Artist Day

Today was spent largely living in the Wife’s world, that is to say, the world of an illustrator. We hung out with a guy named Huan, a very talented Vietnamese-Canadian artist who’s part of an artists group here called the Sketch Motel of which the Wife is a part of. We had a fine meal at a restaurant who’s name escapes me, which is situated on College Street, the somewhat more upscale version of Bloor where the Wife and I usually frequent. After that, it was sitting around at his place while all kinds of artsy things were discussed. Being a geek, I perused his collection of DVDs to borrow a few things and made off with the Sci-Fi triple pack of The Last Starfighter, Titan A.E. and 12 Monkeys. It’s nice to be able to see a real community of like-minded people all just pulling together like this and sharing, talking and generally encouraging each other.

In other news I also just found out that mutual friend of ours in Singapore by the name of Sonny Liew, a comic book artist, just got nominated for an Eisner Award for best penciller. If you don’t follow comics, that’s basically the equivalent of an Oscar Nomination, so I’m mightily impressed, especially considering that Sonny is such a nice, humble, obscenely talented guy that quietly goes about the business of creating some drop dead gorgeous artwork. He’s amazingly talented, and completely deserves the nomination. And, if nothing else, he’s another one of those annoying stories about what happens if you just knuckle down and decide “I really want this,” and then go on to get it through sheer hard work and love of the craft. I know of too many stories of folks with aspirations to writing, art or film who don’t make it, citing various reasons like how insular their particular chosen industry to break into is, or how unfairly stacked against them the odds are, when all it really boils down to is their just not willing to do the work, and would rather just watch movies and or distract themselves with other pop culture pleasantries rather than simply sit down and sweat it out. I’m really happy this is happening for Sonny.

And here’s the latest from the Wife. Actually, it’s one of the first things she drew when she arrived in Canada, it just took her a while to finish it, but now that she has discovered the wonders of Canadian beer, I guess she felt obligated to finally color and finish her interpretation of Canada. Witness, Beer: