-mai- Le mois de la détermination.

i re-drew this one. Still not quite there... Trying to get the features right.I also feel like the flowers are not big enough...is it just me?

FrintonPress second wrapping paper.

For some reason this reminds me of Alice in Wonderland.

 Everybody like a good pout. Or life upside-down?

LO-OOG, LO-OOG....

     Good morning everybody, is it as grey where you are? Just a little announcement, i finaly put up my etsy shop. Something that has been in the air since last summer....getting around to it. I have a few items listed, and will put more gradually, but i wanted to show those two pieces off on the blog, since i like them a lot. 

     First of all they involved a pretty intense quest to find the actual logs...it was a tricky matter since wood dries, and i could not use bark that was not dried well, since that would meen it would dry after being painted on, and nobody could predict what that would look like. (paint chipping, bark ripping off...wood benting on itself.) So, i managed to find actual crusts of trees.. (not without great help, thanks to my dad <3,  and to his friend Yves Rivard for his help) that had been sitting inside for a couple years, and oh god, where they far from home! Then, the prepping began, i'll save you the steps, but lets just say those where kind of the holy grail of the Girls of a Feather art show. The one concept that was teasing my artiste-peintre's heart...Girly paintings on real rough logs...

"I Married" in the shop

"Bow" in the shop.

-Mai-

Here's my sketch for the month of May in my calendar.

I was trying to be oh-so clever...by combining many different projects into one single sketch.

i want to submit a wrapping paper for this year's frinton press call for entry. (and do it right this time!) And also make a spring drawing for LDH. And, obviously, colour this into my month of may page...

UH HUMMM. i just dont like the image anymore. I dont know why...but this has no mojo at all.

you know when a teeny-tiny thumbnail looks heavenly, and everything in that really too tiny image seems perfect. even the features in the face, which are clearly just hinted, seem so beautiful...only if they where bigger and better drawn....NOT.

I guess another problem was that i needed to clean it with a pen, since the frinton press image needs a black-white-no-grey-tones look. (i was then going to make it into a nice pattern....lots of work, ect. But, i dont really like the look of clean pen lines, (or messy ones in this case) compared to pensil lines. So, im kind of facing the fact that i might not use this sketch for any of those things, making this morning a total loss of time!

still, i was up early so its not a big deal. and mojo cannot happen each time. right? I'll move on to images i need to finish for this week...and just leave may for later. it'll be waiting for me in at the back of my brain i guess.

*** UPDATE***

Okay, breathing steady, and not loosing controle, i managed to make this image into the wrapping paper for frinton! Im pretty happy with this good-attitude-self-of-the-year-of-the-white-tiger. See? What a little perseverance can do?

If any of you would like to send in something, check out the links i put up at the top of this blog post. or check out frintonpress.blogspot.com in general, for the spechs and details. Making a successfull repeat pattern is kind of a pain in the bum if you never-ever did it before. But i think they linked a couple how-tos on their blog, and you could defenetly start with something simple. Go check some of their prints from last xmas and you'll see what im talking about in terms of coolness. 

xx

paule. 

Marine

A little something i did quickly. lunch break procrastination-in the shape of a pre-summer new portfolio piece?? Ive been kind of missing by back bob....i know, i know...it is silly. Now that my hair is FINALY on the way of being grown for real...(well, if 2 inches bellow the chin line can be called growing out of a bob.) and that i also found the courage to let it it's natural shade of rich brown. But what can i say?... we always want what we dont have? or something like that...

Well, well....what i can say is that this illu is inspired by the creations of two awsome designers from montréal, Noémie and Tamara, two girls i recently met at the girls of a feather vernissage. We are planning some really cool colaborations for the near future, so stay tuned for that...in the meantime, this is those earings from Noémiah bijoux, and that body-jewelery from This Ilk. 

oh and btw, i just set up a twitter account, talk about 2 years late...but i heard about it in a more self-promoting way, and felt it could have some up-sides. so if you're already twitting, follow me there! @paule_tb

ciao!

-Janvier-

Unlike my friend Boum, I've decided not to keep my calendar-illustrations a secret, :P

I'll be posting sketches, colour studies and things like that. I like the feed back. and i think it'll make it an even nicer body of pieces in the end. Not that we dont like suspense...but i beleive that people would still want it next january anyways....will they? If people still havent gotten one for 2010...i suggest you get Boum's, it is a pretty cute serie of cartoonish-edgy pinups, and it brightens my kitchen, and kind of weirds out some of my guests, but in a good way.

In the meantime, im not sure yet if i'll print it and spiral bind it myself, or go with the deviant art format like she did. I havent totally understood their submission process, but i like the fact that they take care of the charging and shipping. BUT i dont like that i dont get to design the month pages and the format. Pros and cons, pros and cons...still plenty of time to think about it. 

