Gilles Rainville illustration

With my recent surprise book cover contract from Prise de Parole , I decided to register myself with Illustration Quebec .  After a few months of very little activity on my profile, I thought, maybe I need more examples of cover art illustrations. So I decided to challenge myself.  I am going to take my artwork, imagine a storyline relating to the idea behind the artwork, and illustrate a book cover for it. I chose my most recent finished piece, Can I Have It? ,   to be the guinea pig for this "experiment". When I took a step back from this piece, it gave me the idea of a pre-teen novel centered around a brother and sister going on a magical yet perilous  adventure after discovering a small magical planet. I started with some messy gestural sketching to help me decide the layout of the book cover. With the rule of three I drew the rough sketch. Added a 2-point perspective guide to fix any perspective mistakes. For the next steps, I started with the foreground a...

  CHOICES As the dominating race, our species affects every aspect of the natural world we are part of. In consequence, some of the choices we make create chain reactions that have changed the world, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. This series of pastel artworks explores some of these choices many people make daily in the hopes of inspiring thoughtful consideration and understanding of the domino effect our choices necessitate. HOW DO WE GET THERE? This first piece explores our choice of transportation. Choosing our vehicle influences the choice of where we live, how much we pollute, and how much freedom we have. Cars became a class symbol, and a desired item in the 1940s. Eighty years later, most of the population still regards them the same way. This piece is meant as a reflection of a choice that often seems automatic when we are growing up. This piece was started last summer (2019) in a smaller format without creating any thumbnails to explore the compositional posi...

This is the first piece in the series where I included a human figure. I wanted to explore our role within nature. While we are part of the animal kingdom, because of how we have evolved and since we affect nature on a much grander scale than any other species, I believe our role is of much greater importance. Therefore, we have an equally greater responsibility towards it. This piece started with yet another abandoned idea. That of animals being reborn from a man of roots. To start, I researched some root textures, took out my how to draw human anatomy books, took a different point of view, and started drawing a new man of roots. I work by drawing gestural three-dimensional shapes first representing the basic form of the different parts of the body, then adding the detail over these shapes to complete a sketch of the composition before adding colour. I always keep perspective, three-dimensional form, and the dynamic rhythm of my lines in mind while I draw.   ...