MY-AN NGUYEN ILLUSTRATION

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Natsu Matsuri 2019

I illustrated and designed the poster for JETAA Ottawa's Japanese summer festival, Natsu Matsuri, to take place on July 21 at Ottawa City Hall. If you’re in the area that weekend, come for a day of dance, martial arts, music and fun booths celebrating Japanese culture!

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Bird

I designed a tattoo recently for a very dear friend some time back, and finally found the time to format and share it. Variation 1 and 2.

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Hailey and Wes

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Bread of Life

This is my rendition of the Last Supper, when Jesus breaks the bread. Thanks Denis Grady, for giving me the freedom to do whatever I wanted with this!

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Hot Snakes - Jericho Sirens

PENCIL AND PHOTOSHOP

Another one for the ol’ BeatRoute, for the lead review in their March 2018 issue. You can pick it up if ya want.

This was for their review of Hot Snakes’ new album, Jericho Sirens, the band’s  first full-length release in 14 years. I chose an active zine / collage-styled image to reflect the DIY nature of the band’s post-hardcore roots and their driving, expressive, tension-filled sound.

And here’s how it looks in print:

Cheers :)

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Coloring Pages

My friend Nicole Wolf had the privilege of spending a couple months at a refugee camp in Lesvos, Greece, putting her great heart and illustration / design skills to use. She came back to Canada wanting to put together an educational coloring book for the kids at the camp she worked at. Below are my contributions.

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Kensington Utility Box

I was commissioned as part of a team by City of Calgary to paint a utility box for the Kensington neighborhood, in partnership with Alberta Printmakers and Loft 112. Big thanks to everyone involved for the opportunity and amazing experience. For those in the area who would like to check it out in person, it’s located on the corner of 10 St and 5 Ave NW, on the corner where the Shell gas station is.

The images on boxes our team did were inspired by real stories from the neighborhood, both current and historical. A part of our research process was interviewing residents and business owners.

Here it is. The street hockey scene here is inspired by the fact that Kensington is one of those neighorhoods where kids can still be seen playing out on the street at night, being watched by one another's parents and grandparents. It's an innercity neighborhood that still has that village feel. The kids on a date are eating fried chicken. This story came from Russ, the owner of Chicken On the Way. His restaurant on 14th St has been in the neighborhood for nearly 60 years. He wears a Chicken On the Way jacket and is recognized a lot on the street as the owner. He's had old couples approach him, telling him that they had their first date at his restaurant. It had a cafe back in the day.

This story is about a hobby pigeon racer that used to live near Chicken On the Way. His pigeons could often be seen in and around his house. When he died, his kids wanted to sell the house, so they released all his pigeons. With the pigeons being released upon the neighborhood, they quickly became a problem, pooping on everything. So they were all eventually killed.

This story comes from Bob, owner of Hot Wax Records on 10 St near Memorial Drive. His store mostly consists of vinyl records, and he talked about how people will sometimes come into his store just to take pictures of themselves...and then leave.

No real story here, just a personal homage to biking and the active lifestyle taking place along the river on the other side of Memorial Drive and beyond.

These images on the box are NOT digital prints. The line art was screen printed, and in some cases, inked by hand (long story, ugh). Everything was printed, inked and painted onto rice paper, and then glued onto the utility box using a special clear coat. The nature of the rice paper is such that after applying the adhesive coating material, the paper dries clear, showing only what’s been painted / printed /inked on it. I did need to spend a day or two painting over the areas where the paint didn’t show through the paper enough.

All of the research my partner, Jack Bride and I did for this project involved either talking to decades-long residents of the area or reading about them at the library. The stories told to us had a “memories of the good old days” feel to them, inspiring me to take a Mid-Century Modern direction for my imagery. Here are some process images of the sketch phase:

This was the final preliminary sketch of the box, but as you can see, the end result didn’t turn out that way. Due to time and budget constraints, the community garden image had to be scrapped.

Here are the digital images. I tried to match the colors in the actual painting of the prints, and the final result (in my opinion) actually turned out better than the digitals.

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Moonshot Experience

GRAPHITE AND PHOTOSHOP

I did this for the Facebook community Moonshot Experience, formerly Inside Quest Exchange. This banner was for the group’s rebrand, and was designed by the group’s administrator, and executed / illustrated by me.

