Toronto Park Posters

July 13, 2023 in Behind the Scenes

This year I had the honor of being selected as a mentee for the AOI 2023 mentorship scheme. The aim of the mentorship was to set 3 goals for myself and with the guidance of my mentor bring those goals to reality.

I was paired with the lovely Jacqueline Colley as my mentor and one of my goals for this mentorship was to create a new portfolio of brand new work in order to pivot my career into new avenues, particually in Editorial Illustration.

Together we did a lot of mind-mapping and reflection of what I could develope and decided on exploring a more limited colour palette and create style of illustration that felt commercial but still me. I then set myself my own first project to be a series of posters featuring popular parks in the city of Toronto.

Why Toronto?

This year and the last I had the chance to spend my summers in Toronto and this year I fell in love with going to the parks and it became a big inspiration for me during my trip. I still wanted to create something close to my love of urban environments but to recreate them with characters of my own as well.

Creating a series of 3 posters was to help me explore a theme using consistancey in style and tone to form my new narratives. As was using a limited palette which did not limit my creativity when it came to finding the right balance of compostion, it became the element that was actually the most fun to explore.

My Process

I chose 6 parks to visit and then whittled down to the 3 that inspired me the most and began developing my photos and sketches into thumbnails, exploring different angles, compostions and colour schemes.

My mentor provided me with a great resource on how to break down an image using a limited colour palette which in turn made thumbnailing just as exciting as creating my final images. I then developed them further using watercolours.

Reflections

As much I would have loved to create the finals in watercolour, I had a hard time keeping my colours consistent with each mix, so to be more flexable I added colour to my line work using Photoshop and recreating those textures there. This was something I did before with great success from a project earlier this year called-

‘Dreaming of_’ a series of travel illustration posters created to depict a place I wished to visit also using a limited palette of 6 colours and 6 snapshots. This helped form the base for this project and I was able to create my images quickly and confidently from this exploration. It was quite surprising how quickly this small personal project has already begun to influence my creative voice and I was thankful that I had done it.

I happy with the end results as you can tell from my excitement to share my journey and I look forward to sharing more thoughts and see how my work continues to grew as I continue my mentorship.

Thank you for reading!

A Grand Place - Grenada Illustrated

November 08, 2021 in Behind the Scenes

This Year I began work on hopefully the first of many Children’s book called ‘A Grand Place’.

‘‘While Zora waits for Grandma to return, she explores what it means to have a home away from home. This nostalgic love letter to Grenada is a joyful celebration of Caribbean culture and all the forms it has taken over generations. Join Zora on her journey through this heart-warming tale of love, family and home.’’ Formy Books

Written by Leighan Renaud, we worked together to create this charming tale about our homeland Grenada.

Published by Formy Book on October 14th 2021 . Available for purchase here .

My research into this book was luckily all first-hand as I happened to be currently living on the Island. I had returned to be with my family during ‘the unprecendented times’ , I never realised it would lead to a children’s book. I was very lucky in that respect, and lucky that my first children’s book would be very personal to my own childhood.

I came to learn the concept of ‘Own Voice Stories’ and even had the chance to talk about how it affected my perspective of children’s publishing. It is not always enough just to see yourself represented but to have that representation in the creatives themselves. It shows that anyone can have access to different oppurtunities.

We never know where our creative journey will take us, but knowing it is not a limited choice and it can be what you make it is very uplifting.

my re-imagination of the Grand Etang Forest Reserve.

I would be hardpressed to pick a favourite illustration in this book as each featured an element of home that was dear to me. I made a point to plant as many easter eggs as I could to be found by watchful eyes. A single image can tell a story in many layers, and I wanted readers both familiar and new to landscape of Grenada to revisit the book and always find something new, just like they would in person.

