I'm Selling Online!

I've opened up shop with Redbubble.com and started to sell my artwork online! After the success at the Saanich Fair, I was inspired to start putting my work up for sale. You'll even find some of the work displayed in my blog in the form of prints, printed clothing and even some iphone cases.

You will also see my latest art series, the Alphabet Fairies. The first two letters are up now, with more to come. I'll be uploading the fairies in pairs, hopefully one pair per week.

Mekatt is also making appearance along with the newest illustrations and photoshop images, like Key to the Underworld.

Please check it out. I'm under the name landimonk.

Saanich Fair Art Entries

This is one of my most resent works. I created it for entry into the 2d Mixed Media section of the 2012 Saanich Fair. I am proud to say that it earned 3rd place and one of the first pieces of art to place in any of the competitions that I have entered. I even got a few parties interested in it. I should really look at continuing this style (which inspired by a fashion trend known as Steampunk) and see where it takes me.

For this piece, I used print outs of old newspapers as the background, then layered over it tissue paper. Then I painted the white steam with acrylic paint to add a base for the character version of myself. The character version was mainly painted with water colors then edged with black ink. Only the flesh was painted using acrylic. Then the words "of Steam", I penciled in by hand, followed by inking it in with black and silver metallic inks. I also used metallic inks on the rope, parts of clothing, hair and eyes.

My other two art entries are showed below. The drawing of my friends and I enjoying the fair placed 3rd in its category (which sold in the last few hours of the fair!), where as the metallic bird on the hat placed 2nd in the recycled art category. I'm happy with all three and I surely learned what I can improve upon. The drawing and mixed media piece are even sporting my new signature/ logo, which you can see in the blog header.

 

VIME 40th Anniversary Poster

We all have our hobbies and clubs that for specific hobbies. My father's club, Vancouver Island Model Engineers specializes is model trains, making and driving them. Their best models can also be ridden and pull riding cars. Thanks to their members, the club has been around for 40 years and could be the best part of a peninsula museum. To celebrate the club's anniversary, they are holding a party open to the public, complete with trains ready to ride. But they needed to let the public know, so my father asked me to design a poster for them. Other members of the club also created posters, but my design selected by the entire club. The main concept of the poster was a boy playing with his toy train while imagining he is driving the real thing.

Norvic Toastmasters Open House Poster

Last week I was officially elected as the Vice President of Public Relations for my Toastmasters club and with that I was asked to design a poster for the club's open house. Taking the color scheme from Toastmasters international website, I proceeded to lay photos of a few members wearing those colors.  The members were of varied ages, styles and positions to show that the club wasn't just for one group of people, but welcomed everyone. The title is similar to what a town crier would yell out, maybe one of the earliest public speaking positions and the kind of confidence that the organization wishes for its members. The background shows that the members speak from the heart and let it shine out.

Grandmother's Memorial Card

 Two months ago, my family received a phone call saying that my grandmother had past away in her sleep. With my mother mainly in charge of her funeral, I was trying to think of anything that I could do to help. In looking at what all needed to be done, I came across the one thing that only I could really do. Design my grandmother's memorial card. I did some research into what these cards tended to look like, then proceeded pull together imagery that suited my grandmother's life. The two types of flowers that I have running throughout the card, symbolize both my grandmother's birth month and the month that she died. I was happy to create one last thing for my grandmother using the skills that she helped fund.

Christmas Magic- Cardcaptor Sakura

I love to start my holiday spirit on the first of December. And since it's been a while since I last worked on a art piece, let alone posted anything, I finally sat down and worked on something to get me into the holiday spirit. This image is of Sakura flying through the night, with Keroberos carrying Tomoyo not far behind.
I created the Christmas costume (which was inspired by a few Cardcaptor Sakura pictures that I found on the internet) last year and decided to use it as the jumping off point for my first Christmas art piece of this year. This Photoshop image took a day to either find photos in my stock collection or capture new ones. Then I spent another 5 hours composing and playing with effects in Photoshop, to create the final image. I hope everyone is enjoying the start to the holidays.

Happy Halloween

Even though Halloween just ended a little while ago, I wanted show some of my creativity for one of my favourite events of the year. We start off with Mekatt's well wishes.

Views of my decorated front yard at sunset and at night. The set up took about 2 hours and most of the items my family had around the house. For the graves, I piled the fallen tree needles into 8 piles then placed a mixture of statues, wooden crosses and fake tome stones at the head of each pile.

 But my favourite simple decor item was the "Soul Collector". I made this eel-like item by first wrapping newspaper into a wedge-shape. Then I stuck the newspaper into one corner of a plastic shopping bag. Then I taped more shopping bags into a long tail, leaving the handles free and attached it to wedge-like head. Finally I tied some twine to the head and the end of the tail, which allows me to hang it from bushes or trees. This item is really effective in the dark.

Me in my "Steam Era Guy" costume along with my "Morning Mandy" mannequin. "Mandy" is my dressmaker's mannequin fitted with styrofoam head, fabric arms and dressed in different pieces of costumes and fabric. My costume is pretty simple. I just took some of my dressier clothes and combined them together. The jacket was the only that I really altered by trimming the collar and adding lines of a dark brown fabric in certain pattern.

And finally, the community's fireworks display seen from my front yard.