So this is a bit of a belated post, things have been a bit insane around these parts – but here you go! I had the pleasure of illustrating the September 2012 issue of the Literary Review of Canada. Epic thanks to AD Alastair Cheng!

I’ll be posting non-print shots of these over the next few weeks, so you can get a better look!

I would like to thank the lovely folks at WeMake for the photo of my birdhouse, which I made for their Put A Bird In It project to raise money for Portland schools (for arts programs)!

The birdhouse was really fun to make, and it was a part of Portland Design Week, exhibited for a short time there.

The WeMake folks sent me some questions about my process – I’m posting them below!

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Your work is so happy and full of character with a nostalgic appeal. Was there certain illustrators that have inspire you… or where do you find your inspiration?

Oh man, great question! I find most of my inspiration from reading about different spiritual and magical practices from around the globe. My own spiritual practice and reading about that of others will always be what fuels my work. My bookshelf always inspires me – mostly work by ecologists, religious scholars, anthropologists, and spiritual practitioners. I am really into the work of Pablo Amaringo, a Peruvian shaman who has a book out of ayahuasca paintings which is absolutely fantastic (the book is called Ayahuasca Visions). I also love Susan Seddon-Boulet, Georgia O’Keefe, Frida Kahlo, and David Blackwood. A trip to Montreal last year renewed my love of Inuit art, both sculptures and prints from Cape Dorset – but my favourite Inuit artist is Pitseolak Ashoona, she is brilliant! In terms of contemporary illustrators, I’m super into Meg Hunt, Kali Ciesemier, Eleanor Davis, and Olaf Hajek.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background as an artist.

I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. I have been lucky enough to do a lot of gallery shows but my home right now is in the illustration world. There is something I really love about the challenge of creating personal work for corporate clients! I also just love making things. My latest infatuation is with mixing herbal teas, but I also make my own fruit and veggie preserves, herbal salves, hand-bound books, zines, screen prints, and relief prints. My preferred media is mixed media, with an emphasis on a ballpoint pen, coloured pencil, and ink.

The Put a Bird In It project is supporting music and the arts for Portland public schools. Do you have memories of making art as a child?

It’s all I ever did, and it really kept me grounded. I remember winning a massive state-wide art competition in Colorado when I was in second grade, and seeing my art on bookmarks all over the state and being given away for free at my favourite bookstores really blew my mind. It inspired me to see that my work could spread so quickly and be in the books of people I didn’t even know was such a crazy concept. I think it’s still a bit hard for me to grasp!

Please give us a little detail about your process and approach to the project so far. What have you enjoyed about it?

Structurally, I wanted to give a bit of a nod to modern architecture and have the structure resemble more of a miniature house, rather than what we might just associate with birdhouses (ie, the perch, the circular entry hole, etc).

Approaching this project was interesting because the medium (wood) was an impediment to using the materials with which I am most comfortable. I decided to take a very decorative and simple approach, which in this case was a pattern of flowers in three colours – pink, magenta, and teal. In a lot of my work I like to use common household materials (for instance, I prefer your average ballpoint pen to a fancy micron or sakura pen), and for the birdhouse I decided to play that up by using common house paint and sharpie markers. I have always questioned the idea that ‘art supplies’ have a specific definition or need to be bought from an art store! I remember buying photo emulsion as a kid to paint with, without having any idea what it was. That approach has never steered me wrong!

I haven’t blogged about this yet because I haven’t had the time to start working on it – but I will soon!

I’ve been selected to participate in Portland-based WeMake‘s new project to raise money for arts programs in Portland schools. It’s called Put A Bird In It, and you can click here to take a gander at some of the other talented folks who will be involved!

Tote bags make everything better.

Mostly: cute bird stickers, some instructions/ideas on how to make a birdhouse out of a bunch of blocks of wood, and a TON of tiny wood blocks. I’m having to resist carving them…! But my plan is to incorporate that urge into the final design. It’s going to be a surprise!

The birdhouses are going to be a part of Portland Design Week, and I believe they will be auctioned off in order to raise funds. Yay!

