900 Days.

Yep, it's true - Saturday marked the 900th day of my Thousand Days Project. Since January 1st, 2010, I've drawn/painted every single day, without fail. That seemed like an almost-ridiculous goal at one point, but the end is definitely in sight now.

I didn't do anything special for Day 800, because I was well into Birthday Shenanigans Week. Day 700 was the 1st of December, and in addition to chipping away at the numerous paintings I was doing at the time, I drew a quick headshot of a beautiful blonde.

So with all that in mind, I figured that Day 900 needed something out of the ordinary -  not a metalflake painting, not a dinosaur, not a sketchbook diary piece. But what?

Meanwhile, one particular illustration of mine has lain dormant for a long time - since September 15th of 2011, to be exact. This has been a long-gestating piece. I first started it in the fall of 2010, but it kept getting set aside in favour of other projects.

The first rough iteration of it looked something like this:

As time went by I slowly got closer to finishing it. In mid-September I did the blueline pencils:

This was scanned and imported into my Photoshop document, and the base illustration was set aside on my bar, waiting for me to do the final linework in ink. Anybody who's had a drink at my place since then has seen it sitting there, though oddly enough, I don't recall anybody ever asking about it.

I posted an in-progress picture online the night of the 15th, and walked off to a date with destiny. My whole world changed that night, and definitely without warning. Another story for my memoirs, I guess.

And I've seen that illustration almost daily since the fateful night, till it got to the point where it was just part of the furniture.

Until I was finally ready to finish it.

So without further ado (or cryptic remarks), here it is, the fruits of my labour of Day 900/1000:

Bret Taylor
Vancouver, BC

Blast From the Past.

Once upon a time there was a car magazine publisher named Tom McMullen. Back when I was in highschool, several of his magazines had sections that published illustrations from readers - Truckin', Street Rodder, Custom Rodder, etc.

Fancying myself an accomplished illustrator by this point, I promptly shipped them a handful of my drawings (never occurred to me, of course, to keep copies for myself). Over the next year or so, I think they published four or five of my pieces - my first published work. And last week as I continued in my efforts to purge a lot of the useless crap out of my life, I found three of the magazines:

I knew immediately which issues they were. I can still remember how excited I was to see my art in them. Here, have a look:

I still kinda like that Monte Carlo. Maybe I should draw an updated version sometime.

Hot Rods 2

Hey, I just released a new Hot Rods calendar in my RedBubble store.

Get 'em while they're hot.

Red or Gold.

Brothers and sisters, once again I come to you with a colour question. In this case... well, you can see for yourself:

So what's it gonna be? Red, or gold?