Melissa Bergen, artist and illustrator

Brand Spanking New Illustration

2012-03-08T13:17:00.002-06:00

Illustration for Lilipoh Magazine

2012-03-01T12:58:00.000-06:00

I was pleased to recently illustrate an article for Lilipoh Magazine (http://www.lilipoh.com/index.aspx) , a lifestyles magazine for people interested in holistic health, well-being, creativity, spirituality, gardening, education, art and social health. The article is titled 'Redefining Progress, More Stuff does not Equal Progress' and features Annie Leonard, author of 'The Story of Stuff' (http://www.storyofstuff.org/).

Illustration for The Uniter

2012-02-02T12:59:00.000-06:00

I just did this illustration for an interesting article on addiction in The Uniter. The Uniter is the University of Winnipeg's Weekly Urban Journal. Here's a link to the article online: http://uniter.ca/view/7218/

The illustration concept came from that of The Four Horsemen of Addiction: Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration and Despair. I decided to focus on the horses themselves, thinking of the 'animal' side to addiction.

Sugar Frosted Goodness!: 'Apart' Illustration

2012-02-01T12:39:00.001-06:00

Sugar Frosted Goodness!: 'Apart' Illustration: With this illustration, I wanted to create the feeling of coming apart inside. The piece began with heavily pixelating a photo, taking it ap...

Album Cover Illustration Discount

2012-01-17T12:49:00.000-06:00

I've partnered up with Manitoba Music to offer a 25% discount for album cover illustration!
https://www.manitobamusic.com/member-discount-program

Check them out here: http://www.manitobamusic.com/
They represent over 700 members in all facets of the music industry, including artists and bands, studios, agents, managers, songwriters, venues, promoters, producers, and beyond.

Meld Illustration

2011-12-22T11:47:00.002-06:00

I thought I would do a little experiment with 'melding' different features from various faces into one face. I also discovered some new ways of working with layers in the process. Hope you like the result!

Sugar Frosted Goodness!

2011-12-02T16:49:00.000-06:00

I'm super excited to have just joined this cool illustration site called Sugar Frosted Goodness.
Check out my first post here: http://sugarfrostedgoodness.blogspot.com/2011/12/hello-all.html

And the title is.....!

2011-11-30T12:59:00.001-06:00

It's a difficult decision, but it's time I decided on a name for this piece. Since I couldn't come up with my own, I had a teeny little contest to coerce others into doing the work for me! Thank you all!

Here were the submissions:

Lucy in the Sky (everyone loves a good Beatles/drugs reference)

The Melissa (not sure if this was a 'real' entry??? lol)

Sterling Beauty (I totally get this, it does look kinda shiny)

The Traveler (I like the sense of movement this portrays)

Fantasia (very apt)

Orphic (meaning 'mythic'. I love learning new words!)

So........after implementing my complex system of illustration title selection (it involved spreadsheets and graphs) I have decided on....

The Traveler!!!!!!!

Congratulations to the winner, Barb!

Thank you!

-Melissa

PS: I have no prize for you, Barb, just so you know.

PPS: I don't really have a complex system of illustration title selection involving spreadsheets and graphs

Come up with a title!

2011-11-23T13:05:00.000-06:00

Obviously I love to create visual art. But when it comes to giving that work a title, I am often stumped. So instead, I'm hoping someone else can name this new illustration piece! Please email me or comment on the blog post if you want to submit a title. Anything goes! The winner will get....(drumroll).....bragging rights and....praise by me!

Gallop illustration

2011-10-18T13:08:00.000-05:00

This piece started as a portrait of a horse we met in the spring, and along the way it joined with a poem by Marie EJ Pitt, A Gallop of Fire:

When the north wind moans thro' the blind creek courses
And revels with harsh, hot sand,
I loose the horses, the wild red horses,
I loose the horses, the mad, red horses,
And terror is on the land.

With prophetic murmer the hills are humming,
The forest-kings bend and blow;
With hoofs of brass on the baked earth strumming,
O brave red horses, they hear us coming,
And the legions of death lean low.

O'er the wooded height, and the sandy hollow
Where the boles to the axe have rung,
Tho' they fly the foreman as flies the swallow,
The fierce red horses, my horses, follow
With flanks to the faint earth flung.

Or with frenzied hieroglyphs, fear embossing
Night's sable horizon bars,
Thro' tangled mazes of death-darts crossing,
I swing my leaders and watch them tossing
Their red manes against the stars.

But when South winds sob in the drowned creek courses
And whisper to hard wet sand,
I hold the horses, the spent red horses,
I hold the horses, the tired red horses,
And silence is on the land.

Yea, the South wind sobs among the drowned creek courses
For sorrows no man shall bind---
Ah, God! For the horses, the black plumed horses,
Dear God! For the horses, Death's own pale horses,
That raced in the tracks behind.

Fire Thought, mixed media illustration

2011-09-16T12:06:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty excited about this new illustration. I'm not sure exactly when or how the idea came to me, because I hadn't been listening to Tori Amos lately. Her song 'Cooling' has a line in it "but fire thought she'd really rather be water instead." Somehow that lyric really touched me and inspired me to come up with the concept of a 'fire' woman desiring to become a 'water' woman. I hope you enjoy! I had so much fun making this one, and incidently it looks like it would make a great album cover!