In order to prepare for making this thing, I’ve been doing research into whether or not birdhouses should actually be painted at all. Certain kinds of paints are toxic, and I really don’t want to endanger the lives of the birds who may live in my birdhouse. It is apparently also not the best to use of bright colours, because birds are attracted to a home which blends in with its surroundings (supposedly trees and bushes, etc). If I were to make a usable birdhouse, I doubt I’d paint it at all, so I’ll probably just send along explicit instructions that the bird house I make should not be put outside for the use of real, living birds. How terrible would it be to kill birds with art?

Zine Dream kicks off three days of festivities tonight! There’s an opening party tonight at Art Metropole, and tomorrow there will be a fun panel discussion and some workshops, and on Sunday there will be a bunch of badass exhibitors selling wares (including myself)! Check out the Zine Dream site for specifics on programming. Hope to see you there!

On Sunday the zine fair is at the Tranzac (in Toronto – nearest major intersection, Bathurst and Bloor) from noon until 5 pm. Happy zine-ing, yall!

Okay, we all know Lovecraft was a terrible racist, but the innovative and visionary worlds crafted in his stories have impacted and inspired generations of creative output by writers, artists, musicians, and occultists. I was lucky enough to have been asked to be a part of Trevor Henderson‘s HP Lovecraft illustration zine project, called Puffed Shogoths. Check it out!

If you haven’t read or listened to HP Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu, do it now! My picture is of Henry Anthony Wilcox, a vital character in that story. Wilcox is a young artist tormented by dark dreams of monsters and gods and destruction, and it is his sculpture of Cthulhu that sets the story into motion. I’ve always been fascinated by dream landscapes, and the power of speaking with spirits and gods through dreams. There is a considerable interplay between Lovecraft’s work and old tales of the witches’ sabbath – (primarily) women whose spirits, in dreamtime, travel to places and speak with beings unknown to the common human eye.  Historian Carlo Ginzburg in his Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath discusses this phenomena, and late occultist Andrew Chumbley’s work on sabbatic witchcraft takes the practice forward into contemporary use. Perhaps Lovecraft was inspired by tales of the sabbath, and maybe Ginzburg and Chumbley were, in turn, inspired by Mr Lovecraft.

Hey, a girl can dream!

I’ll post more information on Puffed Shogoths when I get it. The line-up is looking pretty fantastic, and I’m honoured to be among a roster of such talented folks!

What up dudes!

So this is a little different from the typical artsy fare you see ’round these parts, but hey – food making is an art!

I have a bunch of handmade (I didn’t make them at home, I made them in a profeshunal kitchen, thank you very much, so I know everything was sterile while I was prepping the jars) preserves I’m looking to sell! I have pears, beets, pear chutney, beet chutney, and a nice spicy Indian chutney which is a bit more savory. I also have a beet jelly. Each preserve comes with a silkscreened tea towel.

The produce that was used for all of these comes from local Ontario farmers. Each yummy preserve is guaranteed to be both delicious and pretty!

If you’re in Toronto and you’re interested, let me know – prices are $15 each and slightly below for the smaller jars. If you want to pick some up in person, please let me know and I’m sure we can figure something out! Or, you can let me know what you’d like and I’ll bring it to my table at Zine Dream, which is right around the corner! Sunday, August 12, from 12noon – 5pm.

For non-local folks, shipping on each of these would probably be roughly $15. But hey, if you’re not local, and are interested, I’ll make a custom shop listing just for you!

So now that I’ve recovered (a little bit, anyway) from 2012′s Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition I can finally post some photos!

Here’s a few shots of my rad art set-up! Excuse the dirt view, it was super hot and we wanted to get a breeze running through our tent by keeping up half of the tarp. Our ploy was successful and made for a much more enjoyable 3 days than it otherwise would have been! Yay for breeze!

