New pattern tiles

Here are a few new patterns I have been working on, each made with a few simple tiles.

2018 - New Year / New Pattern

Here is a new repeating pattern I have been working on... with some bright colours behind it, it looks a bit 60's. Would make cool black and white lined tiles ...

Isometric cube-land with dimensional pattern... rough idea

I was revisiting my tiled patterns and wondered if I could add some dimension to it. Here is what happened.

1) Put a tiled square onto the surface of an isometric cube.

2) Seemed interesting so I grabbed a few other tiles, a bit rough around the edges ...

3) I tried using just shading on the pattern to give some dimension.

4) And tried the same in colour but it didn't quite work...

5) ... it needed some background shading to help...

6) ...and here with flat pattern on shaded background

7) But it seemed most interesting when I offset the background. Three tones in the whole thing!

Block Head

Here is a cubist head that is based on a rubber stamp I made once and have remade in illustrator.

Back on the Blog

Hi everyone....anyone?

Sorry, it has been a while since my last blog post. I am trying to get more artwork up here on a more regular basis. I have been really busy doing whiteboard animation work. I'm thinking about a whole new website, this one is about 5 years old and getting a bit stale.

Anyway I am going to kick it off with a few repeating patterns I have been getting into.

Layered Landscape

Here is another in the layered landscape theme. I was trying to get it as bright and saturated as possible but still easy to read...

5 levels of complication

 I have been doing some more work on repeating patterns and tonal tiles. This tile has 5 levels of tone and can be put together to make pretty interesting patterns.

Here I took a tiny photo of guitarist Keith Richards and reworked in into a big tonal portrait. It would be great to make this as a giant wall mural using octagonal tiles. I am making a few more portraits to get the procedure more streamlined.

Scraps

I am really fascinated by making these sort of shapes. I think I first saw something like this done by Saul Steinberg from back in the 50's.

It is a sort of abstract construction, random shapes that looks like something solid but don't really add up to anything specific... I call them Scraps. Anyway, I had fun shading and colouring it and thought I should do more of these, maybe even try and make a little sculpture or some repeating patterns.

Geometric man

Hello, I've been a bit busy chasing work to post lately but have been doing all sorts of artwork. Hopefully I can get some of it up in the next little while...

Colour and thick outlines

Another simple vector bush background

Spending some spare time coming up with new and easier ways to make simple, bold bush landscapes in illustrator... Oh and designing more roo characters of course.

A few autoportraits

I am busy applying for jobs and so need to update my business card. I have been playing with a few self-portraits...might be a bit cartoony for a business card though. Would you employ this creep?

Oinky Beach

Here is little oinky piglet on the beach. Just trying out some new quick illustrator tricks...

Pattern Process

Ok here is a post mainly about some of the process I have been working on to make repeatable pattern tiles. I started thinking about this stuff years ago based on some of M.C.Eschers early experiments with stamps.

The first thing you do is work out how many times you want the edge of each side to touch.

Here is a tile that is 11 units square. The pattern hits the edge of each side 5 times (the red/even numbers).

This next tile is a little more complicated and more geometric, it is 17 units across and the pattern hits the edge 8 times.

Then you just rotate the square -90 degrees to get 4 variations...

From this one tile and its variations you can make endless patterns.

Here things get more complicated with two tiles...

And then we really get moving with a bunch of tiles and the variations.

To make more and more complicated patterns.

The next thing I am starting to work on is using different tones in the patterns and using these tones to replicate photographic images like this one of Groucho Marx using 6 tones. It isn't quite working yet but it is getting there.

Stay tuned...

More Teatowels

I finished up designing three tea towels for the BEPS fathers day stall. They all sold!

These last two I got to print myself at the brilliant Harvest Workshop on Lygon St. I was especially happy with the urban sunset image.

I mixed the ink on the silkscreen so each one had a different range of colours in the sunset, then black for the urban business on top. You can see the difference when I took out the yellow.

I am hoping to do a few more of these for the end of year Twilight Market.

Teatowel pattern

Sorry, I haven't blogged for months because I have recently moved house and it took 6 weeks to get back online...

Here is a teatowel I designed for the BEPS (Brunswick East Primary School) Fathers day stall. I didn't get to screenprint this one but I did get to print two others which I will get to in a future post.

The printing was done at the fantastic Harvest Studios on Lygon St by some other BEPS parents.

It is a two colour teatowel same print each end and a bargain at $7.

I have been doing a lot with these sort of patterns lately and will go into some detail on my process in the next post.

Oh Yeah, I have finally succumbed to the pressure and have signed up for a facebook account.

House Husband Gyton Grantley

Here is another vector based caricature. This one of House Husband and Underbelly TV star, Gyton Grantley.

Gyton Grantley

Tile pattern

Here is a tile design I have lifted and revised from an old portuguese design. There isn't much to the actual design but it combines great into a 4 square. I still want to change the main sort of thistle shape and fill up the space a bit more.

Revised pattern

Modigliani portrait

Modigliani sawtooth portrait

Muddy "Mississippi" Waters

Another in my line of vector portraits of songwriters is one of my all time favourites, Muddy Waters. I have been doing this one over the last few months. I haven't quite worked out what i want in the background yet or what the final colours should be.

This is probably the closest to what i originally wanted to achieve. Love that 70's style shirt...

Here i was fooling around with various patterns & fills in illustrator.

More with the patterns and fills, starting to fall apart as a portrait though.

I kind of like this colourway , but it isnt quite popping enough for me.

Maybe a bit to obvious for a bluesman to be in shades of blue...?

When I had the vector shapes sorted out i quickly painted it as an acrylic on wood portrait. I think it still needs quite a bit of work as it has lost something of the confidence seen in Muddy in the vector. Also it needs a background, maybe some kind of abstract cityscape...

Feb 2013

Yeah, a long time between posts, but I have been doing a fair bit of artwork including some paintings that i will post when they are finished.

Here are a few odds and ends from over the summer.

I dunno, some kind of vector/limited palette test...

Oh yeah, this was used to help sell gingerbread to to little prep kids...

This one is part of something else, still in progress.

Reflecto lettuce alien, still not finished but a fun way to make pictures. Did I show this already?

Something from a series I am working on currently in a few different formats.

Allright, that's enough for today but I have a bunch more that i will put up over the next little bit.