Sketch Diary.

So I bought a new sketchbook recently, and started carrying it everywhere. When I'm in a new place I try to find some small object to sketch - nothing major, just kind of a visual souvenir.

Last weekend I paid a visit to a city I haven't visited in a couple years, Victoria, B.C. Just needed a weekend away from Vancouver, and see some new faces and decompress. While I was there I saw this wooden rhino and had to draw him:

And yesterday I went to a fun little Sunday-brunch outing at one of my favourite restaurants, Cosca. Lots of cool visual details in the place, so I had lots of options to choose from. In the end I drew this lamp that reminded me of the restaurant's symbol (an artichoke):

And after that I spotted this chandelier:

I definitely need to do more of this. Stay tuned.

Bret Taylor
Vancouver, BC
May 21, 2012

Hold On.

Had a very nice walk home through the West End via the quieter side streets last night. Felt like I hit a level of inner peace that I haven't felt in a long, long time.

Now as you may or may not know, the past year has been an incredibly tumultuous one for yours truly. Every couple months has been marked by another sea change - one dramatic shift in tone, content, mood, cast, dialogue, conflict, theme, plot, etc. after another. Bret Taylor circa August of 2011, for example, would be floored by the day-to-day (and especially night-to-night) life of the Bret Taylor from a mere month in the future.

And so it goes.

For a long time I got lost in all this, just struggling to keep my head above water. Maintaining any sense of perspective was an nice idea in the abstract sense, but an impossibility in practical terms. So I did what anyone would do: I tried to keep it on the path, and I adjusted my worldview as I went, based on the current day's data.

And ultimately? I failed.

You heard me. Failed. And miserably, at that - I lost my path altogether. Let some very (very) important people down, couldn't live up to heartfelt promises and blood oaths. I dropped the fucking ball altogether, if you must know. Paid an absurdly high price for that failure, too. And in the process lost more than I even knew I had to lose - more than I could ever handle losing again. But then, nobody said any of this was fair, right? I mean, fairness is great as a utopian ideal. But how many times have you actually seen it play out in front of you? Once? Twice?

Be honest.

So. This brings us to yesterday. The morning started out with disappointing news, albeit not the kind of news that could change a man's life (a cancelled date, if you must know). Yet that news hit me hard, out of all sense of proportion and in a way that left me off-kilter for most of the day. Even my old standby, paint therapy, absolutely could not snap me out of it (of course I publicly blamed paint therapy).

This has never, to my recollection, happened before. A real measure of how far adrift I am right now, you might correctly surmise. I had honestly thought the method to be infallible.

In the end I dragged my much-bruised and abused ego into the kitchen and focused my flagging energies on sustenance instead. Whipped up a mindblowing batch of meaty, chipotle-dominated chili. And when the bulk of that work was done and I was waiting for the mixture to reduce, I turned my attention back to the painting in question.

And goddamn, but everything flowed. Hit exactly the right marks when mixing my glazes - tone, saturation, volume. The highly-reflective silver bits (my trusty Tri-Art Liquid Mirror) drybrushed over the glass bead gel took the phthalo blue and alizarin crimson glazes perfectly. Ditto the more subtle highlights I'd carefully worked in over the past few days.

Then I went out to visit friends. Had a couple drinks, talked some things over, watched some TV. Y'know, everyday stuff.

And made that fateful walk home. And the rest you know. I guess the lesson here is, the therapy won't take when you're not receptive to it. But it'll work when you're ready.

Deep, I know.

Bret Taylor
May 6, 2012.
(Not to be confused with the Bret Taylors of September 2011 or January 2012.)

Soundtrack - "Hold On", by the Alabama Shakes.

Day 810: a Retrospective.

So here's a post that's long overdue. Back on March 25 (day 810 of the 1,000 Days Project), I woke up to find myself inspired. Hell, maybe even driven. I looked around at all the stuff I've been working on, in an attempt to prioritize. And as a means of self-promotion I decided to post in-progress photos online to document the whole day.