Anyhooo, this is January. There is a lot going on in my mind about each month, i started with occidental birth stones, and english months' flowers. Little traditions that i've never really paid attention to before, but somehow i wanted to go away from zodiac signs and things of that sort. 

So i'll tell you for this one, but maybe it would be nice of you to try guessing the other ones from the sketches? The birth stone of January is Grenat/Garnet in english. I love the fact that it's name comes from latin of pomegranate...and the flower of that month is Oeillet/Carnation, which happens to be one of my favorite flowers, so i guess i'll have to see january on a different angle now, with such pretty stone and flower in mind... 

i found little gregorian poems about each birthstones that were used by Tiffany and Co in the 50's...i kind of want to use them but im worried about copyright issues. i'll have to look into that....

still, here it is:

By her who in January was born
No gem save garnets shall be worn
They will ensure her constancy
True friendship and fidelity.

Pretty isnt it? 

xx

early birdie.

I decided to start working on a 2011' calendar. Better early then later? This is exactly the kind of project that i always underestimate, and end up stressing about. This time im going to take it easy. Could this be part of my new year-of-the-tiger-non-procrastinator self? We'll see....

Girls of the Feather Vernissage

Hey, Just saying a big thanks to everyone who passed by the show last friday. You are great. 

It went super well, the turn out was good and people seemed to like my art and Angie's creations a lot. 

My face is a little weird but that is no big deal to me. 

Those three fan-panels were my favorite, and the Purple-Shade one (closest to me in the pic) was sold so it makes me happy. Beautiful model Mosh, let me paint her for those. 

I'll be going at the gallerie to take nice clean pictures of everything. I'll probably post it here. and then everything will be in an Etsy shop later this spring. 

The show is up the walls until april so feel free to go check it out if you live in Montreal! The Headquaters boutique is defenetly worth the discovery too. 

xxx

Norwegian Wood+Paule TB

Since the Opening of the 'Girls of a Feather' show is this friday, i thought i would remind you....and feature something related! 

Since i have never put them here on the blog, now is a great time! The tags i designed for Angie Johnson's Norwegian Wood creations, to be hanged with her special collection for TopShop EDIT. (oxford circle, last september) The tags where all inspired by the clothes, accessories of Angie. And most of them came in a couple different colours. Here's a bunch of my favorites. Those were teeny-tiny and i have only one set of extra ones for remembrance.

The original sketches for those tags (which are digital art) will be for sale, separately.

HeadQuaters Galerie

1649 Amherst St.

(Friday March 5th)

7-11pm

See you montrealers friday night! xxx

I Heart Denis Gagnon

I fell in love with that dress, in this month's ELLE Québec. It is part of a special on Québec designers. 

I just love everything about this dress. The pale pink silk, the zipper details, the pleats, everything is so perfectly rafined and original at once. This is exactly the kind of dressy dress i'd wear to get married. 

Then i actually heard the designer, Denis Gagnon, being interviewed on Radio-Canada première chaine. He was just as delightful as his dress. 

So i could not resist googleling him and being so amazed at his creations. His style reminds me of Lanvin, and Louis Vuitton woman-wear...which are favorites of mine.

ahhhhh....so much love. 

Pinups.

Just some leisure drawing tonight. 

     Trying my hand at drawing vintage pinups. Also wanted to polish my line-cleaning skills. Which are very very far behind, and never were amazing either...héhé.
I wanted to scan/save the "line art" alone. Ill try shading and colouring it like a tattoo.

progress is good. wooden things.

     So I said i wouldnt put final stuff online...but i just did with that Connie Illustration...tsk tsk. 

And im also going to show some "work in progress". (I want to keep people exited.) And to be honnest,  it feels a little weird to be working hard all day and not to post anything...this blog habbit is so natural now. Finish something, post, read feedback, repeat...

     These are recycled skate decks. They arent that easy to work with since they involve much more prepping then brand new ones would. (ive seen a lot of amazing art on skateboards in galeries, and i was dying to try it myself. really, i was dying.) BUT, id rather use the rolled-on ones for many different reasons, first of all they are less expensive for me, therefore will be more affordable to purchase for people. (otherwise the price would be related to buying a skateboard AND a painting for your wall...) And also i like using things that have a lot of life to them. And finaly, those were going to end up in a dumbster. (i like to think that people would have recycled them...but i doubt it. )

Thanks a trillion to my friend Caroline for posing for me.

And Miss Pearl too. (which i can draw with my eyes closed at this point.)

Btw, this portrait of her will be in the show also, as a limited edition giclée print on rice paper. 

The logs are pretty much the pièce de résistance, i think. Maybe because they are quite original and painful. The work implied in getting them (many, many tribulations...) and then prepping them and working around the painter-unfriendly nature of them makes them just the more interesting.

Also to be noted, i am canadian. So logs...very dear to me.

