Before I drew the Snowman holiday card I made this one. I dind’t think it was funny enough so I didn’t send it out but just for the heck of it I’m sharing it with you all here.

A couple weekends ago, Michael Cho and Steve Manale and I drew pictures for tykes at a bank’s Christmas kid’s party. They hired out a building at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) and filled it with a ferris wheel, a rock climbing wall, go karts, Santa Claus and enough inflated monsters and castles to make their own Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. This is just a small wedge of the hall:

I was hired after one of the bank’s employees saw me at TCAF doing hideous cariactures. I drew him and his whole family and they got a real kick out of it. Unfortunately most of the kids (well, moslty their parents) at this event were not excited to be made into monsters. Fortunately we all still enjoyed the drawings of kids as princesses and super heroes.

Mike doesn’t really do likenesses of kids but drew awesome superheroes for them instead.

Here’s Steve drawing a couple of ladies, which was a nice change from when we had to draw babies who wouldn’t keep still. I think maybe we needed a policy and sign “For ages 1 and up”

We had a long line up most of the time so hopefully we’ll be brought back next year for more fun or for your corporate event.

During the lunch break we found a unicorn that had wandered over from the Princess Planet that looked happily wounded with its legs in the air that wanted us to jump up and down on it’s belly.

And I thought this was weird. Want to find a bathroom from a distance in the big busy hall? Just look for the universal symbol for washroom: two grey squares, one with a smaller blue square, of the same value , inside it. ???

In the summer I picked up a few more doozies from the dollar bins to share with you all…

Not to be confused with Marvel’s Bullseye who would show up a year late, this blue guy with a target on his chest works for the FBI. “The doom skulls of Professor Death”? You can’t beat that kind of ridiculousness!

What is Hulk fighting? Monsters designed by a two year-old? This monster has the lack of coolness and imagination that is also absent in my drawings of cars. This guy must really not like drawing monsters.

I was excited by the egg headed man only to realize he isn’t an egg-head but a whale! Wow! Tobias Whale, who like any good whale-monsterman shoots water at you… from a hose. Not a blowhole, a hose. He’s shooting it so hard that the phone only has 9 buttons. Whoosh!

Seriously, I’ve been enjoying Dagar. It’s well drawn and each issue is a tight little story with a nice hook. Getting a copy of a book onto which some child has drawn a ballpoint pen Van Dyk is to be cherished! CGC has got comic grading all wrong. This one has history. This was Steven Huns’ Dagar! Also awesome: little Dagar in the corner ready to backstab the dragon’s tail like a nasty Great Gazoo.

Last year my wife and I got the previous year’s special edition Hanukkah Jones Sodas and did a taste test.

APPLESAUCE

Not bad. It taste like apples. I said I would have it “a more”. Not more. I mean amore, like love! Not really. It’s just okay.

CHOCOLATE COINS

This was interesting. It somehow tasted exactly like cheap chocolate kids get for Hanukkah gelt or Easter eggs. Despite not having any milk in it, it tasted like milk chocolate too. Super weird. If you like those supermarket-quality chocolates for some reason, you should try this

 JELLY DONUT

I guess this is better for my heartburn than sufganiyot. To me, this soda just tasted like cream soda and watermelon. Not particularly strange. Like bubblegum icecream I wonder “which flavour of jelly/bubblegum are we talking?” Luckily it didn’t have anything like the consistency of drinking jelly.

LATKE

Fried potatoes. I love ‘em but this tradition of eating fried foods to celebrate the lasting of the oil is heck on my acid reflux. I saved the weirdest for last. Geughk! This was gross and fizzy. There was no potato flavour. No grease flavour. Just salty and carbonated. It’s naaaaahhhsty! Even sour cream wouldn’t make these latkes taste better. Latke fail!

 Overall: fun but never again, like trying sea cucumber.

Enjoy this snowmanorah! (I’m off on vacation for a week so I won’t be around to answer emails/validate comments after tomorrow but posts will continue via the wonder of automation!)

On Monday of this week I had a Letter to Toronto published in the National Post. It’s probably relevant if you live in any big city and worth a chuckle or two if you want to have a quick read.

For the last month or so I’ve been doing some illustration work for The Torontoist website. It’s a municipal news blog. They have divisions in many cities like the  Bostonist, Londonist, Seattlest, Shanghaist and for New York, the Gothamist. It’s been nice to work on some editorial style illustration, like I went to college for so many years ago. I enjoy trying to depict things conceptually on a tight time line. Here are some of the ones I’ve done so far…

Gender Studies being introduced into the Toronto curriculum:

The Global City conference Toronto was hosting:

The City budget, which may not translate well because you may not know the shape of our city hall or what a twoonie is.

A histroical look at one of our malls that opened in the 60s:

And a likeness of Ryuho Okawa that wasn’t used because he never came to town:

Back in September I announced a contest and in October I announced the winners. Now that the winners have recieved their watercolour painting prizes in the mail, I can share them with the rest of you.  This is what you totally missed out on by not entering.

Inspired by Lars Chicken Pox Pies being delivered by Magpies I made a Magpilot to drop his infectious confectionary.

For I drew inspiration from Daniels strip for a Mad Hatterpillar. It is Lewis Caroll’s work that the the modern use of portmanteau is credited. It means the jamming of two or more words together to make a new word, like I do all the time with my princesses’ pets.

I just updated my Cafe Press store to include the Xmas card I sent for 2008. If you want to send your friends a Christmas or Hannukah card, check the shop out. The Gingerbread card that sold well last year is still there too.