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.

the rush

an extract of an already posted piece a year or two ago. i just liked that gas mask design and the crispy aspect i had added to it at the time. where the hell is this photoshop brush now. have no clue.

discontinuity

First of all i wanted to throw back the ball at limbolo for is extremely kind reply. (does "throw back the ball" makes any sense? .. anyway). Minimalism is not that easy to understand when talking about art. And it's a fact that even though this philosophy logically belongs to the animation world, few people have been able to amaze and fully understand what this "do less say more" process really meant. i could look at this piece from limbolo for ages.

and here's another semi abstract compo done a month or two ago. well allright, not much minimalism in there, but i'm still learning!

decay

i still got all these sketches lost everywhere in my puter. found this concept that i used for a cover not long ago. my first intent was to define the piece by adding extra postapocalyptic details here and there. i had even added a few layers with flying scooters as well as a few humans near that lower beach. you begin sketching a boat wreck, and you end up painting a cathedral

dump poetry

this one escaped from my brain in a snap tonight. packed the whole thing in an hour. just two tiny but extremely important hours of mind relaxation between kids going to sleep at 8 and me falling asleep two hours later. not much time, hence the urge sometimes.
i guess i was nostalgic. i was also being pretty much influenced by limbolo's formidable egyptian structures. it fascinates me. this one's for you neil. you're such a great inspiration.

there we go ...

there i am. into that blog thing. my site is there but don't ask me why, i prefer opening some sort of a new space for a change. i want to post different stuff. escape from my regular habits. talk more.
nothing new right? that's why blogging is all about. only the content is important.
i will put a better makeup to the site slowly. but i prefer posting now otherwise nothing is going to seriously force me to achieve anything.

sparth