Chris Blog: illustration

Showing posts with label illustration. Show all posts

Let's help kids go to camp!

One month from today (exactly!) I will be participating in the Sporting Life 10k Run. On Sunday, May 11, I'll be running down Yonge Street to help kids with cancer go to camp. Last year, through the generosity of family and friends (old and new), I raised an astounding $1260. I am still amazed, and immensely grateful. Let's see if we can do even better this year!

If you can spare a few dollars, please donate what you can on this fundraising page:

http://www.ooch.org/christopherrouleau

As further encouragement, for every online donation over $50, you will be eligible for a free limited edition art print I will be creating in the next 2 months. Details to come...

And if money is tight, I will gladly accept all donations of encouragement - I'm going to need it.

Thank you in advance. Have a great weekend!

Influence Magazine

Here is some custom chalkboard-style lettering I recently created for the front and back cover of Influence Magazine.
You can check out the online magazine here.

Thanks again to Sharon for this amazing opportunity!

Spacing Magazine

Great news! The poster I submitted to Spacing Magazine's Transit Poster Contest has been published in the Spring 2014 issue!

The brief: "to create their own original poster (or a series of posters) that promotes the TTC. The topic of the poster can be anything you desire."

From my rationale:

I have always been attracted to mid-century posters and advertising campaigns, especially ones that feature traditional hand-lettering. I am also an advocate for common courtesy in the public space. This poster seemed like the perfect opportunity to fuse these two passions and create a campaign around transit etiquette.

The goal was to create a playfully anachronistic poster about cell phone etiquette, had cell phones existed in the 1950s. Using a simple acronym, I present five friendly reminders for "S.M.A.R.T." phone use on the TTC. These tenets were complied from my own experiences, as well as personal research. The overall style is distinctly mid-century, with it's brush script lettering, sans serif typography, traditional figural illustration, muted colour scheme, and offset ink placement.

This is one poster in a speculative series called "Rules for a Better Ride", based off of the original TTC slogan, "The Better Way".

Thanks again to Spacing Magazine for this creative opportunity, and for showcasing my work!

Angels in Toronto

Illustration credit: Brian Rea / Soulpepper

If you live in Toronto, you must not miss Soulpepper's production of Angels in America, which runs until September 28 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in the Distillery.

Tickets available here.

Alphabet 100 print

I am proud to unveil the new Alphabet 100 print to my online shop. For 52 consecutive weeks in 2012, I chose one letter, drew 100 variations of it, and then rendered the best or most interesting option in Illustrator. After 5200 thumbnail sketches, 52 complete illustrations, and over 200 hours of work, this is the final compilation of letters in full printed technicolour glory.

When I started back in January 2012, I had no idea how the project would evolve. But as the weeks progressed, it turned out that most (actually, all but two) of the final illustrations represented something that started with that letter. One exception was upper case 'Y'; in this case, I substituted the lower case 'y', and created a new lower case version:

The second anomaly was lower case 'a', so I went back to the drawing board and created this version:

With these two revisions, here is the complete list of alphabet illustrations:

These 24" x 24" prints are ink jet printed in Toronto in full colour on 180gsm ultra white matte cotton-based art paper. Each illustration is 2" x 2".

More detailed photos below.

The perfect gift for any child, or the child in all of us. Purchase your copy here.
Thanks in advance!

Alphabet 100: the finale

And that's a wrap! After 5200 thumbnail sketches and over 200 hours of work, above is the final complete lower case set of the Alphabet 100 lettering project. It has been such a joy to work on this for the last 52 weeks. I am currently formulating a new lettering project for 2013 – I hope you will stay tuned!

In case you missed it back in July, below is the complete upper case set. Watch for a new print in my shop with all 52 illustrations coming in early 2013.

Alphabet 100 update: the final stretch

Here are the next four lower case letters to the Alphabet 100 project. This is exciting for 2 reasons:

only 2 letters remaining – lower case y and lower case z
lower case x marked letter #50, which means I have officially sketched 5000 letters so far!

Be sure to check out all the sketches over here.

Alphabet 100 update

Ta-dah! Here are the next four lower case letters to the Alphabet 100 project. Be sure to follow all the lettering fun over here!

(p.s. Only 6 letters to go!)

Alphabet 100 update

Here are the next four lower case letters to the Alphabet 100 project. Be sure to follow all the fun over here!

Alphabet 100 update

Here are the next four lower case installments to the Alphabet 100 project. Be sure to follow the progress here!

Alphabet 100 update

Just a quick note about the Alphabet 100 project - when I created uppercase I earlier this year, I thought it ended up looking more like a lower case i. So this week, when I was scheduled to complete the lower case, I did a big ole uppercase!

Check them both out here!