http://workbymarco.tumblr.com

Been working on some type pieces lately just for fun. Finally revisiting my “book” and pulling stuff that I like from it. This was meant to be about every company out there milking skateboarding for all it’s worth, without having any legitimate investment in it. I guess if you’re super positive about everything in life (i.e. not me) then you could take this literally.

If you’re in the St. Catharines anytime over the next week, Anne and I are showing some work in the member’s space at NAC (www.nac.org). The stuff on the walls is mine. Anne built the awesome house towers.

Fellow Dundasian Errol Richardson (www.busymaker.com) kindly invited me to contribute to his zine, Something Secret (somethingsecret.ca). The theme for the issue explores “the weirder side of things.” My 2 cents posted above.

I participated in the opening of The Print Studio’s digital studio a little while back. They invited a few artists to work in the studio and output some nice sized giclees. The printer is pretty incredible, so I was excited to get in there and make something. I try to take these open ended opportunities to try something a little different, since I don’t have a client to disappoint if things don’t go well! I didn’t really know where to start, so I set up a rule – only use elements that are already on my hard drive. Not exactly huge walls that I set up for myself since I have a ton of junk on there, but nice to have a starting point nonetheless. It was a fun process and I’m pretty happy with the resulting piece.

I have a couple of these, so if you’re interested in picking one up, send me an email. They’re 18″ x 24″ and printed on a smooth archival watercolour paper.

I was asked to contribute some of my work to the Uncommon project. I currently have three iPhone cases available on the site and I’m working on a few more that should come out in the next month or so. I got my sample in the mail the other day and I gotta say, these guys are doing an amazing job. They came out better than I could have hoped. If you want one, go here.

Last summer I decided to take a printmaking course at The Print Studio in Hamilton. When I first made my decision in the late nineties to take the art thing more seriously, one of the first courses that I enrolled in was printmaking. I learned a little bit about woodcuts and some other basic printmaking techniques, but I never really took it any further. I’ve always liked it though. The smell of the inks, the tactile quality of the prints, the different papers… there’s something about it that I really love. So it just happened to finally fall into place that there was a lithography class going on, and I had enough money and time to take it. So for eight Saturday mornings last summer, I got my hands dirty and learned something new.

I didn’t go into it with any plans or ideas, I just wanted to not care so much about the image and concentrate on learning the process and just make some stuff. I had time to work on and print two plates. The first was a drawing of a pair scissors that was sitting in the studio. The second was just a number that was in my head. It was really nice not to have an undo button and to have to commit to making marks. I wanted to try to print on some non-conventional papers, so I grabbed a bunch of old magazines that I was hanging on to and just printed a bunch. These are two of my favorites.

This is one of those things that I ask myself how I let happen. I got a job a while back to do the cover of the Insound catalog. This was back in 2007. When Joe, the marketing manager, emailed me, he included past covers as examples. The covers look amazing and they’re done by 2 of my favorite illustrators. So I’m really excited to do the job. I hand in roughs and everything goes smoothly. I also find out at some point that Joel Speasmaker did the layout. If you don’t know, Joel is an awesome graphic designer and art director who put together 9 fantastic issues of The Drama magazine. So basically, this is a really great job that I’m super happy and excited to have been a part of… and I somehow forgot to put it on my site. Nice one, Marco.

My good friend, Carrie Ng, posts on the Design Exchange blog. I went to school with Carrie and she makes some really great things. I say “things” because it was always hard to describe what she was doing. She was in the furniture design program at Sheridan, but she was rarely making furniture. Or at least rarely making furniture that you’d immediately recognize as furniture. She was usually just making really great “things”.  She’s been doing a few interviews lately on the designers that she’s interested in and around Toronto and posting them in the DX site. She recently interviewed Anne and I and the result went up today. I think she did a good job, it was definitely fun to do. Thanks, Carrie.

I’ve been illustrating now for close to 10 years. That seems kind of nuts that it’s already been that long. My site has changed many times, and some work got lost or ditched along the way. I’d like to take the chance to look back at some of that work that re-appeared as I did my cleaning these past few weeks.

here’s a collection of pieces I did when I was still in school. I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to be an illustrator when I graduated back in 2001. So for my year end show I did a bunch of pieces on wood. They’re kind of like a woodcut print, but without the printing part. Basically I was working back into the plate. I was really happy with the way they came together and I still really like them. I’ve always said that I’d revisit this way of working some day, and I’m starting to feel like that day is coming up… we’ll see.