Thanks a lot to my moral officer. :) I like this picture of us and since we havent really gotten any new ones online, so there it is: unrelated. (note the lumberjack apparel.)

Connie

This illustration will be part of the upcoming show. It is meant to go beside Stella Stars and Stripes.

Those two will be limited edition, giclée prints on deluxe paper, series of 10. 

xox

Girls of a Feather.

Just picked up the flyers at the boutique today. So exiting, :)

Upcoming Show at HeadQuaters Galerie.

I have failed to mention, in the last posts, that i'm curently coming up with a lot of new things, for an exibit at HeadQuaters Galerie. This very lovely space is run by a quite remarkable couple, Tyson and Angie. The same Angie i worked with over the summer for custom tags, who is the designer behing Norwegian Wood. I very-very much enjoyed working with her. Which was so confortable and fun, and its with immense pleasure that i'm pairing my art with her designs for a second time. We're putting up a show of her creations, and artworks from miss me too. 

Needless to say, this is exiting.

***

So here is some of the works in progress. I wont put anything on the blog at final stage. Id like to keep a little suspense over what im going to show. 

But i'll say, that there will be paintings, skates decks, digital prints, and original sketches. Some of them from the tags for Norwegian Wood at Topshop EDIT. 

Like this one. 

***

So, im shouting into the internet void...

Girls of a Feather

at HeadQuaters Galerie

Vernissage: Friday March 5th

7-11 pm. BE THERE. :)

Dazed and Confused.

The magazine Dazed and Confused is having a call for entry, for illustrators, to get inspired by one of their covers, as a celebration of their 10th anniversary. You can find the info about submiting here.

Here's my shot at Kate Moss.

And here's the original cover.

Also, what portion of it is traditionnal. just cause i like the look of it before photoshoped too.

I'll post more soon. I had a very full week and am still sort of recovering, :)

Actually if any of you have any comments, feel free, i wont submit it right away. thanks. xx

***

I added a skin tone. Joel helped me correct some things that were annoying when he got home from work.

This is the New Year-Decade.

Let's reflect a little over what we want for ourselves during the next 10 years....

Over the last 10 years, so many things happened. and i cant help but think that the next 10 will pass much faster. 

I will turn 30, midway through the next decade. It is scary, but makes me wish that i would feel like more of an adult, or even more serious. (though i consider myself a quite serious person. when im not being silly.)

It makes me want to be more dedicated to whatever resolutions i should take now. during those couple weeks of january where you feel like all changes are possible again. 

The last 10 years have defenelty been mostly about drawing. And i hope this is what the next 10 (and other decades) are about as well. 

Here is a little time-machine MEME that my Joel found online on deviantart somewhere. To see where the original template is from, go to his blog.

It was very hard (probably because i actually didnt really put any effort into it) to find some old art at hand. What makes me think that i have a very poor way at archiving what i do. at least it is the case when not work related. then i feel much more organised. but its still too bad. i couldnt find much for 2003, or older. 

I think its time i challenge myself again. in different ways..i find i didnt improve that much over those last years. not as much as i though probably. 

Happy New Year to all of you. xxxxx




Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.  ~Benjamin Franklin

Christmas is here.

Just wishing everybody an amazing christmas week.

i think mine will be a little crazy. My in-laws visiting from across the contry! <3

And a lot of work, plus a present feast tomorrow night, family time for christmas eve and the 25th.

I need to start thinking of my resolutions for the new year...

Hey santa, wont you bring me something sweet.

Since a lot of people are doing it. (just like buying Canada Goose coats...) I'll follow the trend and put up a blog post about a Christmas Wish List.

Keep in mind, that most people who will actually buy me presents this year have probably alread done it, which is wise, and would probably not pick any of those extravagant things...this is more a dreamy-wish-list. Most those things are too much money. but i can dream, can i?

***

Prints by Jessica Hirsche.. . 

Like this awsome alphabet,

or this "Say it with flower" poster.

 

Persol  Sunglasses

a rice-cooker,

 

awsome sugar skull SALT AND PEPPER SHAKERS... 

Or, this vintage tea set

or this one,

a knitted squid,

a stapler, 

OR...

a puppy...

***

Le Drawing Happening.

Bonjour,

Here's a little sketch i used for a funny illustration...made out of mags cut outs, and bic pen.

It was for this blog i started "Le Drawing Happening" .

I know i've mentionned it a couple times already... But it is awsome.

So many people i admire as artists are a part of it. (and a lot of dear close friends that i love too)

So i thought i wouldnt put things on both blogs...but still im posting up the sketch here cause i like it as is too.

People are gonna submit stuff about bi-monthly, so be sure to check us out!

And if you happen to be an artist, and are totally jealous and want to participate...email me! its not exclusive at all. The point is to have as much people and inspiration fire in all directions.

Fire!!! All directions!! MAGIC!