Steve McDonald

Steve graduated from The Ontario College of Art & Design in 1992. He immediately went on to become a founding member of the Canadian artist collective Drawnonward. Over a twenty year period Drawnonward went on to show work in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and was the subject of two CBC documentaries and the full length Genie nominated film from Film-maker Andy Keen ‘Seven Painters, Seven Places’. Drawnonward was asked to represent Canadian up and coming artists during HRH The Prince of Wales visit to Canada in 2000.

From 2015 until 2020 Steve McDonald created over 400 drawings for a coloring book series commissioned by Chronicle Books in San Francisco. The six volume series has become an official international best seller which has been published in over thirty countries in more than twenty languages. The five books were originally released as Fantastic Cities (2015), Fantastic Structures (2016), Fantastic Collections (2016), Fantastic Planet (2017), Fantastic Machines (2017), and Fantastic Coloring (2020).

Steve’s process includes observing, sketching on-site, and taking photos for reference in the studio, as well as working from many noted photographers’ material. Both his detailed architectural line drawings and his vector-designed digital yet painterly landscapes have gained many loyal collectors. His work is not easily categorized as he employs onsite sketching, studio drawing, photography, digital manipulation, filter applications, digital vector illustration and various print technologies to achieve his final image results.

When he’s not knee-deep in the intricate details of his drawings or crafting new imagery, Steve is likely hiking, gardening, canoeing or working on his property. Steve lives in Dunedin, Ontario in a valley beside a river. Far far away. He and his wife have two daughters.

Steve’s work can be found online at

http://sdmcdonald.com.

Among the more notable publications that have featured Steve's drawings and/or his books are:

The Guardian UK, Architectural Digest, Architectural Digest Italy, The Atlantic, Walrus magazine, NY Times, Gizmodo, CBC, Imagine FX, Communication Arts, Yahoo News with Katie Couric, The San Francisco Chronicle, Toronto Life, The Globe & Mail, CBS Sunday Morning News.

Notable past illustration clients that have commissioned artwork from Steve include Amazon, Architectural Digest India, Amazon Prime, Indeed, Entertainment Weekly, Blue Man Group, Dymock's, Scotia Bank, Indigo Books, MolsonCoors, Pixite & Pigment Apps, The Globe & Mail, & ManuLife Canada.