If anyone’s interested in any of these works, holla! I have unlimited 1/2 size prints up in my Etsy shop for the very affordable price of $40 a pop, or $60 for 2 – they’re giclee, printed on rad stonehenge paper, and 22 x 15 in. Limited, massive editions are more expensive, and if you’re interested in those you’ll have to pop me an email at sabrinadraws [at] gmail [dot] com.

And some of my badass swag:

You can take a gander at all of the above items in my fancy Etsy shop! The sachets are $20, the zines are $10, and the totes are $25.

I don’t have the pins up in my shop yet – if you’re interested in any of these, send me a hello! I don’t have the preserves up yet either, and might not since they’d be hugely expensive to ship. More on them later, but they’re all made with occasionally organic produce from local Ontario farmers. They’re professionally sealed tight and come with a silkscreened tea towel! They’re selling for $15 a pop. Pins are $1.50 each, and a set of 8 is $10.

Anyway, enough about my stuff. This event is always such a blast because I end up meeting so many amazing, friendly, inspiring folks! I had the opportunity to chat with so many people and by the end of the three day show I was exhausted but also buzzing with energy. Thanks so much to both old friends and new for stopping by for helping make the show a huge success! And I couldn’t have done it without my amazing partner and my family. Not to get corny on yall, but it needs to be said.

Also bonus high-five to my hat for keeping my head away from the sun.

More information on the preserves will be posted soon – and if you’re interested, pop me an email or comment here with your email address!

It would be nice to get to a place in our society when we can represent the diversity of the people on our planet simply as they are without people feeling as though you’re making a comment specifically on who is being represented. The default is inevitably middle-class white men; deviating from that norm, in the public eye, often means that you must be saying something pertaining to that non-normative person you’re representing. For instance, if you depict a person with a disability in your illustration, the illustration must be making some sort of comment on disabilities or folks who live with them. I’m of two minds about this issue – I wish that our society was at a point where a disabled person in an illustration could just be interpreted as reflecting the diversity of humankind rather than a comment on disabilities. However, we’re not.

The illustration industry reflects that. What’s in an illustration must be there for a reason. Good illustrators are in a constant state of paring away the excess – they start with a good idea and an image or two in their heads and work constantly to distill that idea and its visual representation to its most simple and clear form. All the information that viewers need, they should get from deciphering the illustration. If it’s not clearly communicated visually, your viewers won’t get it.

Enter: the illustration/cartoon below. This was published in the Toronto Star on July 17th, 2012 – just after a recent surge in gun violence in the city, but in particular after a large shooting in Scarborough. The illustration is by Michael de Adder.

I have a lot of concerns about this piece, both on an ‘is it a good (effective, concise, communicative) illustration’ level but also on a social responsibility/representation level as well. As illustrators it’s vital that we’re mindful of who we are representing, why we’re representing them, and how we’re representing them. A lot of folks are reading this work as – to put it kindly – irresponsible, and to put it not-so-kindly, racist (racially irresponsible and/or ignorant). I’m inclined to agree on both counts, and I’d like to tell you why (especially since ‘racist’ is a loaded term, and not everyone may read this work in that way).

Let’s pick this apart. What are some signifiers that exist within this cartoon? Well, there’s the representation of class via middle-class clothing (this child looks rather put-together and not scruffy in my opinion), and there’s the representation of race via the child’s skin colour and facial features (she is depicted as having some stereotypically black facial characteristics). We also have an image of someone who is young. That’s about all we have to work with here – those are the only three things being represented. Whatever else you’re seeing (“this could be about all children!”) literally isn’t there. There is no signifier of universality.

The lead-in: “Things to expect before they are two:” also begs some questions. Who are “they” and what exactly can they “expect”? Once we read the cartoon we understand that “they” can expect a bullet wound to the head. But again, who is this “they?” Children? Middle-class people? Black people? Notably the only category which has (misguided associations in popular culture) with gang violence is the latter – and so the illustration seems to suggest that black kids (regardless of their social stature or any other characteristic) can expect to sustain a gunshot wound, as though it is predetermined by skin colour. The illustration paints gun violence (and most gun violence is gang violence) as literally a black problem (again, since no one else is represented here).

