The Naked Silo

11" x 8.5", digital, 2018. Some time in the late summer of 2018 I was approached to provide a poster design and illustration for an event intended to raise some funds for the expansion of the Picton Library here in Prince Edward County. Having done an ink painting of the front of the library at night as part of my County 101 series a while back, I had an immediate vision of what I thought the poster image might be: a head-on view with all the windows glowing as though something extremely bright was inside the entire building. Illustration pre-installation. Using a photo as reference, I built an elevation view of the library in CorelDraw, concentrating on the building and the front steps, ignoring details like the benches and trees out front. I then exported the drawing to Photoshop where I added the glowing effect. Then it went back to CorelDraw for installation into the poster design where I added the text afterward. A digital expansion. Of course, I on...

2018 theme: SPACE. This year is the sixth  Firelight Lantern Festival  here in lovely Picton, Ontario, and I'm happy to continue the motif of silhouettes of people on parade with their lanterns changing each year to reflect the current theme (here are  the previous five posters ). As with the others, this is a combination of ink and digital illustration. Even though there are probably less than a dozen examples of my extreme love of science fiction and real space exploration in my paintings, this affinity is clearly represented in many of  my scale models . 2014 Lantern Fest theme: AIR. This year I'll be once again strapping into the Mark 2  jetpack I built a few years ago... Upgraded. The Mark 2  was created in time for Kingston's Skeleton Park Arts Festival in 2015 and used the same fabric flames as the Mark 1, but everything else was built from scratch. Flight mode in Kingston.

Winnipigeon Logo for The McLuhan Institute Ink and digital, 2018 I was recently contacted by Andrew McLuhan (a friend, master upholsterer , and a former colleague at the  Regent Theatre  (he's still there; I'm not) about doing a logo for The McLuhan Institute (he also happens to be Marshall McLuhan 's grandson). He had a very clear idea what he wanted, but felt he couldn't execute it to his satisfaction. The idea was of a pigeon perched atop a W, which could then be inverted to become a pigeon hanging from an M. The M is, of course, for McLuhan (and Marshall, too), and the W is for Winnipigeon. I'll let Andrew's comments from the TMI Facebook group explain that last bit: "Marshall McLuhan referred to himself as a 'Winnipigeon.' "As far as I know, he's really the only person to do so - it's not really a thing. "I think I first came across that reference in this issue of ChicagoLand (July 1969) in his article 'Medi...

Many desperate acts of design (including gradients, drop shadows, and the gratuitous use of transparency) are perpetuated in the absence of a good concept. A good idea provides the framework for design decisions, guiding the work. – Noreen Morioka (updated 2015 version) Names are very important to Krista and me and we brainstormed dozens of them and deliberated for weeks until we were absolutely happy with " Small Pond Arts " (during the logo design process, we dropped the "Ranch" to simplify the name). The next step, of course, was to create a visual identity, mainly a logo, for this new venture, so I set about doodling some concepts that had to do with the overall theme of "a big fish in a small pond." With the sketching underway, the typeface had to be carefully chosen; it had to convey a friendly, artistic playfulness while walking the very fine line between professionalism and whimsy (it couldn't be staid and boring, nor could it be s...

What an interesting three-day extravaganza the 2011 Prince Edward County Studio Tour was. There were lots of people walking in and out of my gallery here at Small Pond Arts , and I chatted amiably with interested folks, all while I worked on the underpainting of my next Prince Edward County  barnscape. My large body of work (spanning just over two decades) seemed very well-liked by my visitors –including the six new paintings I did especially for the Tour using three local wines ( Malbec , Cab Franc , and Baco Noir ). However. This whole time –from the initial application process last winter, until I took down my Studio Tour sign at the end of the Tour today– something was nagging at the back of my mind. Something about the whole Studio Tour's visual identity seemed oddly, and inappropriately, familiar...something about...my home town? Something about...an old TV show? Something... ... ...something... ... ... ...something... ... ... ... >...