glissement de temps sur mars

California in the 50s, on mars. k. dick is really a fabulous writer, and i still have a lot of his books to read. His productions and detailed universes represent a real goldmine for us illustrators.

I received a few weeks ago a russian magazine in which i had done an interview in january. The very kind person who interviewed me, alexander, thought about sending a print. I really appreciate this attention. It is called gamenavigator, and they published a bunch of my artworks in a three pages interview. Unfortunately i lost my english replies, and the mag is in russian only. I have no idea what i said really, which is kind of fun. I'll maybe post a link here, as a souvenir.

Now here's a link. This book, "LA/SF", by Christian Schellewald, published by designstudiopress, is a real keeper. Live and nervous sketches, a very original layout, collections of notes and scenes from the west coast. It could even incitate me to go outside and sketch with a real pen and paper. something i haven't done for ages. well done christian!

DesignStudioPress - Concept design 2

Do you know how much time it took me in order to sign 200 limited edition conceptdesign2 books? one and a half hour. Gee! i thought i was going to wrap up the whole thing in ten minutes, how wrong i was. The final concept design 2 book is awesome, I got a double page with five artworks appearing in this opus. and the good news is that it can now be obtained via amazon.

hundred years

i rarely have the time to post a personal piece. let's consider this the piece of the month, since my last message has been posted nearly a month ago. This illustration has been imagined while listening to some extremely relaxing ambient mixes available on the web. my second inspiration came from my friend rainart who has posted amazing experiments on forums lately.

feast definy

yesterday it had to come out. an impulsive will forcing me to go forward. to improve, to understand how to bring the next images to the next level. and to have fun!

late feedbacks from late february.

Just wanted to make a small post about the event i had been attending in late february 06. My friend travis had invited me to give a live explanation of my process for the gnomon workshop. We're already in the middle of March but i felt like talking about it. The demo lasted one hour thirty, but i guess i could have continued for quite a while. Once you're in it, nothing really stops you. True i was a little stressed at first, mostly because syd mead was doing a demo just before me.

(mark goerner on the center left, and travis bourbeau on the right)

I had a very nice time, even though i stayed in LA for just two days. My franco-canadian friends were all there, and it was a pleasure to stay with them, even for a few minutes. Even though i am having a great time in Dallas, i have to admit that i miss being with them, as the atmosphere was great and creativity very high. but life goes on, as we often say.
Scott Robertson was extremely kind showing me LA during a day. Designstudiopress is a small but amazing haven of creation, and the city is overall very pleasant.

It was important to start showing the process we had invented with the Montreal team. we focused so much on brush templates and forms during the last year, we felt like we had definitely opened the right door within the program. i'll try to explain more about the whole thing in months to come, if time allows me to do so.
many thanks to all the people and friends who keep checking this little blog. i'm having a pleasure reading your posts, and it does mean a lot more to me than when i update my html "no feedback" news page on my site.
the first image is a photo shot by phil holland. phil was there, like in 2004 during the CA Austin workshop, he's always very helpful and kind, and he's also an amazing breathtaking photographer. Many thanks phil for having been there exactly at the right time. you know what i'm talking about. same for you travis, i owe you much!
Second and third pictures are shots done by nicolas ferrand and bruno gentile. thanks mates.

scene for insects

an extract, once again, of an older composition. my sketch folder is ready to explode.

as planned, i began leaving aside book covers from now on, and i will not accept any more work of this kind in the near future. and no, i am not doing this to find more time to relax, but in order to concentrate on my artbook expected for 2007.
and i will use this blog in order to do updates on this matter during the year.

subcity

i rarely have time to do personal pieces any more. but when i do i try to keep it under two hours, sometimes even less. i still have a lot of stuff to organise in my everyday life. it's not an easy thing doing such a move. i will have to concentrate now on having my driving license. at 34 years old, it's about time right?

a small enviro with red subs.

rene levesques in 2005

in june 2005, following an advice from my friend barontieri, i decided to buy a laptop in order to use it as a painting tool. live paintings. with hydropix, which had bought the exact same computer too, we went around Montreal during a few weeks, trying to find the best spot in order to paint. sometimes people were looking at us with interest or surprise. i remember that a guy had even asked me if it was possible to write things down with my small portable wacom. i told him he could do so, that way he wasn't deceived, but i really wanted to escape from the conversation. he was amazed. i was amused.

i perfectly remember this moment on the picture. we were on rene levesques, one of the main large streets in downtown. pretty much dead during the night, not like on st Catherine. very pleasant moments. and this last painting was done probably the day after, on desjardin.

by the way. i had written all this stuff down on december 20, before christmas. but i had kept it as a draft since. merry xmas to you all!

romantic snow boom

on one hand, having a winter without snow is depressing. dallas is not the sort of place to find your car burried in snow in the morning, i've been fooled. :D on the other hand, the fact of not having to put ten layers of clothing on every kid when going outside is an immense pleasure. it's probably the worst thing i had to deal with while living in Montreal. imagine two squeeking kiddies, with only the head visible. then you enter into a mall. you remove everything if you don't want them to become red like apples. then 20 minutes later, you leave. repeat the process... on and on. until summer comes.
i used to love snow. now i still love it though. on photos or in magazines.

low larva ship

an extract of a larger illustration done a few months ago. i did add quite an amount of details on this specific ship. i wanted it to become the main focus point of the illustration.

arthur's batman

my older son arthur, which is 5, started doing a lot of sketches tonight. actually he started doing funny drawings just a few months ago, or at least, let's say that he began having fun with a pencil quite late, as most of his earlier sketches were pretty much conventional. now it's definitely getting fun. the thing that strikes me the most is that his sketches are all extremely balanced. i chose this one because of the ears and mask: quite minimal, but everything's there!

second drag

second drag was an artwork done around september, while discovering a lot of new techniques with the Montreal team. tried to keep it confidential until now, even though i must have posted it on forums already. doing this serie of spaceships and building was a lot of fun, especially because the different techniques i had developed with my friends helped me obtain nice compositions in sometimes less than 15 minutes. it helps gaining self confidence. however, do not expect me to explain all my tricks, it would be like revealing you the coca cola recipe, i bet you wouldn't maybe drink as much coke if you knew what it was made of . . .

music: try pandora if you desperately need musical inspiration. thanks thierry for the link.

perceval

this one is an oldie. a fast sketch done for a children book cover a year or two ago. the sketch did not correspond to the exact demand, so i continued on other concepts and left this on in a drawer. i kind a liked it though. damn, i even forgot to add the final cover to my site covers page. probably because within myself i found the final cover not good enough.

something completely different now. for those of you who aren't familiar with biosphere, that guy has been doing such amazing sound compositions for years now. he is the one who has created what we call today the "arctic sound". Ambient from up north. cold atmospheres. biosphere has a few mp3's on his site by the way. i often work with Geir Jenssen's compositions in the background. actually i always work with instrumental music in my ears, electronic, symphonic, scores and mental conpositions. i'll try to sometimes put my feelings on paper concerning this subject. music plays such an important part in my creative process.

la voie ancienne

Once in a while, i like playing with my sketches folder. some sort of a treasure box filled with extracts, or even sometimes entire illustration that do not reach (yet) the standart i want them to obtain. it's a pleasure going in there and take a tour with my virtual scissors, going around, "snip snap". and you would not believe it, but sometimes, images tend to fit perfectly together, exactly like in a puzzle.