Mark Hoffmann's Mural at the Montserrat Gallery

The exhibition SEVEN: A Peformative Drawing Project at the Montserrat Gallery was a perfect opportunity for illustrator Mark Hoffmann to spread his creative wings even further. Mark, along with six other artists, put their creative process on display by executing a large mural on one of the gallery's walls in an open studio environment. The mural itself was meant to be the "residue of an artistic performance." We found both the process and the final product pretty spectacular.  

Mark Hoffmann's 'Men of Mountains' Mural

 Close up of Mark Hoffmann's lettering

We chatted with Mark Hoffmann after the show...

i2i Art: How were you approached with this project?

Mark: Leonie Bradbury (the gallery director at Montserrat College of Art, where I teach) contacted me in the fall to see if I had any interest.  They usually try to get one faculty member involved and thought I would be a good fit with the other artists.

i2i Art: Was this your first mural?

Mark: Yes, and it was quite overwhelming.

i2i Art: Tell us about the piece.  What was your inspiration?

Mark: I really wanted to paint a giant horse and started to research. Somehow I ended up reading about the early exploration of what would later become the first national park of the U.S., Yellowstone. In my research I found the story of the Cook, Folsom, Peterson expedition to explore and survey the land. I thought this might make a fun image with them, a horse, and geysers. I also had a previous color palette worked out that I wanted to apply to the piece.

i2i Art: What was it like working on that scale?

Mark: Difficult. It's hard to get a sense of the scale until it is right in front of you. I found that I had to stand back and look at it a lot, otherwise I wouldn't take the scale into full consideration.

i2i Art: The gallery was open while you were working on the piece, tell us about the atmosphere.

Mark: As I was working, quite a few folks stopped in to look, but very few chatted with me. They later told me they were afraid to interrupt. I must look deep in thought when I paint. It was nice to have the freedom to paint and explore at that scale and really knock people over with an image.

i2i Art: Do you have any tips, tricks or lessons learned you want to share?

Mark:  I realized that some of the techniques I planned to use are hard on that scale and surface. Use a paint with primer in it (I used house paints) so you don't have to apply it twice to get good coverage. Bring plenty of Aleve and Tylenol, the work can be a little back breaking.

Hyperlapse: Watch Mark Hoffmann's mural come to life

http://youtu.be/RNxRIeZmY-Y

On view through March 28, 2015 at the Montserrat Gallery.

Mark Hoffmann offers a playfulness to his americana, folk art style.  View Mark's entire portfolio.

John Webster in Covet Garden Magazine

John and his friend Stephanie Power were recently featured in the lovely Covet Garden decor magazine.  Their spaces are perfectly aligned with Covet's interest in environments that have not been styled by  interior decorators.  Both John and Stephanie's artistic esthetic is reflected to a 'tea' in their uniquely delightful homes.  John says, "The best part of the house is that for the first time, my apartment feels like a collage--my art and way of living have become one."  Look at John's portfolio here and see if you can find some of his "curious curios" living in his art. Photos courtesy of Covet Garden, photographer Ashley Capp.

John in his delicious kitchen!

Jillian Ditner: TIFF 2012 Walking Map for Timberland

A little while back marketing agency trevor peter communications contacted us about a walking map for Timberland, an official sponsor of TIFF (The Toronto International Film Festival).  When Jillian Ditner was chosen, we were pretty excited about this great opportunity!  Creative Director, Alexandra MacDonald and Jillian, along with Josh McKellar, Marketing Manager for Timberland, began the collaborative process of creating the first ever eco friendly tool for navigating TIFF. The initial direction was for Jillian to create her own artistic interpretation of Toronto, the TIFF ‘playground’ and the area venues downtown that host the Festival.  One of the key objectives for this user-friendly map was to inspire TIFF-goers to ‘get outside’, walk the festival, and connect with the community.  The finished map below is available as a downloadable pdf at the Timberland online Community here.  Enjoy the Festival!

Here is a glimpse into Jillian's process.

JD_TIFF_sketches

Gary Alphonso Illustrates Sports Metaphors

Gary discusses a recent project he worked on with Michael Stokely for a campaign for "MCAP Service Corporation", one of Canada's leading independent mortgage financing companies:  "The illustrations were to be based on sports metaphors.  The challenge here was that the client wanted to keep their former ad format--a full page divided into 2 panels:  a dark blue panel (their corporate colour) and a white panel.  The illustration was to take up portions of both panels as well as rag around the bilingual headline and body copy.  As the work progressed the copy was being written, laid out and edited at the same time.  It was kind of like designing with a moving target.  The client also requested that the illustrations be able to exist on a completely white background to accommodate future usage.  All this said, luckily the designer, Michael Stokely, really understood the challenges and was very helpful in the collaboration."

MCAP Golf AD vFINAL.indd

MCAP Hockey AD vFINAL.indd

Tracy Debuts Paper Cut Illustrations at Studio Tour

This summer, Tracy recreated some of her favourite fairy tales in paper.  You can see these and some of her paintings at the Uxbridge Studio Tour, September 17th and 18th, 2011. Tracy is being hosted by sculptor, Fly Freeman -  look for her at site, #15

How Gary Alphonso became a Scratchboard Illustrator

We recently asked Gary Alphonso how he got his start creating Scratchboard/Woodcut style illustrations:

"During my early years a creative director approached me with an opportunity that would lead to my career as a “Scratchboard/woodcut” artist.

The time was the late 80’s just before scratchboard illustration enjoyed a huge surge in popularity.  The client was a national clothing store chain called “Beaver Canoe”.  It was at the time a major competitor to “Roots”,  with an earthy outdoors feel to it’s product line.

The idea was to create a series of diamond shaped logos that would be very illustrative with a wood cut feel to them. They would represent the various product line, and be used in advertising, graphics on the clothing, and on in-store P.O.P.  They became their trademark.

GA Whitewater

GA Wilderness

Gary's first traditional scratchboard illustrations (above)

That year (1988) they were featured in “Studio Magazine’s” Awards Annual.  The timing couldn’t have been better.  Scratchboard was about to become wildly popular in the 90’s.  I quickly (and I use that term loosely because of how labour intensive the style is) began creating new samples on my own.  I discovered and fell in love with early 20th century wood engravers and printmakers like Lynd Ward, Rockwell Kent, Frans Masereel, Giacomo Patri ...and the likes of.  This was added to the passion I already had for the Art Deco period, the propaganda art that came out of Eastern Europe at the time, and the advertising and editorial art  from the “West”.

At first the work was mostly black and white because of the nature of the scratchboard medium. This meant a lot of design (logo) packaging, and newspaper editorial work.  As I slowly introduced colour to the mix, the advertising, magazine editorial, book, Annual report etc. work would follow. The phone kept ringing. I never looked back.

After years of success as a scratchboard illustrator it was hard to resist the role of the computer in the digital age. Very reluctantly at first, I began trying to adapt my style to the digital realm.  As I became comfortable with this it became evident that carving shapes and lines out of black ink and clay had it’s limitations. With the computer I could keep this conceptual way of working (creating negative space while leaving the positive space behind) and carve these shapes out of colour instead of just black. This simple fact opened up many more doors creatively. The result was that I am able to keep evolving the style beyond the limitations of traditional scratchboard."

Hybrid_Trad & Photoshop GA103 Skiers Lg.

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The evolution of Gary's work continues, however, sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same--evidenced by a recent logo icon he created for a Bespoke Letterpress Printer in Chicago, Illinois.  The retro appeal lives on!

Lester and Lucy Logo Large