Now, I’m no expert on policing, or gangs, or gun violence – but one thing I do know is that a person’s skin colour doesn’t determine whether or not they’re in a gang or engaged in gun violence. Gun and gang violence effects people of all colours and all racial backgrounds (and living in Toronto, where there’s been a bit of gang-related gun violence in the news lately, there are many gangs in the city which are not black) – but one common denominator seems to be a complex combination of factors, including poverty and social circumstance. What is the real issue here? I’m pretty sure it’s concentrated in a variety of social factors, and there are different ways to signify those rather than skin colour. In illustration, representation needs to be specific, otherwise it seems as though you are making a grandiose statement about All Black People – which is why this illustration can be easily read as/construed as racist and/or racially insensitive.

If the illustrator wanted to represent the poverty of the area(s) in which shootings occurred, then he should have taken the care to represent lack of financial privilege as a signifier in this piece, or made some sort of visual representation of the poverty of the neighbourhood(s) in which the violence occurred. But he didn’t, so as viewers all we can really take away from this is that all black kids can expect to be shot, because all gun violence is black. (Newsflash: it isn’t.) The differentiating factor about this shooting should, in a more thoughtful illustration, not have been represented as being about skin colour. Furthermore, many comments on the cartoon (on Facebook) have pointed out the incredible racial diversity of the area in which the shooting occurred. It’s not a predominantly black neighbourhood – so why was a black child depicted? We need to be careful to not reinforce systemic racism with our illustrations, and to carefully consider our responsibility as image makers to both our audience and to our ethical code(s) as thoughtful human beings.

It’s also important to consider the implications of representation. Sure, some individuals involved in the recent Scarborough shooting happened to be black. But is that really significant? If as an illustrator you decide that it is, it’s important to be wary of racial profiling and reinforcing negative stereotypes about different types of people.

I also want to make it clear that this is not an attempt to demonize Mr. de Adder. That is not my motivation for writing this commentary. But, as illustrators, as visual people, and as consumers of visual media, I do believe it is important to have these conversations, learn from one another, and work to improve our visual literacy, particularly when representation of minority groups (who often suffer marginalization, misrepresentation, and misunderstanding) is concerned.

Photo by Anonymous (know the photographer? let me know!), from BlogTO. (Not mine!)

In less than 12 hours I’m going to have a tent at this lovely event, the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition at Nathan Philips Square! It’s the biggest outdoor art show in Canada and I couldn’t be happier to be attending, especially since the exhibitors are very severely juried! Thanks judges, for selecting me! I’m in booth Blue #355, which is to the northwest side of the square. Here’s a map (well, the top of the official map – to see the whole thing, click here):

Blue 355!

So that’s exciting! Come visit me!

Here are the hours, taken from the TOAE site:

July 6, 7 & 8, 2012
Friday 10:30am-7:30pm
Saturday 10:30am-7:30pm
Sunday 10:30am-6:30pm

Here’s the link to the Facebook event I created for this. Share with your pals and folks who like art! See you at city hall!

I love wandering around and seeing beautiful sights like this! So awesome! Honestly, food, flowers, and occultism are my biggest inspirations, and stumbling upon something like this randomly is such a huge jackpot for me, and an awesome reminder of how magical and pretty the universe can be. I love the variety of colour in these flowers – some purple, some deep red, some magenta, some light pink, some white. Does anyone know what on earth these are called?

A bee bathing in pollen! This little dude was having a blast.

Night time adventures! Resulting in more flowers, of course!

Love the pink and lime green colour combination! There’s no combination that puts me more in mind of summer (and watermelon)!

Hydrangea!

There are so many beautiful residential streets in Toronto where you can’t see the sky because the trees lining the streets have so many leaves, big bushy canopies. It’s on those streets where everyone has a massive garden and beautiful, big old houses that you find gems.

And this is relevant, yet not a flower:

My view from behind my booth at the Toronto Anarchist Book Fair! Check out those pears! If you are interested in some, contact me!