Since I'm planning a series of six ballerina paintings, I figured I should start working out the poses I want to use - the final lineart will be drawn from a live model, but I wanted to do my homework this time. So here are the sketches:

With that out of the way, I decided to turn my attention to an Avengers painting commissioned by a friend of mine. Once the masking was done, it struck me just how fortunate I was to have such a perfect venue for painting on a sunny day:

Then I started applying the linework. Instead of the white I always used to use on my metalflake pieces, I went with silver (Tri-Art Liquid Mirror), bronze and copper. It's only recently that I branched out from the white - the silver was also used on the "For a Dancer" painting, and the copper on the seahorse (AKA "Top Seekrit") piece.

Pretty soon all that remained to do was signing the Avengers piece:

And finally, the glorious results:

I have to admit, I'm really happy with how this one turned out, especially the metallics in the lineart.

Once that was finished I was still pretty psyched, so I decided to press on:

I really enjoy these large-format paintings. As I've mentioned more than once, the plan is to do a series of these pinup-girl paintings, if I can ever get the planets back in the same alignment again. Here's where I left off that night, after close to nine hours of painting:

And that was day 810. A whole slew of amazing people offered comments and helped me promote this mini-event, so I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them all:

Nicole Cruickshank, Andrea Waters, Cosca Restaurant, Ned Tobin, Geoff Gauthier, Trevor Ricketts, Ceci Graber, Wes Thompson, Natalie Jean, Bahaneh Grewal, Ron Cooper, Isabell Kinga Markus, Amanda West, Matty Sadorf, John Lee, Bob Cluness, Heather Prost, George Smeltzer, Candice Roach, Keith Perkins, Kelle Belle, Meghan Low, Lola Frost, Vincent Ng, Irving Lau, Todd Hancock and 99.3 CFOX, Opal, Annie Friesen, Melissa Hartfiel, Lorraine Murphy, Jessi Sensabaugh, Yvonne Milroy, Julie Frisina, Jim Dickson, Tina Power, Cathryn Smith, Margaux Wosk, Erika Wallace, Matt Algren, Kimberley Mulla, Jaime Purgavie, Wendy Pemberton, and Tess McCann.

(Plus Tequila Mockingbird, Nikki B, maryjane_77, the ruggler, Baw-nee and sparklehorss.)

Thank you, one and all. You're the reason I do this.

Dinosaur-a-Day Project, Day 12/29.

At long last, a new dinosaur. This is another one I saw in the Extreme Dinosaurs exhibit, the Carnotaurus:

Still plenty more to come. Maybe another T-Rex?

At Last, the Top Seekrit Revealed.

Way, way back, I blogged about a project I called Top Seekrit. The project took awhile, due to the vagaries of winter weather and life just getting in the way, as it often does.

The painting was more-or-less finished in early January, and presented to the birthday girl who inspired it on the day of her party. Unfortunately there wasn't time to get it properly photographed. Plus, the clearcoat was still milky in a couple spots, which I have to admit made me more than a little nervous. What if it never cleared completely? You really don't wanna be the guy who ruins a pretty girl's birthday present.

Fortunately it dried nicely, and a couple days ago I finally had it photographed by my good friend John Watson.

But wait - I'm getting ahead of myself here.





It all started this way: she told me about a seahorse tattoo she had, and how she'd love a painting based on Charles (the aforementioned seahorse, of course). She'd already seen several of my first-generation metalflake paintings, and liked the look of those. So really, it was all just a matter of sorting out details after that.

First I did a tracing of her tattoo, which hopefully didn't tickle too much:

Then I refined that a bit, and defined the lineart better:

Next came the final ink lineart, ready to be transferred onto the painted surface:

(It was during this stage that I decided to add the little circular bits to Charles's crest.)

And how did all this turn out, you ask? Well, a lot like this:

Oh, and here's a little macro detail to give you more of an idea of how the metalflake paintings look in the real world:

What can I say? When I'm inspired the whole process is just... easier.

Bret Taylor
Vancouver, BC
March 31, 2012

P.S. As always, thanks, Tess.

Dinosaur-a-Day Project, Day 11/29.

Shockingly, yet another daily-picture project has gone off the rails in a major way. Theoretically, the dinosaurs should've been done almost a month ago, but no dice. Work and life have gotten in the way, as they often do.

At any rate, I'm finally making use of the photo reference I shot at Science World last weekend. This particular beastie is from the same family as the triceratops, protoceratops and kosmoceratops. Can't for the life of me remember what it's called, but hopefully some kindly and knowledgeable dinosaur dork can fill me in:

Steinway - a Work in Progress.

