Zebrasaur

Interviews with Ben Dugas

A few weeks ago Andrew was interviewed by our friend Ben... A couple of weeks after that, Ben interviewed me... Both of the interviews are related and are quite laid back and in my opinion, funny... Mine is sort of a response to his....

You can read Andrew's interview HERE.

And my interview HERE.

Pilot 4

My friend Lee Sheppard, along with a couple of his friends, publishes this great illustrated literary pocketbook entitled Pilot... I have some work in the new issue... If you are a creative writer you should go to the website, look around, and if you like what you see, submit... If you are a fan of reading or looking at things, you can purchase copies of the pocketbook on the site as well...

I met Lee about 7 years ago, I got a job at an art supply store when I was in 2nd year in college, and Lee was my supervisor... Since that time we have become friends and he lives just around the corner from my studio... I was trying to think of a story about Lee to post on here, so I decided to post this one, just because its the most embarrassing...

When I was working at the art supply store, close to the time that I got the job, I had a crush on one of the other workers there... I'd get a little nervous when I was taking to her, and I always wanted her to believe I was a little cooler than I actually was... When I was younger I didn't really understand that the best way to approach a girl is to just be yourself... One day right around the time I got the job I was really tired and I wanted a snack, so I locked myself in the bathroom and ate a big bag of Doritos. I must have been there a long time or left some crumbs on the floor, or maybe Lee was outside the door listening to me, but somehow he knew what I was up to... About 15 minutes later I was finished the Doritos and I was talking to the girl, trying to drop subtle little hints that I was awesome, and then mid conversation Lee come up and says: "Did you just lock yourself in the bathroom and eat an entire bag of Doritos?" I was all like: "Ah, no. Why would I do that? That's stupid..." but Lee wouldn't give up, he called me on it until I confessed. And my face was beat red, and then I had no reason to try to convince this girl that I was cool anymore. I don't think Lee realized what he was doing to me... He wasn't even mad at all, he thought it was funny, but back then I got embarrassed way more easy than I do now, and didn't have the best luck with girls... It shouldn't have embarrassed me, but there was something about getting caught feebly lying about it right in front of this girl that made it really pathetic...

Ok, thats not much of a story, but there it is..

Here are some shots of the pocket book... It reprints some of the work that I showed in Berlin, which I have already posted here, so I will not include many pages...




Also, I finished my Road of Knives page... it must seem to people that RoK is what I spend the majority of my time on, but that isn't true... Its just that I like to keep my other drawings a little more underwraps until I am done an entire series, which takes quite a while... In March I'm in an art fair in Paris, I will post a bunch of new drawings then...

This is the first time drawing a landscape I think, so go easy on me... Man, doing stuff for the road of knives is really difficult for me because it is all stuff that I don't have a lot of experience in drawing, but I also hink that if i stick with it, pushing myself into unfamiliar territory will hopefully improve my work overall...

Ok, thanks for reading all of this, I think the Dorito's story is an attempt on posting more content, but all of my stories are kinda boring and kinda pathetic, so maybe I should just stick to images...

gross...

I was just going through some old files on my computer and I stumbled upon this, I'm not sure if I ever posted it on here...It's an old page that I did for the Road of Knives... Umm... it ended up getting cut from the story... I'm not really sure what I was thinking when I drew this, I must have had some pent up frustrations I had to let out or something, it's kinda weird...

Anyway, ah, here it is...

The last panel is the worst....

LE Cinq

This Friday I'm in a group show to celebrate the first 5 years of LE Gallery, my gallery here in Toronto... I didn't have a chance to do a new piece for the show, but the director is showing one of my larger mylars from his own collection... Anyway, come on out and see, there should be some good work in the show... The info is in the flyer...

Jitter Magazine

I have a pretty long interview (in German) in the current issue of Jitter Magazine... The guy who owns and runs this magazine is amazing, he interviewed me in person when I was in Berlin last year, Jitter really seems like a labour of love... Anyway, its a cool mag if you can get your hands on a copy. Its also the first mag to interview me to ask about and publish pages from the Road of Knives, so Shawn and Zak have some stuff in here too... They also have some interviews in English with the character designers from God of War II, those guys are crazy talented... Here are some photos of the layout...

random studio shots

I've been working a lot on my studio since I got back to Toronto, making the space as usable as possible, throwing out or giving away all the junk that has been cluttering up my studios over the years.... I was going through some old stuff and I found these photos of my old spaces, and was reminded of how disgusting I used to be.... My spaces we always filled with garbage, sometimes over a foot deep... and not just paper and art supply clutter, serious garbage like food, trampled CDs, broken bottles... Here are a couple examples of what I'm talking about, but they are pretty tame... In it heyday my studio was depressing to just look at....


That's Andrew in that second photo, he must be 18 or so in it... Somewhere along the way I've changed it seems... My space is generally pretty clean these days... Well, the washroom is still pretty disgusting, but my workspace is usually pretty slick... Anyway, this post might be really boring, its just going to be a bunch of photos of my space, some work I finished before the holidays, and some work I have on the go right now for my upcoming show...

Ok, here it goes...

A little drawing I've been working on...

A larger drawing I've been working on, incorporating some of my older imagery...

I can't believe I'm still working on this... For anyone new to the blog, this is a big ballpoint pen drawing I've been working on... Its going to be a grid of 20 000 butterflies when I'm done with it... I really can't believe I'm still working on it, its been on the go for well over a year now, and I've working on it nearly every day... And not just a little, often I wake up and work on it straight through until bedtime. Almost...done...

A small drawing I recently finished.

A little pile of drawings on the go.

My wall of photos of animals doing it.

The bedroom. Andrew and I share it... Somehow it worked out that Andrew gets the bed and I get the couch... But the couch is pretty comfortable...

An airbrush portrait of me.

One day Andrew and I had a disagreement, I left the studio, came back, and the drawing I was working on looked like this...

The toilet. All the dinosaurs are wearing party hats.

The bath tub.

The food shelf in the kitchen...

We had a broken down smoothie truck blocking our window for over a year... One day we looked outside and it was being hauled away! We have natural light now!

Three mylars I sent to France...

Those are the last 3 mylars that will be available for the next couple of years... I owe a few to a friend of mine; they will take over a year to make... I won't make any more until those are completed, and after that I might stop doing them altogether...

Ok, thats my studio.

One more thing, I've noticed that a lot more people have been reading my blog and commenting and emailing me and stuff... I just want to put out there that I really appreciate this. When I started my blog it seemed like I was the only one who ever read it, and that kind of sucked. So again, thankyou to everyone for reading and commenting and all... It really does mean a lot to me... I've been trying to update more so there is more new content.

Ok, bye.