Beautiful Rust

2011-08-08T15:00:00.000-05:00

Ah rust, how I love it! At least as an image and texture, not so much on my cutlery...(or other metal items I own that I could potentially get rust on?) This idea had been floating around my brain for quite some time, just needed to create the design and find a good image of rust. Luckily I had taken such a photo at a lovely trip to the local dump when on vacay for May long weekend. I always imagined it as a book cover. (I could spend hours at the bookstore just looking at covers!) It looks kinda firey to me now, which is interesting since it looked nothing like that in my head, but nothing ever really does. I'm always surprised by what I have created! Anyhoo - hope you like it!

Sweet City Woman update

2011-08-05T12:58:00.000-05:00

So here is Sweet City Woman as of today. I kinda stopped working on this one, since it seems a bit of a departure from my regular 'style' (which I'm still trying to define!) But I like her and am happy about the textures I've added for her clothing. I'm still in love with the torn edges of the piece. So much that perhaps I will create every piece with torn edges??! Or, maybe not.

Illustration Friday theme: Obsession

2011-08-04T21:00:00.000-05:00

This IF theme was quite fun, I imagined I was illustrating a book cover for some kind of thriller/murder/mystery/stalker type of novel.

IF Theme: Perennial

2011-07-22T12:53:00.001-05:00

The current IF theme being perennial, I decided to create a tribute one of my favourite flowers: the bluebell. When I was little I thought fairies used the petals to make themselves skirts and used the stamen as their wands. What a disappointment to find out fairies aren't real! I adored the Flower Fairy illustrations by Cicely Mary Barker, see her bluebell fairy below:

North of 55

2011-07-20T12:40:00.000-05:00

This illustration is called North of 55 after my place of birth, Thompson, Manitoba. If you look closely you can see little details about Thompson, like the GPS coordinates. Sometime in the future I will be featured in an artist's section on the Defining Moments website, check out this interesting project here: http://moments.tigweb.org/

IF Theme: Gesture

2011-07-19T12:48:00.000-05:00

'Gesture' made me think about the graceful hand gesture of a dancer or figure skater. In mulling this idea over, I saw the image in my hand of a hand delicately plucking a design from a pile. Is that what I do? In some ways, yes! I sift through my own inventory or sketches, scans, photos, and paintings and pluck out the worthy items and place them all together.

IF Theme: Stay

2011-07-14T13:01:00.000-05:00

'Stay' is the theme for this week. I was reminded of a friend I once had as a wee lass who attempted to make a housefly her pet. She tied a string around the fly and dragged him around, trying to get him to fly with the string attached to him. He was uncooperative.

Illustration Friday: Remedy

2011-07-07T16:52:00.000-05:00

So for this theme of 'remedy' for http://www.illustrationfriday.com/ I have decided to explore herbal remedies. The 'herbs' in this illustration are of my own invention, which makes it more fun! Hope you enjoy.

IF: Midsummer Night

2011-06-24T13:00:00.000-05:00

http://www.illustrationfriday.com/ theme: Midsummer Night. "For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast" - quote from A Midsummer's Night Dream by Shakespeare. Night is a magical time, where things that were normal and uninteresting in the day become shimmery and soft in the night. I hope I captured that sense of magic and mystery here.

IF Theme: Launch

2011-06-22T12:28:00.000-05:00

This week's Illustration Friday theme is launch. I pondered this for a while, and then the idea flew over to me, literally. I was outside on my deck as a seed launched itself into the air.

New Promo Card

2011-06-14T12:32:00.000-05:00

So I'm working on a new promo card for myself. I hope the promo card describes the general feeling and look of my work. The first draft was a little too scary looking. The last thing I want is to scare people away!

IF Theme: Shadows

2011-06-09T12:59:00.000-05:00

Carl Jung spoke about the shadow within all of us: he said that 'Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is'.

World Drawing Day - June 4, 2011!

2011-06-01T12:16:00.000-05:00

What will you be doing this Saturday? Well, I'll be drawing! Check out http://www.drawingday.org/, a fantastic way to celebrate artists, illustrators and everyone who loves drawing!

Asleep - Illustration Friday

2011-05-27T21:26:00.000-05:00

Asleep - It doesn't look like much is going on, but inside your head the wheels are spinning, the fires are burning, and sometimes it's a big old mess! And that's what I love about it.

Safari - Illustration Friday

2011-05-19T10:26:00.000-05:00

The theme for this week's Illustration Friday is 'safari'. I decided to look up the word safari and found out it comes from the swahili word meaning 'long journey'. I found this intriguing and imagined an image of someone walking along a lonely highway.

A 1970's Work in Progress....

2011-05-11T12:41:00.001-05:00

Somewhere along the drive to work one day, I switched to the 60's and 70's radio station and began rocking out to Sweet City Woman by the Stampeders (a Canadian band btw!) Completely inspired, I imagined a cool, calm and collected 1970's woman relaxing in her sweet pad. So here we have her; a little faded and ripped over time but still super cool. I'll post when she's done!

The Beginning...

2011-05-10T08:39:00.000-05:00

For my next Illustration Friday piece, the theme being 'beginner' made me think of the robins building a nest in our cedar bush. What better way to represent a beginning than with a nest of eggs?

Illustration Friday!

2011-05-05T12:19:00.002-05:00

This is my first illustration for Illustration Friday!(http://www.illustrationfriday.com/) The theme is 'lesson' which got me thinking about this recent illustration based on my time in art school.

I often have dreams about being back at school and having a major project due. Being that it's a dream, the project is generally something very unusual for me like a huge conceptual painting or a strange clay sculpture of a city.

This illustration started out as an entry in my art journal using pen and acrylic paint. I then digitally added a scan of my pencil drawing of a girl's face and played around with the colours and textures. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, I like that you can see the text but it's obscured enough that you have to delve in to actually read it. Let me know what you think!