting my own finishing touches on the painting:

I used coloured pencil for the large “TREPANIC” graffiti tag in the tunnel, as well as many other small touches throughout.  I should mention that, despite the grime, the TTC does a pretty good job of keeping the station graffiti-free, and the tags are non-existent in the actual station and are my own original creations.  And that is how I painted St. Patrick Subway Station, from start to finish.

Take care,
Brian

Edited: May 12th, 2010

Northern Exposure

A little over a week ago, Melissa informed me that she had never been fishing.  Five days later we’re in a rented car with a borrowed tent and fishing poles and heading towards Tobermory, Ontario and all I can think about is how beautiful the country is.

To be fair, the trip wasn’t all about fishing.  In fact, fishing actually ended up being a really small part of it.  The real reason for going was that we had been meaning to get out of the city for a while, to see some new places, and hopefully get inspired by nature.  Fishing was just the catalyst (and no, we didn’t catch anything).

So for the last three days, we’ve been “Up North”, camping on the hard ground (forgot a foam mat or air mattress) at Bruce Peninsula National Park.  Upon arrival our first day, we immediately embarked upon a three hour hike.  Ambitious, yes, but also very awesome.  We saw a lot of the park on that first hike, and it was certainly inspiring.  We were also the only campers in our entire section of the park, which I would assume was due to the fact that it is really, really cold out there this time of year.  The days were fine, but we were definitely not prepared for the cold that first night.

It also rained quite a bit, but one thing we’ve always loved is being out in the rain, and we made the most of the sunshine when we had it.

While there, our campsite was overrun by some very frisky chipmunks, and we were also lucky enough to see some butterflies, various birds, garter snakes, a bunny, and a toad.  We heard a lot more wildlife while we tried to sleep, including a woodpecker who obviously lived somewhere in the vicinity of our campsite.  We also took in a small number of local touristy sites, such as the Big Tub Lighthouse, the Tobermory Art Gallery, and some craft stores.  It was interesting to see how the town was just coming back to life before tourist season began (read: nothing was open).


On the drive back, Melissa pointed out that so few people in Ontario realize the beauty that we have in our backyard.  Camping was insanely cheap (if not for that darn rented car!), especially for such a first-rate experience.  I think what we’ve taken away from this trip is that it’s easy for us to get out and get inspired by what’s around us, and we don’t need to spend a lot of money to do so.  We’ve gotten motivated to look into planning some future trips and we even managed to find some (free!) natural art supplies to take home with us (which you’ll be seeing utilized in a future post).


If you’re looking to get away for some inspiration, you might not have to spend as much or go as far as you think!

Edited: May 5th, 2010

Stenciling 101

By no means am I the master of stenciling, however I’ve been doing it for a while and I figured anyone starting out for the first time could learn from my mistakes.  This isn’t meant to be a ‘How to use Threshold in Photoshop’ tutorial, but rather a basic how-to of creating a stencil and how to avoid some common mistakes.

Tools I use:
•Adobe Illustrator (designing the stencils)
•Xacto Knife
•Paper (single use stencils)
•Cardstock or Inkjet Transparency (reusable stencils)
•Loctite Spray Adhesive
•Masking Tape
•Rubber Cement Eraser
•Stainless Steel Ruler

I usually start out designing my stencils in Adobe Illustrator.  Whether it’s a drawing I did by hand, or something I sketched in Photoshop, I find Illustrator is the best place for me to make all the adjustments needed to turn a piece of art into a stencil.  If you’re here because you just tried to cut a stencil and realized that it doesn’t work at all, you’ve probably run into the most common issue; everything must be connected.  Allow me to illustrate:

The image on the left will not stay together once you cut it out.  Obviously, anyone can see that looking at such a large and basic example, but more complicated stencils are trickier.  That’s why I like to work out all the details in Illustrator first.  I even edit the text in Illustrator, because cutting stencils can be tedious, and it’s too easy to turn on autopilot in your brain and ruin a perfectly good stencil.

Step two for me is choosing a material.  For a single use stencil, I’ll just use standard printer paper.  Although most people will tell you to use cardstock, inkjet paper will work perfectly fine if you’re just spraying it once.  Cardstock or an Inkjet Transparency Sheet will work better for reusable stencils.   Inkjet Transparency Sheets will work for a practically unlimited number of stencils, providing you clean any excess paint off before it dries.

Once you have selected your material and printed your stencil, the next step is cutting it out.  I use a standard Xacto Knife with a triangular blade, although I sometimes switch to the scalpel blade is better for large curves.  I use a Staedtler Stainless Steel Ruler for straight lines, as plastic rulers tend to get cut up really quickly by the Xacto Knife.  Also, during quick cuts the knife can slip over a plastic ruler and into your wrist, which will lead to the paramedics attempting to pull your wallet from your blood-soaked torso so that they can identify you before your birth certificate is rendered illegible.  In other words, take your time and be careful.

Once the stencil is cut, I spray the back of it with Loctite Spray Adhesive.  It will only make a temporary bond if you spray just the stencil, and then stick it to your stenciling surface (wall, skateboard, etc).  At this point, you’re ready to stencil!  Whether you’re hand-painting with acrylics or spray painting it, the key here is quick, thin coats.  With a spray, you should be able to get it done in one coat if your surface was primed.

Once the paint has dried and you are satisfied with how it looks, it’s time to remove the stencil.  Use the Xacto Knife if you have to cut through excess paint, but be careful not to cut too deep into your painting surface or you’ll likely have to do touch-ups.  Once the stencil is removed, you’ll probably have a bit of goop left over from the spray glue.  This is where the rubber cement eraser comes in handy.  A quick once over the goopy areas with the eraser and all the glue will be gone, without affecting your paint.

Congratulations!  You’ve just accidentally slashed your wrist so badly you’ve been hospitalized finished your first stencil!

Edited: April 26th, 2010