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Feist - Pleasure

GRAPHITE AND PHOTOSHOP

I did this in May for BeatRoute Magazine’s review of Feist’s new album Pleasure, her first album in six years. The idea of Pleasure in this album is more spoken of as something to strive for, existing not yet, but some time in the future. Deceptively titled, much of Feist’s album is actually inspired by the pain she experienced during those six years, her “dark night of the soul.”  I drew inspiration from this idea, that the album Pleasure actually comes from a place of Pain. Pleasure is Pain. The night time scene represents her “dark night of the soul” with the moon being a kind of muse. The moon is pink to show it’s connection to the flowers, which, following after the album’s branding, represents Pleasure.

IN PRINT

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Sarah

GRAPHITE AND CARBON

Just a little something that came to mind a couple mornings ago, so I decided to draw it. A black 1940s car, off to somewhere.

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Explorers // North Star

PENCIL AND PHOTOSHOP

This is a personal project I spent a couple weeks working on recently.. I’m thinking a lot about mountains at the moment, how they’re a metaphor for challenge, adversity, journey and exploration, especially when set in the winter. Make of it what you will, but it’s certainly a metaphor for where I’m at in life right now.

Process images next. This illustration was unusual in that it was more improvised. I didn’t start from a thumbnail like I usually do; I was sketching a study of a mountain range in preparation for other ideas I had in mind, and the sketch was coming along so well that I decided to take it and create a full-on illustration.

Refining the pencil drawing here and I wanted a greenish sky to create a bit of ambiguity as to where the location is set. I wanted my Explorers to be astronauts.

Still trying to figure out the composition here, as well as trying to understand how to draw clouds. How do you know when a shape is “good?”

After much struggle, I figured out how to draw and paint the clouds, as well as the texture of the sky. I also nailed down the composition, deciding against including other human Explorers. So much of the time, my own personal journey has felt like a solitary one, no matter how many friends I’m surrounded by. The green sky by this point had gotten so nasty looking that I had to convert the whole thing to black and white in order to search for the right color palette without distraction.

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Feeding Ducks

PHOTOSHOP

A moment of peace, contemplation and solitude in the midst of life’s confusion.

Yep...

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JFL Northwest feat. Tom Segura

GRAPHITE, PHOTOGRAPHY AND PHOTOSHOP

I designed and illustrated the cover of this month's BC Edition of BeatRoute Magazine. It was such a relief to pull it off, as this assignment was very outside of my comfort zone and I was stressed out almost the entire time lol.

Tom Segura is one of the headlining comedians at the comedy festival JFL Northwest, happening in Vancouver this month. He has two specials on Netflix you guys should check out -- Mostly Stories and Completely Normal. This is one hilarious dude.

Here's a bit of a rationale for my direction. I read in an interview that Tom is an Average Joe in terms of appearance and cadence of speech, and comes off like a sane individual who sees the world on the edge of insanity. Since the "world" of JFL Northwest are the various venues of the shows, I have some of the buildings sketched around Tom's head and the two comedy mascots incorporated in like a mini King Kong and Godzilla.  I wanted to try to incorporate the paint splotches in the existing JFL branding to be like little explosions among the buildings so that it looked like the mascots (ie. the comedy) were "taking over" or "blowing up" the venues, and overall representing the "world on the edge of insanity" idea.

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The xx - I See You

GRAPHITE AND PHOTOSHOP

I did this recently for BeatRoute Magazine’s review of The xx’s new album I See You.  Fun assignment to get, as I’m a fan :)

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Explore

PHOTOSHOP

My friend wanted me to do Market Collective, an artisan craft fair in Calgary with her, so I created this image with three variations for it. I wanted to create something dealing with the themes of exploration, adventure and togetherness.

And they eventually became bookmarks. I had them printed on birch and maple wood. There’s still some left over. I’m in the process of setting up a store, so if you like ‘em, you can get ‘em there when it’s up and running!

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Abolitionist Kit Characters

I designed some characters for a teaching and training program about human trafficking. Since portions of the manual already existed, I had to modify my drawing to better fit what was already there.

Here is how my work looked originally:

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Linger / Sometimes

GRAPHITE AND CARBON

Sometimes moving on isn't always the easiest thing.