My Illustrated Book Marriage Proposal

After over 5 years together, I proposed to my girlfriend Chantal on New Year’s day, 2010. It was a long time coming, and a long time in the making. The hardest part about proposing to her wasn’t making the decision that I wanted to marry her, it was coming up with a way to do it! I wanted to do something creative and also have something  we can look back on to remember how it happened.

Collier's Cyclopedia, circa 1883

I had a lot of different ideas but in the end I decided to write and illustrate a magical little  story for her that revolved around a story of the ring. So of course I had to find the ring first, and I found an incredible 100 year old brass ring with an art nouveau design carved into a piece of red coral, a great ring to write a story about. I make it sound simple, but I searched for the perfect ring for about 8 months.

I wrote a few drafts of the story and come up with the title  A Coral Arrangement.  After I sketched out which images would go with which pages I illustrated 22 drawings to go with the story. I worked secretly over about 2 weeks to get the book done before heading to Ottawa for New Year’s Eve. I had decided I wanted to propose in the New Year and get 2010 off to a great start.

It’s tricky to work on a project like this when you work side by side with someone all day long (our drafting tables are right next to each other).  Thankfully even if she did sneak a peak or catch a glance she didn’t know exactly what I was working on and I pretended it was a Christmas present I was making for her.

Red Coral

Finding coral on the beach

A glossy ibis promises a great gift

Foxes appear on the beach

Caribou also come to the beach

Sunken treasure

A ring is hidden inside a book within a turtle shell

The brass ring is made from sunken ships

The last page reveals a flap

Instead of binding a book myself I found a beautiful old book called Collier’s Cyclopedia of Social and Commercial Information. The book was perfect. It was printed in 1883 and was filled with amazing illustrations. I scanned my illustrations and designed the layout in InDesign before printing the pages and gluing them into the Collier’s book. I felt terrible doing this to such an incredible book but it was really the perfect book for the job.

For the final touch to the book I decided to cut a hole inside to hide the ring. When the story ends there is one final illustration with a fold up flap that opens to reveal the ring hidden inside (that’s my cue to propose). I cut down about an inch into the book after gluing the pages together with an acrylic painting medium. It worked perfectly and from the side you’d never know there was a ring hidden inside.

The coral ring revealed within the book

On January 1st of this year after taking the dog for a snowy walk I presented Chantal with the book. As she read through the story and looked at my drawings I tried to guess if she knew how it was going to end. She flipped through slowly and I prepared my words when she got to the final page with the flap. I wish I could remember exactly what she said when she saw the ring and I proposed but I all I can remember is a very happy face and an excited reaction, and that her answer was something similar to “yes.”

Needless to say, for those of you who know us, we’ll be getting our invitations printed with Papillon Press.

Aardvark Island

I painted this for my brother Aaron for Christmas. I think I’ve given him a painting every year for the last few years. Aardvarks are a lot of fun to draw. In my research of aardvarks I learned that they’re very similar to anteaters but are not actually the same.

Aardvark Island

Everyone loves getting paintings for gifts, but they always have trouble finding standard sized frames for my work since it’s not something I usually consider when painting something for someone. I’d rather not have standard frame sizes influence how I compose my paintings.

Sometimes I think I should paint in standard sizes, but then I figure if they’re getting a free painting they can buy a custom frame

Happy New Year to all my readers, 2010 is going to be a lot of fun. I have a lot of new paintings and projects in mind and I’ll post them all here for your viewing pleasure. My biggest project of 2009 is coming up soon. Thanks for reading.

Christmas Card

Here is my 2009 Christmas card printed with our letterpress in three colors. I wanted to have a city feeling to my Christmas card so I decided to throw some old skates over a telephone wire, draw some nice buildings and a water tower and have some snow blowing around.

I printed the snow with almost a blind printing method (no ink, just impression) but added a tiny bit of transparent white and the smallest amount of blue to the ink plate to give a subtle color to the snowflakes instead of being the white of the paper.

We were also able to finally use our creasing tools on the press to make folding the cards a whole lot easier. We pretty much let the press take care of the folding for us and it worked perfectly.

You can purchase single this card as a single card or in a package of 6 in the Papillon Press Etsy shop. You can also find Chantal’s beautiful card there as well.

Digital file to use during ink mixing for color matching

2009 Christmas Card

The Pearl

This piece is an illustration for the cover of The Pearl, a novel by John Steinbeck.

The story revolves around a poor Mexican family. The husband earns his meager income by diving for pearls. When his son is stung by a scorpion he searches for a pearl to pay for a doctor to heal his child. He finds a perfect pearl in the ocean that brings optimism and joy to the family but it also places a burden on the family they have a great difficulty dealing with.

You can buy a limited edition print of this painting in my Etsy shop.

Buckets and Tanks

Here is a painting of one of my fascinations – water towers. I’ve painted tons of these things in the last few years, but usually of the city variety. This is really my first time painting the good ol’ rural variety (aside from my drawing of the Sudbury water tower) so I decided to go all out and paint 12 of them in one piece.

I love the water towers in the city because of their old, wooden plank siding, and for their appearance in comic books. I love this type of tank because they come in so many different shapes and colors- and sometimes they look like spaceships.

Prints of this piece are available in my Etsy shop.