Van Gogh style at Merri Creek

Another trip to Merri Creek with the ipad.
Channeling Vincent this time. A time consuming way to paint, but fun. This view is almost the exact reverse of the previous image. Its looking down the hill, rather than up it.

Digital Bush painting

All done in photoshop... here is a detail of the bottom left.

Troublesome cubist painting...

 

Still not quite there but getting closer....
Never done a painting like this before, could maybe have left it a few sessions ago...

Cat spray stencil & linocut

Here is a unique print I did a while ago. I have to find all the bits again and do a series as it proved popular and I only made 3-4 impressions...

Abstract Painting

A recent sort of surreal/abstract painting.

I thought I had lost this blog when I shut down my website (Nov 2018) but it's still here...
Fantastic! This is where I will put all my recent artwork. Enjoy.

Digital Palette Knife Painting

First try at using some of the digital palette knives in Photoshop.

Palette knife painting

Photoshop Sunset Painting

Painty McCubbin style

I was trying to get the sort of effect of the bush that Fred McCubbin did with thick oil paint... but digitally. Needs more work but I found it interesting. Be good to see if this could be done much bigger.

Queen Purpuss digital book cover

Here is a book cover I painted over the summer for Author Robert Lawsons digital  fantasy novel - The short reign of Queen Purpuss the 40th. It was fun getting all the cat fur painted in.

St.Lukes Exquisite Palette show

This is about the third or forth time that I have been involved in St.Lukes Exquisite Palette show. I always find it so hard to paint small details with actual paint and brushes after being able to zoom in digitally to do details on the computer. It is always good to keep the hand in. Mainly done in the beautiful Golden Acrylics Louise and David gave me for my birthday years ago.

Robbie Roo cycling along Merri Creek one Tuesday afternoon...

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...

Birthday Jamboree

Yes the Birthday Jamboree!

Various Birthday items happily marching to a birthday party to offer themselves up for your delight.

I first did some sketches as ideas for the annual Illustrators Australia 9by5 exhibition, the theme Carnivale. I carefully drew it in pen and ink to 9" x 5".

I scanned that and came up with the colours digitally. I used an idea from James Gurney (of Dinotopia fame) to come up with the colour range, it's called gamut masking and it really helped limit the colours and made it much easier to make colour decisions.

I drew it up on the 9 by 5 wooden board and started in with the Golden acrylic paints. I am not so keen on painting things so small.

That was finished just in time for the 9x5 exhibition and was well received but didn't sell...

Pretty happy with that little painting so I decided to upscale it to a bigger canvas. This was now the fourth time I had to draw it so I felt I was getting the hang of it. I had a little more room on the left so I added a drink cup but that was voted out by others and I changed it to a choc top ice cream which everyone loves. I have been taking photos of the progress of the bigger painting but it is going much slower than the little one. I will post them soon.

Dylan Portrait

Well, I have been doing a bunch of different stuff towards a Bob Dylan portrait but still not sure which direction the final will take.

The black and white version evolved from a large pen and brush ink-drawing and an acrylic painting. I enjoyed using Ben-Day dots to add tone, here is an almost finished coloured version.