I’m super excited to announce that I will be tabling in the Artist Alley at this years Niagara Falls Comic Con! It will be the first convention I take my wares to outside of Toronto – so I’m crossing my fingers that it’s the start of traveling to a lot more conventions across Canada and beyond!
You can find out info about all the amazing artists here.
The Convention takes place Friday June 5th through Sunday June 7th at the Scotia Bank Convention Centre in Niagara Falls Ontario.
I’ve restocked my animal tea stain posters, and I’ll be debuting a large tea sloth poster print at the show.
There will also be a whack of new fan art mini teas.
A smashing good time!
And lust after sexy zombies.
Totoro teas!
Sassy Spidey (smells delicious)
Why so serious?
Sally tea
I’ll have posters, prints and postcards. Shiny things, mini teas, big tea stains and on the spot commissions.
Tea art galore will be at table A23. And on top of that, on Sunday I will be giving a talk on Art Direction in Indie video games! So if you happen to be at the show, come out say hello and ask questions about games, how to get into them, or what exactly an art director does for independent games.
The full floor plan and schedule for panels and talks can be found here.
And last but not least, here’s a video preview of the show!
Hope to see you there!
And as always you can keep up to date with me on facebook, twitter and on my Society 6 store.
Super exciting news!
The title page
In December Fresh Cup Magazine released their 2014 Tea Almanac.
Fresh Cup has spent the last two decades covering stories that specialize in coffee and tea. Featuring growers, retailers, blends, small tea & coffee shops and tea artisans.
I’m overwhelmed by the fact that my art and an article about my tea stain process was one of the featured articles in the 2014 iteration of their annual issue devoted entirely to tea. I was interviewed by the lovely tea blogger Lu Ann Pannunzio of The Cup of Life.
featured in the table of contents!
article page 1
article page 2
article page 3
Make sure to check out more of Lu Ann’s writing over on her blog. You’ll find tea reviews and a plethora of other tea based goodies. If you want an even deeper dive into the world of tea, consider subscribing to Fresh Cup Magazine.
And as always you can stay up to date with me online.
Tis the season for… HOLIDAY ART MARKETS!
I’m super excited to announce that I will be exhibiting at this Sunday’s Wychwood Barns Holiday art market.
There will be 28 local artisans, holiday treats and music, a bar, and a gift wrapping station. So forget the crush of the mall, and come out and visit with some local makers and creators.
The market is located at the Artscape Wychwood Barns, 76 Wychwood Ave, Toronto.
I will have an assortment of mini teas (customs too!) oodles of prints in lots of unique sizes, animal tea stains, note cards, and hand made tree ornaments!
Happy Holiday festive skull ornaments!
Animal tea tree ornaments!
You can find out more information about Artscape, the market and exhibiting artists on their website.
A good artsy time is sure to be had by all!
And if you can’t make it out the market, you can always stay up to date with me online.
I’m super excited to announce that I will have my artwork on display at Elephant Shoes for the next few months!
Creepy and cute art wall
This is the first time I will have my Visitations (the black and white pieces) artwork on display since the conclusion of the play that they were created for. They’re a real diversion from my usual style and allowed me to explore the creepy sensibilities that underscore a lot of what I do.
I’m over the moon with how the show came together. I think the intermingling of the two series really works. Sometimes you think something makes sense in your head, but you need to see it in the space to believe it.
Many of my paintings are portraits of women, or young girls whispering secrets to each other. It’s neat to see how my “go to” themes carried through seemingly disparate works.
Girl Walk – young girls sharing secrets
Two young girls, still telling secrets.
If you want to see the show in person swing by Ransack The Universe (1207 Bloor Street West Toronto). Elephant Shoes is housed inside. You’ll find stained glass, hula hoops, art workshops, vintage and totally random goodies, and of course art! Traversing the aisles of the store to get to the show is a bit of an adventure in itself and highly recommended.
You can find out more about Elephant Shoes on their facebook page.
Want to stay in the loop with me ? Head on ovet to www.facebook.com/daragoldart
Need tea stain mugs or other classy home decorations? I’ve got you covered. http://society6.com/daragold
I was recently asked by the Hand Eye Society to create a tea stain illustration for the upcoming WordPlay festival. I’m extremely excited about the final image and I want to share the process of creating it with you!
The first step in creating the tea stain was to draw some thumbnail sketches. Unlike many of the tea stains I create, this one needed to be planned out. After the first round of sketches it was decided to take a more visually Victorian approach. I came up with a couple using the WordPlay logo to engage on a journey featuring a dirigible and Kraken tentacles. You can almost never go wrong with dirigibles and tentacles.
Victorian couple reading the WordPlay book, sitting on a bench.
Victorian couple reading the WordPlay book, standing.
We decided to go with the second sketch.
The next step was to mentally break the image into pieces and decide how many teas I would steep and how many stains I would make. I decided to create a composite image (all of the pieces created individually and digitally composited for the final) to give me the freedom to play with the composition and make each visual element clear. I used Orange Pekoe, Cranberry and Ginger tea to create the 5 parts of the image.
I don’t pencil out my tea stains. When I have an idea in mind I set up my reference materials ( my sketch or a photo) next to my work space and use it as a reference to help guide where I put the tea. The end results are abstract, but oddly specific tea stains.
Initial tea stains
Once the tea dries I ink in two stages. The first is to use a fine tipped technical pen to “rough” in my line work, and create small patterns. This basically acts as my pencil drawing, which guides the final inking. That being said, I can’t erase anything. Its my freehand inking in combination with the loose shapes of the tea that leads to the final tea stain drawing style.
Once the rough inks are complete I make my final lines with India ink and a brush. I have a couple of sizes that I like to work with, but I just stuck with a #2 brush tip for all of these drawings.
Rough and final inking, sky not pictured.
After inking each drawing I scanned them into my computer and removed the images from their water colour paper backgrounds.
Orange pekoe couple
Ginger Kraken tentacles
Orange pekoe dirigible
Cranberry water
Cranberry sky
Once I have all the pieces ready to go I place them on to the digital canvas (in photoshop) sized for the final image. I don’t really have a picture to encapsulate this part of the process. Basically I just resize and move things around until the whole things matches the sketch and makes a pleasing composition.
I also added some detail digitally. The WordPlay festival is about words, and many of the featured games don’t have any visuals at all. So it was very important to include text in the “game” area of the image. I chose a passage from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and overlaid the text in the sky (behind the tentacles). I made the words white and set the opacity to a medium low so the words wouldn’t interfere with the image, while still seeming part of the scene.
I created a 4×6 postcard and 4×4 square for the final image. All that remains is for the Hand Eye Society to add the festival details, and voila tea stain FESTIVAL POSTER!
4×6 poster
4×4 poster
Want to stay up to date on all my current works in progress? Head on over to my facebook page for projects like this and other art treats!