I am grateful to have had the chance to share this story, as lately my art has been heavily inspired by Grenada. I was given a chance to re-live my own childhood as I gathered my references and I came to realise that what I always love about Grenada has never faded. During this time, I also became an avid hiker and my parents now joke that I know more about the island than they do. So I think I can qualify as a tour guide now! (Perhaps my next workshop should include a hike?)

I will end this with a few illustrations from the book , but I do hope you will pick up a copy of Grand Place to see them all!

Drawing Architecture - An AOI illo Meet-up

February 15, 2021 in Behind the Scenes

On February 3rd 2021, I had the pleasure of being the guest host for the Illustration Meet-up organised by the AOI (Association of Illustrators). The meet-up is a casual setting for artists to socialize and sketch together for an hour or two. The theme was Drawing Architecture and it was very humbling to share my art practice in this way. It was also the first meet-up for the year so to say I wasn’t nervous would be a lie, but it also helped motivate me to create an enjoyable session.

As part of the meet-up I created a virtual tour, inviting participants to visit my homeland of Grenada via the magic of Zoom/screenshare. While they sketched away, I showed them around the capital town of St. George’s; known for being one of the most picturesque towns in the Caribbean. I presented anecdotes about famous historial buildings with emphasis on examples of Georgian-style architecture. The timing of this event alined nicely with it also being the Independance Holiday weekend (Feb 7th).

The session was divided up in to the warm-up; 5 minutes given to draw each slide (containing 2-3 references) and then 2 long studies, 30 minutes of one reference each.

Special Thanks to my co-hosts and organisers Lana Le and Natasha Knight.

A full article by the AOI about the event, including wonderful artworks from participants can be found here

2020 Workshops Summary

December 01, 2020 in Behind the Scenes

The ‘Let’s Draw!’ workshops are done for 2020 and in short amount of time I was able to have 5! Sometimes it rained and they had to be postponed but they all happened eventually! I had many repeat students and it was great to see their progress over the last few months. I never expected such a response but I’m so grateful to how it turned out. Every workshop I was pushed to come up with a challenge and always try something new and fun!

Critics were also a great way to help not only my students but for me to see what I needed to improve on in my teaching methods. Lots of healthy discussions were had!

I look forward to the New Year and the many new workshops to plan! Till then, thank you!

Let's Draw! - A workshop experience

August 21, 2020 in New developments

2020 to say the least has been a strange year. It will be infamous for forcing me to reflect on my life and where it was going, as opposed to how I planned it to go. As an Illustrator I had planned to do many things, such as participating in markets and making those face to face connections, but suddenly the world was cut off. I retreated to the safety of my small home to be nearer to my family, where I knew I could be most at peace. (The mental effects of a pandemic was something I felt immediately).

After months in seclusion, it was starting to feel safe again. No new cases were being reported and the positives of a small Caribbean life were felt. I began to reflect on my life again and form a new plan for my practice. What could I do? and the answer was workshops!

During my residency in Taiwan I held two workshops teaching monoprinting to the local communtiy. This was aimed at helping to introduce art to persons of all ages and technical background. I saw how valuable and encouraging it was that art became more accessible. ( language barrier need not apply!)

I always felt there was a stigma of art being just a hobby back home and the oppurtunities to explore it even more limiting. The art community has grown from how I knew it and I am happy to see more and more development in the arts but I still felt there is a lack of accessiblity.

So that is why I created the ‘Let’s Draw!’ workshops. An invitation to anyone with an unnutured interest in art to find a starting point in their journey. Drawing is the most basic skill of an artist but also the most valuable. Drawing is how we learn, research and experiment, it is the most versatile and supportive medium. As a person who loves drawing landscapes I decided to make the workshops as outdoor location-based, which is also safer choice in these times. Using the world as your inspiration and learning through observation, I believe is a great way to begin.

After a fairly successful launch of the first workshop at the beginning of August (Which was delayed but luckily not cancelled by a tropical storm). I used that feedback to organise another to be held at the end of August. It is my hope that this will grow into a series.