Pyrography might be my new obsession

You know I never ever really blog about anyone else's work apart from my own on this blog, but this girl has inspired me so much with her beautiful pyrography work that I thought I'd mention her on here. Her name is Genevieve Dionne and she lives and works in Vancouver in Canada.

Her work was featured in the most recent book I bought called 'Illustration Play'. In the book she says that: "My drawing style has always been very linear. When I saw a woodburning tool at a craft supply store I realized how lovely it would be to actually burn the line into the surface. I quickly fell in love with the colour and quality of the line, as well as the cozy smell of toasting wood."


Genevieve doesn't have her own website yet, but you can check her out on flickr. I find it quite peculiar that I haven't heard of her before now considering how talented she is, but I bet you she'll be well known in a couple of years.

Anyway, I love the style of her work so much that I decided to buy myself one of these:

For those of you who don't know what this is: it is a pyrography machine, or a 'wood burning' machine. Pyrography is the traditional art of burning into wood or leather. Both of Genevieve's pieces below were created using this method. Aren't they beautiful?

I will probably receive my pyrography machine in a couple of days, so I'll keep you updated about how it goes and if wood burning is anything for me! Thanks for the inspiration Genevieve!

Taxidermy

I cut the dump creature's head off and hung it on my wall, like a real poacher would do!

Dump creature

For the last project we had I decided to work 3D for the first time to see if it was something I enjoyed. Turns out I really like it and will be doing more of it in the future. We were asked to create a character inspired by a chosen place. The character was supposed to represent the 'genius loci' (spirit) of the place, and I chose the dump. My dump creature is made out of many found objects : his legs are old exhaust pipes, his fur is an old rug which I stained with a mixture of coffee and tea, his face is decorated by broken china plates which I found at the dump, and he has old cutlery hanging from his body. My main inspiration for this project was the extremely talented sculptor AJ Fosik, who makes amazing wooden constructions of animal heads and such. His work should definitely be checked out! Here are some pictures of my dump creature taken in the WSA photographic studio (thanks for helping me Kat). Also thanks to Chantal and Grant for helping me set him up in the studio, it was quite a task! Hope you like it!

Planet of the Shrooms

Holy Mary you look so scary

Oh hello there

FUCK YOU AND YOUR NORMAL HEAD

D&AD screen printed posters!

As you might or might not know I was so lucky to be one of the students selected by WSA to be entered in the D&AD student awards 2010. I decided to go ahead and screen print my final poster, but it was harder than I thought. After many attempts and failures I managed to produce three which I was pleased with. You know what they say, practice makes perfect! I'm really glad i did it now though, because I now know the process of screen printing, which is a great thing to know! Please wish me luck in the competition!