I’ll have these pretty things for sale as well as massive limited edition giclee art prints (two of which were purchased for Target’s new Canadian offices! Can I get a HELL YEAH!) at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, which starts literally a week today! Aaah! It’ll be at Nathan Philips Square in downtown Toronto, and I’ll be on the Northwest side of all the festivities. My booth is Blue #355. It’ll be my second year at TOAE, my first was in 2010 when I won the Best of Mixed Media in the Student category. So stoked to do TOAE again! You can come visit me from July 6-8, and admission is 100% free! Maybe you’ll even run into some pretty flowers on your walk there.

Sup yall!

I’m very excited to say that I’ll be tabling at the Toronto Anarchist Book Fair this weekend! Hooray! I’ll have all of my usual goodies, plus a bunch of salves and canned goods (all from local food, professionally sealed so it doesn’t spoil – and which also come with a silkscreened tea towel!). I’m almost out of My Mundane zines and it’ll be a while before I can silkscreen any more (the fall at the earliest), so come and get yours while you still can! I’ll also have a bunch more Fruits of Love zines (printing some 2nd editions this Friday), as well as some official call-outs for my new zine project which I haven’t officially announced on the blog yet. I’ll do it after this event! I swear!

Anywho, check out the Facebook event for this fair for some more information! The event is at the University of Toronto, and you’ll be able to find me either in room 404 or 405 in the accessible Galbraith Building (at U of T) – the address is 35 St George St, Toronto. You can find me there from 10am-3:30pm on Saturday June 23^rd, and from 10am-2:30pm on Sunday the 24^th. Come say hello and give me a high-five!

If you have the chance, take a gander at the list of talks/workshops. So many great things to see and participate in!

EDIT: I will only be there on Saturday!

Carefully lying an oiled photocopy of a drawing onto a wood block, prepping for image transfer with estasol.

The block and oiled photocopy are below the white mat. With a little pressure… (in this image I’m turning the crank so the big roll thing will roll over the block, pressing the photocopy against the block)

Viola! Image transfer!

So! The sketchbook I made (rather haphazardly) for the 2012 Art House Co-Op Sketchbook Project (which is housed at the Brooklyn Art Library) is now available for online viewing. Hooray! Click here to go check out my sketchbook.

I made this thing in the span of about a week, and just played, for a change! I experimented with a bit of collage in this book, which was fun. The above isn’t the best example of that, but I really enjoy the effect of the cut-out letters in all white on a textured background image.

If you want to see my sketchbook in person – as well as all of the other super badass sketchbooks out there – you can look at the list of the 2012 World Tour dates! It’ll be in my hometown of Toronto from July 18-22, 2012, at the Gladstone Hotel.

I wrestled my way into participating in the lovely Jordan Rosenberg’s Ghost PokeZine project! It’s being funded (successfully!) via Kickstarter, and I couldn’t be happier to be involved. The Pokemon I got was Sableye – which I have to say I had never heard of, but it was tons of fun to make this thing.

And I had the perfect opportunity to experiment with some techniques that’ve been bubbling around in my brain. After drawing the canon Sableye a bunch of times I decided to do a gijinka Sableye.

Sableyes live in caves and eat gemstones, and have gemstones growing from their stomachs and backs. I decided to replace that with a gemstone necklace. I think the hair and glasses speak for themselves!

 Keep on the lookout for the finished project! Updates will probably be on Jordan’s blog. If you’re curious what other artists are participating, you can click here to see a list! 

Drew this thing at 1am in this lovely gentleman‘s sketchbook (which is now a colouring book) for his kids! Favourite part of the TCAF 2012 after-party.

Totally forgot to post this – here’s a picture from my trip to the Brooklyn Art Library in Brooklyn, New York when I was up in NYC in February. Do not touch the fancy wall of books!

It was fun!

I also hit up the Society of Illustrators for a talk by Jillian Tamaki, Eleanor Davis, and Lisa Hanawalt. I went back a few days later to get a picture of myself in front of the epic building. Looking ridiculous, as usual! I’m glad we get a building with a sweet facade, haha.

