Under Pressure Graffiti Festival 2010!!!!!!!

Under Pressure, aka the best damn thing that happens in Montreal in the summer, is gearing up for its 15th year this coming weekend. August 14th and 15th, come down and join the party at Peace Park and Foufounes Electrique (the former being just above Renée Levesque on St. Laurent, the latter...well, you know Foufes, don't you?). Why am I so excited? Because above and beyond being a long-term fan of the event, I was lucky enough to get to design their shirts this year! We went with a playing card theme and the phrase Down With the Kings as our mantra. Below are the results. For more info on the event, visit www.underpressure.ca Posters of these images will be available at the event and online at www.hellokirsten.etsy.com.

New Illo! Maternal Health Initiative

A new illustration for Vue Weekly in Edmonton, on Canada's failure to fund abortions in developing nations through our Maternal Health Initiative.

Abortion in these countries actually SAVES children's lives, because the children of women who die are 10 TIMES more likely to die themselves within the next two years. A study by the Lancet shows that legalizing abortion does not increase the demand for it. Legalization moves the practice from back alleys to safe hospitals, greatly reducing the # of women who die, which in turn saves the lives of their remaining children. South Africa is a great study in how legalizing abortion greatly reduces childhood mortality. I know the logic is not straightforward, but the facts are well documented.

Furthermore, shouldn't women in countries we are aiding get the same medical services Canadian women do (respecting, of course, the laws and rules of said country)? We should be fighting to reduce childhood mortality abroad, not tacitly supporting repressive governments that won't even let women who have been raped or are going to die make a choice.

Stephen Harper has failed many women the world over by not funding a full range of maternal health options.

Here is a link to the Vue article:http://vueweekly.com/front/story/words_are_not_enough/

Polaris Music Prize Poster!

Yippee! Here's my Polaris Music Prize poster for Patrick Watson's album 'Wooden Arms'. It's a great album and he is totally a contender for the win. The poster was a blast to do, and I am looking forward to seeing the silkscreened print this week (18 x 24 inches, 3 colours). There will be 15 up for sale on my etsy site within the coming weeks - yep, it's a small run, so get'em while they're hot! Detail shots below.

New Illo! Eye Weekly!

A new illustration for Eye Weekly about how it can sometimes be harder to be a good father than a good mother, because in order to be good fathers men need to be emotional in ways they aren't used to.  

The photo above is a little dull compared to the file I sent in, because: BEHOLD!  What happens when you try to display a file with a CMYK profile on the internet (which works in RGB).  Sigh, I feel like I am always learning and there are 1,000,000 things that can go wrong when computers and printing get together.  

Actually, it looks kind of cool.  Way to work the complimentary colours, internet.
Work in progress: getting near the end.  I really fell in love with the multi-face thing going on above, but ultimately decided that it was the art part of my brain that loved the weirdness of it, and that the illustration part of my brain needed to focus on communicating a message.  In that respect, keeping the second face looking more like a mask was probably a good choice.  Also, the double face thing might be visually confusing to everyone but, say, the person who drew it.  That was my main concern, anyway.

Work in progress: This is what it looked like after day one: a few hours of compiling the various elements.  Day two was refinement and colour choice.  Thank god, because it looks WAY better now.

I'm still iffy on this whole revealing my process thing I'm doing.  I wonder if it makes sense to air so much of my dirty laundry and mistakes out there.  Then again, as an illustrator who is fairly new to the game, I really like seeing how other people do their thang.  And I figure that if I want to see it, I'd better show it too.  So here it is folks!  For now, at least...  Ha ha, until some art director says, "Well, I *was* going to hire you, until I saw your passion for teal early in the process.  Deal breaker!"

New Illustration

A new illustration for Vue Weekly in Edmonton. Edmonton is in Alberta, a province familiar with booms and busts due to its reliance on oil mon

ey. The concept was to depict a millionaire in a soup line, to accompany an article on the emergence of the 'bust' part of the cycle.

Since I always find myself wishing more illustrators showed their process, I'm going to try out showing mine, even though I'm very much a novice compared to the illustrators whose blogs I compulsively read.  So here we go: concept sketch

Final sketch (looking at them now I kind of prefer the concept sketch 

to the final one.  I think I lost some of the spontaneity, and had better composition).

I tried to make the millionaire look a little less cartoony than he does here.  Other than that, there's more I want to say (I always feel like I have SO MUCH to learn!), but I think I'll save it for another post.  Here's the cover as printed:

Put that in your Papirmasse and schmoke it.

Production for issue 2 of Papirmasse is underway!  What's that you say?  You're a bad blogger and haven't even told us what this paper-thingamajigger is in the first place?  True.  But since a trip to San Francisco and many deadlines loom in my near-future, I'm going to have to delay any explanations until January.  In the meantime, here's a preview of the cover image of issue 2, and a link to the official website, where all is revealed.

Published

And it looks great!  Vue went one step further and turned the illustration into a nifty punk-rock Christmas present in the form of a two-page spread documenting all the bands the members of Les Tabernacles have been in (hint: approximately a million, by the looks of all those squiggly lines.)  Click here for a link to the hi-res version.