Some time ago I went looking for a nice, free mahjongg game for Mac OS. Anything that had nice graphics or simple, elegant gameplay cost money. Who really wants to drop $20 on a solitaire game? I didn’t, so I enlisted the help of Jeremy (a software programmer), and we set out to write our own mahjongg game, knowing nothing at all of how to go about doing that. I think it turned out pretty well, all things considered.

A couple of my coworkers and I have been going to life drawing sessions on Thursday nights in an effort to get back in touch with our artistic roots. It’s also been a great way to relax after a long day. Here are a couple of sketches from the last session. I haven’t done this sort of drawing since school, so it’s great to dive back into it again and refine my skills.

Last night at about 8:30 I discovered that there was going to be a total lunar eclipse at 3:37 am this morning, and apparently it’s a relatively rare occurrence to see one. I’ve never seen such a thing, so of course I came up with the bright idea to ride up to Cypress Mountain to photograph the event. Let’s just say I’m paying for the missing 3 hours of sleep today.

This is a vector illustration, made up of thousands of shapes with different layer styles and opacities applied. The files got so ridiculous I had to build lily pads, lilies and the koi all in separate files and then join them.

I would already assume that one would have to be a bit strange to paint the kind of scenes that Salvador Dali did, but I think it’s solidly confirmed by this portrait. I’ve seen his crazy mustache portrait drawn many times, but I particularly liked the strangeness of this image.

These are two ink illustrations of tree bark that I did for my parents’ birthday cards. I don’t often work in ink so I thought I’d try something new.

Lawren Harris is one of my favourite artists. He somehow managed to reduce entire landscapes down to their simplest forms while still achieving a sense of realism, primarily through his use of dramatic lighting. And that is the nerdiest thing I’ve said all week.

This is a vector recreation of one of his paintings, “Mt. Lefroy”.