The talk was really awesome. I especially enjoyed Eleanor Davis’ points about the importance of doing stuff other than making pretty pictures, because that informs what we make – otherwise we’re just a bunch of people making pictures about making pictures. One really inspiring thing that really stuck with me (again, something that Eleanor said) – is that she works another job. Not because she needs to out of financial necessity, but because she wants to, and because it enriches her. That was just super amazing, because a lot of the podcasts I’ve listened to and a lot of the people I’ve talked to have basically said ‘Illustration 24/7 Or Die,’ which I think is a bit of a false binary. As an incredibly interdisciplinary person, that was music to my ears. Illustration is my favourite thing to do, but I also like making other things! And I think those other things inform my illustration practice and make it stronger, not weaker.

So! You guys!

I was tied up in TCAF (Toronto Comic Arts Festival) festivities this past weekend, and it was absolutely fantastic. I had a lot of fun, both as an exhibitor and an attendee, and going to the afterparties and meeting neat people. I’ve never really been an ‘afterparty1!1!1′ type of person but I’m really glad I went out.

Anywho, in the picture above you can see one of my lovely interns lying on the TCAF exhibitor map. (Sometimes my interns are more in-the-way than helpful, sadly, but alas.) I’m so happy with the direction the festival is headed – the 2nd floor was filled with a bunch of amazing stuff this year. Back in 2010 when I was in the small press room, we were up on the 2nd floor (and I think that’s pretty much all that was up there). TCAF is transforming into this awesome massive thing that is internationally acknowledged as badass, and I think that’s so great. The people who run it know what they’re doing and do it well. Really honoured to be a part of it!

Oh look! There’s my name! Such an honour to be in a room with all these other talented individuals. Check out their work!

Here was my table setup with the lovely Kat Verwho! It was an awesome table pairing, and Kat was a sweet table buddy. Look at that sweet setup. Yeah!

Table closeup!

I’m not going to bother posting pictures of the event itself – many news outlets have done so already, and much better than I have. It was packed! Comics moshpit!

Also – massive massive massive thank you to everyone who came out to TCAF, and an even bigger thank you to everyone who came out to my little area to give me a high-five and some support. Thank you to all of my lovely pals who ventured out, and to all of the neat new people that I met.

Anyway, here’s some stuff I picked up while I was there – a pretty damn good haul if I do say so myself! Look at all this fantastic stuff! Here’s the list, from left to right and top to bottom, if you want to take a gander at any of this loveliness for yourselves.

• Florid Fauna by Meg Hunt (can’t find this zine online)
• Cramond Island by Irkus M. Zeberio
• Temporama by Clayton Jr
• The Complete Talamaroo by Alabaster
• Little Day by Lisa Vanin (can’t find this zine online)
• Eve’s Diary by Meg Hunt
• Even the Giants by Jesse Jacobs
• Chute et Ascension by Micah Lidberg
• Hellberta by Michael Comeau
• Gilded Lilies by Jillian Tamaki
• Witness My Shame by Shary Boyle
• Gentle Soul by Lisa Vanin

You guuuyyyssssss!

I’ll be in the Small Press Room (curated by the lovely folks at Wowee Zonk) at TCAF (the Toronto Comic Arts Festival) all weekend! Thankfully this year we appear to be on the same floor as everyone else, and won’t be forgotten about (hopefully)! Very much looking forward to it. If you’re in Toronto, do come say hi, will ya? It’s at the Toronto Reference Library at Yonge & Bloor. On Saturday the hours are 9-5, and on Sunday 11-5.

Cya there!

I know I’ve talked about this a bunch, but I have a piece in Light Grey Art Lab‘s Pokemon Battle Royale exhibition! It’s in Minneapolis, MN, USA – so if you’re down there why not go take a gander? The show is up until May 11, and you can check LGAL‘s website for a list of times the work is available for viewing. Go check it out! I also have my Weepinbell print up for sale in their shop – so if you like droopy Pokemon who look a bit out of it, my picture might just suit your fancy. The print is only available through them until May 11!