(painting) Waste Not and Whatever

It all started with the humblest of beginnings...

I started by cleaning extra paint off of my brushes, never wanting to waste any. then something happened, something unexpected. The colours began to mingle and play with one another. I added and added until finally I had to stop. The painting was complete and the paper towel was covered. The next day when I returned to the studio to find the paint encrusted paper towel stiff as a board. For the next painting I started a fresh sheet of paper towel, so on and so forth. After accumulating about 3 or 4 I returned to my thesis A frame to find a post it note next to the "Abstract Studies" praising me for trying out a new style of painting. I continued making these "studies" until I had the 8 shown below, and then lost interest in the paper towels to move on to the A frame itself.

(digital illustration) Snake Her Drain 4

Another Dan and Martha comic for all you people to enjoy. We are getting to know a lot more about these characters in this one. They live in apartment 312 of a large apartment building (at least 21 units per floor on a minimum of 3 floors). This is also the first time they are interacting with other people, if porn stars are indeed people.

(drawing) Trevor Guiden Draws Insperation From TED

Next time you are looking to kill some time while being entertained, and learning something go to ted.com and watch any of the amazing, funny, interesting videos found there. I first visited TED after the 4th, that's right 4th, person told me to check it out within a single week. two videos in and I was hooked. I soon began to use the time spent in front of a video making oneliner sketches labeling them with the title of the talk. Enjoy

(painting) My New Abstraction

Art can be very therapeutic for us footicap individuals; especially if the artist is getting down and dirty with their paint. One such artist is Jackie Foster who "uses her finger nubbins as her artistic 'tools.'" Her work can be found at jazzyjackie.com. It was her work that inspired me to make these new abstract studies. I set out the globs of paint and water them down. Then I dip my left hand into the paint and press it against the paper as if I were making art with potatoe prints. Using different sections/sides of my hand allows a variety of shapes to emerge. I move between the colours mixing the paint as I go. Once the page is significantly covered, I outline the massive shapes created by the overlaping tones. I then experimented in the negative space by either; filling it from either side of the paper, or leaving it empty. Enjoy.

(sketch) Poor Little Critters

When I get mad at someone I like to calm myself down before any sort of confrontation. You know, so I don't start yelling and screaming making any argumentative points I had null and void. To bring myself to a sane level I sketch poor helpless animals being murdered in horrible ways. I would never do anything like this to a real animal, that I want to make clear. Cartoon animals feel no pain; if they did Wile E. Coyote would have given up his hunt for the Road Runner after the first fuck up of his ACME gadget. Here are a few of those poor animal deaths.

Killing off real animals lost its flair after a while and so I decided to track a more elusive game. The Sasquatch, or Samsquatch as they are more commonly known, became my target. Over a page of smudged ash I took the head of my 1st victim. Soon The page was filled with my trophies, the heads of my pray, and I felt a lot better about my stressful situation.

(drawing) Smudge Drawing Origin

After seeing the images made in the Coffee Cup Resurrection series people have asked me how I figured out the smudging technique used on those coffee cups. It all started way back in the early winter months as I was working the door at Einsteins. The night was slow and I had already read all of the posters on the walls in the doorway area. That's when I noticed an ad for Godzilla Sundays, which is some sort of sketch comedy I think. The thing that caught my eye was the heads of two of my friends Brad and Tim on the front. After inspecting the card I pulled out my pen and began to draw on the back to help pass the time. With an accidental swipe of my finger the line smudged across the card and my new drawing medium was born. I had been reading up on Telouse Lautrec and Vincent Van Gogh so I decided to turn this new style wild on the customers of the bar, the common folk as it were.


Electric Chair

The first in the series, and the only one from my imagination. I continued to manipulate the ink smudges of that first faithful card until the shape of a man in a chair emerged. Its kind of funny how the imagery in this series follows an opposite path than that of the Coffee Cup Resurrection.

the rest of the drawings are not in chronological order

Party Time

A nice group of people just happened to be sitting in the area visible to me from the doorway. It was triggered by the man at the far left sitting still for a long period of time. The drawing then spread along the table collecting more and more people as it went.






Get Together

Saturday night, live music night. Even though the band is blocked by a pillar the guitarist (who may or may not have been the entire band, i cant remember) is seen as a shadow cast against the back wall.







Sing a Song

Another Saturday night. This is one of the members of a two man band. Unfortunately the shading of the shadows merge with the shading of his hair giving him the appearance of having hill-billyesq facial hair.







First Two Arrive

These two people were the first to arrive in a group of 10 or 12. I couldn't resist the pun in the title.









Dancing Drunks

On occasion there will be a drunk person or two who will dance in the middle of the bar if for no other reason than to be in the way. This particular piece was sold in the 2nd annual 1000 for $10 show.













Douche in Green Sweater

Framed by posters in the doorway was this man and a few of his friends. He thought that if he took off his sweater he could escape the bar without paying... what a douche.














Drummer Boy

This is the drummer for the band The Restless Age who had managed to get the title of house band. Funky covers sometimes slow. They don't seem to bring in much business.








The Game's on

The bar could have been on fire and this man wouldn't notice. I watched as people, who might have been his friends sat down tried to talk to him only to fill their glasses and walk away. He was really into the game.







Portrait of a Doorman

Not exactly drawn from life is my self portrait showing me standing in the stairwell with my clicker in hand to keep track of the people inside. I like the light case on the wall in the background even though the shadows of the portrait don't match it.

(drawing) Christmas is Not Even Close But...

Pictures Of Me To Hang On Your Tree

acrylic resin

A few years ago I decided to add a little something to the Christmas gifts for my aunts, uncles, and grand parents.
I had a friend who worked in the plastics studio at OCAD who was able to help me out with the project I had in mind. The first thing i needed to do was test the pen and paper drawings reaction to the acrylic resin. I made the sketch to the left and carefully placed it within the dyed blue resin at the bottom of the margarine container type mixing dish. I then walked away, going off to do whatever it was I did at the time. The next day I returned to the plastics lab to see what had happened. Not only did the disk come out un-cracked but the paper turned slightly transparent. This meant that I no longer had to worry about copying the drawings backwards to make the image in the disks visible from both sides.
The next step was to draw the "pictures of me" portion of the gifts. I made 12 because of the 12 Days of Christmas meaning that the aunts and uncles would have to share. This also helped with math. Half of those were wearing the "cartoon Trevor" fedora while the others wore festive Santa hats. I also drew the faces in three other categories; looking left, looking right, and looking forward.
After the drawings were complete and carefully dissected from my sketchbook, I set out to make the resin disks. I dyed them blue, green, and what I thought was red but turned out to be orange. I placed the drawings into the resin disks then placed them on the drying rack. At some point they shifted around making it so none of the drawings were centered, but that's not much of a problem. Once they were dry I had to buff out flecks or bumps and round off the edges.
Now all I had to do was drill a hole on the top to thread some ribbon through to allow for my family to hang the disks on their tree the following Christmas... I never did notice if any were actually hung.