Illustration: Michael stretch

 Procreate, digital pen and ink with digital white pencil. Another from the vaults. I went back and forth over keeping his tattoo and decided it added to the drawing. There are many more little dots in this than you can possible imagine. I also tried the smudge tool in procreate which I have had issues figuring out. It's good for blending colours as I have found out and that was the missing piece for me to try a colour painting in Procreate. So... I guess I should try that soon. 

Illustration: Sterch 02

Another inspired from my catalog of old images sitting in folders. I think this has a more natural paint look to it. I added a more "studio portrait" backdrop than I usually do. 

Next year's big project: Artbook and prints for sale

 

As work becomes harder and harder to get, I have to try different ways to pay the bills. Over the years I have sold a 1 or 2 prints a year of some of my drawings. It doesn't add up to much but it makes me feel good and i think shows there is potential to sell more if I can figure out how to go about it.  With that in mind I made  plan to produce and sell a book of illustrations on Amazon and tie it in with selling prints. I plan to sell with an online service that will handle the printing, shipping and taxes. I have several places in mind but any advice is more than welcome. 

The book will feature illustrations of acrobats, athletes and dancers - my most popular subjects. This won't be a retrospective or "best of" collection but include only images I will be selling as prints and ones I think will sell the best. I think having a book out there will help sell the prints and vice versa. I won't include any explicit nudes because I think that might be forbidden on Amazon even for art books and will limit who can see the work. I have a large catalogue to choose from and the idea is to not try and put it all out there at once but see what happens and add maybe an image a month to the print site so there is always something new and if things go really well, produce a second book in future. 

This is plausible but is it possible considering I have zero social media presence and I am not exactly a household name in the art world? I might have to break down and open "Behemoth media" accounts in Instagram, Facebook and whatever else and hopefully convince some of my friends who already have accounts to like and help promote my work to get it out to more people. 

Here is the design layout, the inner title page looks good to me and I decided the full images on the right and a close up of that image on the left would be visually interesting and give the potential buyer more information on how detailed the pieces are. 

So the plan is to finish some new drawings... I have about 15 lined up and most are hopefully for this project if they work out. Picking the right ones is no easy task. This will take months to finish so I am hoping to get it going for real after the new year. The text will be both English and French.

illustration: David 01

 

Procreate ink and white pencil. The reference for this was from a series of photos that I took almost 30 years ago with my friend David who was dancer and taught colour guard to high school students. Sadly most of the negatives disappeared before I could scan them so I only have scans of finished photos printed on textured paper so they don't look so great. I have at least one more that might be better now as a drawing and "redeem" my old photos somehow. We had a lotto fun and he was so great as a model, I wish I knew what happened to him. 

Illustration: Tony 06

 
More inspiration (desperation?) from my collection of photos. This wasn't ever meant to be a drawing, but I really liked the photo and thought it might be a challenge to get his shiny skin right. To my surprise, I did the sketch and basic colour fill of the form yesterday and the rest today with only about 5 hours of work. I think it is because this is ALL skin with very few little details to worry about like folds in clothing or textured or wrinkles in the skin. Not a complicated hair style either. I feel oddly proud of this, something I never feel when just finishing anything. In some ways being forced into my old catalog of images has been a big plus, though I would still like the chance to take new images with new subjects sooner than later. 

Painted with Krita. 

Illustration: Diver 02

 Done in Procreate. The drawing process was fine but exporting it was a nightmare. For some reason neither Procreate or Affinity Photo will save to my Dropbox account and that is normally how I get things off the iPad and into my storage drive. In the end I had to use a USB drive plugged into the iPad to transfer it it. Not sure if it's because of the new iPad IOS update or not. Seems likely. 

Documentary: Parc de L'espoir (2021) Directed by Vincent-louis Apruzzese

I added new material to the end of my 2014 documentary abut the AIDS memorial park here in Montréal. The park has been completely renovated and it 4 times it's previous size as well as much cleaner looking and inviting. I also added English and french subtitles to make the doc more accessible. 

The You Tube link is not showing up on the blog right and that is the one with the English subtitles so click here is you want to see the new version! 

Illustration: Runner

 Painted in Krita again. I tried to draw this severalties in the past and always trashed the results. The reference image is blurred and terrible but I gave it another try and I'm much happier with it now than in previous attempts. I decided to make it more about contrast than straight forward detail and that seems ot be the best choice. I had planned to get new references when the Montreal annual marathon passes by my house but, like last year, it was cancelled. GET YOUR DAMN VACCINE SHOTS EVERYONE!

New business cards to correct a design mistake on the previous ones.

 Earlier this year I redesigned my business cards. I don't use then very often but they do come in handy now and then. The old ones were a stale design, they needed an update and more modern cleaner look. The new design I really liked... until they arrived in the mail and I knew I made a serious mistake. They were far too dark and not easy enough to read.

Things can look great on your 17" RGB 5K monitor but when printed on paper in CYMK on paper the ink can absorb and diffuse the colours, muddying them. Contrast is your friend in print projects unless obscuring details is part of the design. I didn't even dislike them, but i knew they were not going to get attention or even read because of the lack of contrast.

So lesson learned/relearned and I kept much the same design look but made sure all the information was readable from a distance and clear. Before they were black on dark grey and now the logo stands out and  I added my phone number back in. I don't really want to be called on the phone and prefer email but having phone number lends more credence to me being a real business.

Illustration: Paul torsion assise

 A bit of skin in my last 2 drawings I guess. This was from 20+ year old references as well and the quality was better than my recent diver references but still somewhat degraded. I had quite a few of them this time so I think I got more out of this one. You don't find many guys with muscles as defined as this. 

I did have to change the pose and some details slightly. This was mostly for clarity of the image. A few toes from the crossed over leg were really distracting and there was a hint of penis which is not something that I would normally hide but it took me some time to even know that was what it was. I also removed his tan line. To be honest it was pretty sexy looking but, again, distracting from the pose. I thought emphasis was on the shoulders and back, not his butt.