Hello again, Faithful Readers. Lately I've been getting lots done on the Steinway painting (part of the upcoming Closing Time series, as you undoubtedly already know). Today I worked on putting the lettering on the piano itself. Stencil first:

Time to get my hands dirty:

The artist at work:

And finally, where things stand as of right now:

Some colour left to apply, but this piece will soon be finished for good.

The Dino Show.

There is much news on the dinosaur front, my friends. Many more of them to draw - I went to the Extreme Dinosaurs exhibit at Science World yesterday with friends, and I got tons of reference photos and ideas.

They had full-size, moving, interactive mockups of the dinosaurs, plus several fossil skeletons:

 

So my new plan is, I want to do an all-dinosaur show - books, calendars, t-shirts, prints, you name it. I've already got a T-Rex available in my print store, and a handful of t-shirts already. Still a lot of details and strategies to be sorted, but I think this one's really got some potential - already sold one of the T-Rex shirts.

I'll keep you posted.

Dinosaur-a-Day Project, Day 10/29.

Finally back to the dino project tonight, with the alectrosaurus:

Really enjoying drawing the carnivorous beasties more than the others.

For a Dancer.

Sometimes a painting almost seems to come out of nowhere and touch all kinds of people. Other times, the process can be a lengthy, involved one. In this particular case, it's a bit of both.

One night last summer I was chatting with a new friend and she happened to mention that she wanted a painting in hot pink. Further to that, she told me that she used to dance, and that she wanted art along that theme - feet and legs in pointe shoes. Time went by and we became much closer. But this idea stayed in my head. In November I drew a rough sketch of her legs and feet in the pointe shoes she'd had since she was a teenager. That original sketch has since been framed and now hangs on her living room wall:

By this point I could see the finished painting in my head pretty clearly. I started creating another of my metalflake paintings with the intention of giving it to her as a Christmas present. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the metalflake pieces take a lot longer to dry in mid-winter, because the shorter days and crappy weather mean a vastly-reduced amount of UV radiation (which speeds the drying process along).

In the end I bought her a Leonard Cohen book for Christmas, and the hot pink painting proceeded oh-so-slowly. A couple days ago I was inspecting the painting and noted that the thick, thick clearcoat was finally dry.

The end of this journey was finally in sight.

On Friday night I found myself at loose ends. I wanted to go do something social with friends, but any and all attempts to make that happen simply failed. So I mixed myself a strong Sailor Jerry's & Coke, and started masking the painting. The whole process came together pretty quickly, and with the encouragement of my Muse, the painting was soon finished:

Feels very weird to have the painting finished now, considering it's been in my subconscious since August, and it's March as I write this. And of course, my world is a vastly different place than it was during that late-night conversation waaay back in August - I couldn't even begin to chart the changes. I'm a whole new human being, really.

So there you have it - the painting was a labour of love, and it's actually done.

Interestingly enough, I posted updates live on Twitter and then Facebook as the night progressed, and the response was stunning. So much support, so much praise, so many questions, so many people sharing the final image with friends and followers. So, I'd like to thank the people who made this so much easier: Meghan Low, Donna Jaggard, Kelly St-Laurent, Natalie Smith, Mandy Fisher, Nick Voikos, Mark Kretzschmar, Chris Hobrecker, Bruce Ng, Adé Win, Brandy Trudeau, Heather Prost, Liam Rines, Elaine Shiel, Leanne Corrigan, Tony Dunphy, Fiona Flowers, Nicole Crosby, Sean Parrack, Elizabeth Whalen, Jaime Purgavie, Melissa Hartfiel, Ceci Graber, Dale Deruiter, Vince Ng, Melissa Berg, John Lee, Dilara Litonjua, Cathy Browne, Risto Paalanen, Emily Brandt, Jackie McCaughan, Nick Routley, Amanda West, Christine Warner, Kathleen Ralph, Gary Hayden, Donna Jay-Crowe, Tina Power, Tom Van Hoose, Jackie Teel, Geoff Seymour, Winnie Huang, James Dickson, Marion Vincent, Sarah Merris, Katherine Bowes Pieters, Jewel Staite, Paulette Brown, John Bell ...

... and Tess McCann, without whom this would never have even been conceivable.