Away until May 19th
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- by cbadmin
Joel and I are packing our bags for a week in NYC to visit the National Stationery Show and catch up with old friends. I’m looking forward to being completely overwhelmed with stationery goodness. It’s at the Javitts Centre, so God know there will be TONS of it there.
Back in the studio on May 19th.
Wayside
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- Tags: illustration canada, letterpress canada, papillon press, rocky shoreline, watercolour ink •
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- by cbadmin
Since moving back to Sudbury, whatever personal work I have been doing has involved a LOT of black ink. Metaphor?
A big empathetic thank you to all the teachers who have had to put up with me over the years. While in post-secondary education I was a much better student, I know in high school I must have been hard to handle. I just finished teaching a first year, semester-long drawing class at a local college and I can now say to you poor teachers: I know how you feel!
Naively, I expected them all to fall over themselves trying to glean some nuggets of wisdom from my experiences as an artist…but whatever I said or taught was mostly greeted with glazed over, indifferent eyeballs. I hope at least a few of them gained a better appreciation of drawing.
From the inspiration file – Early 20th-century color photographs
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- Tags: early 20th century photos, illustration reference, old colour photos, Prokudin-Gorskii, Russian photos •
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- by cbadmin
A few years ago I discovered a website showing the photographs of a certain Russian photographer, Prokudin-Gorskii, that were all developed in colour! It was the most amazing thing ever, to see authentic scenes from over 100 years ago in full colour. Apparently he had developed a special process for developing in colour, but the photos were subsequently lost during the Russian Revolution and only resurfaced later. I often use theses images for reference because they are so vivid.
There is also a very interesting section on the website about re-creating his colour process but using digital methods.
We tend to think of the past in black and white or in sepia tones, so to see it in colour reminds us that those people in the photos really did exist. Here is a selection of my favourites:

self portrait of the photographer

Cute animals
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- Tags: baby animals, baby announcement, baby announcement canada, barnyard illustration, cute baby announcement, farm animal, illustration canada, letterpress birth announcement, letterpress illustration •
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- by cbadmin
Babies are impossible to draw, so here are a group of baby animals instead!!
You can see this drawing on one of our latest Papillon Press birth announcements:







