Merri Creek sunny Sunday

Another nice day down by Merri Creek... right next to a homeless camp/shelter...

Succulents

Gippsland Highway

Don't think one is quite finished yet...

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...

Cherry Brossom time...

This was way back when Spring had just Sprung!

2017!

OK 2017!! This is the year where I really up the ante on putting up more artwork. I have a few ready to go, so here is something I did over summer... took Lottie rockpooling...

Bush Tucker time

Bush Tucker time

Block Head

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

Bacon and eggs - thin on substance

Here is drawing I did then decided to make a little 3D version with some pasteboard. YUM!

Cubist Pen testing

Hi all,

Now, i am not really a supporter of Smiggle stationary. In the past I have found their pencils to be more wax than colour and their pens to be more filler than pigment.

Last week my daughter Charlotte, spent a whole 5 dollars at a smiggle store and got a grip of coloured ball point pens. I liked the colour range so thought i would try them out.

Here are the results. They are good colours and flow quite well...go figure.

 

I was happy with those little tests so went on to do something a little bigger.

 

Rare fun to be had with ballpoint pens!

 

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...

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.

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?

photoshop brushes

I have been playing with a few new photoshop brushes found at various places online...

Walking dude

Sartorialist denim man

Stampy treescape

This is an idea that I have been thinking about for years but never actually tried.
Cut a few tree stamps, stamp em on a rough line then fill in the rest of your landscape in the same colour... Presto! Instant landscape!
Ok so this one isn't great, but it is a proof of concept. I just need to make a bunch more trees.

Some more summer artwork

Here is some more stuff from my sketchbook of the last couple of months...

Some local wiring is like a puzzle to draw...

This stuff can get pretty busy but is fun to draw with a brush.

A native from the backyard

Same backyard, same afternoon, different medium.

A Salad container label for my daughters primary school fete.

A cupla kookas.

Brushpen of a newspaper photo

Yo dude! Whattup dawg?

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.

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.

Owls

Earlier in the year I was putting together a whole bunch of different ideas that I thought might be good for my sister-in-laws clothing company - Red Rascal

I had read on a design site that their tip for the next big thing was Owls. Deer, stags and antlers were on the way out (about 5 years ago i reckon) and they were predicting owls. So I started doing a bunch of owls. Owls are great to draw, they have a few simple characteristics. Anyway Red Rascal had already done a bunch of owls and didn't need anymore, so here they are.

Some Patterns

Ever since I saw a mind blowing Islamic exhibition in Venice back in the early 90's I have been interested in those ancient patterns that evolve from simple geometric shapes.

This is the first one that I copied into my sketchbook to try and understand. It was on the wall in the great Alhambra Castle in Southern Spain.

It is really quite simple made from a quarter of a square and a quarter of a circle... now try to draw it freehand.

 And this one is based on a similar idea using just circles and squares.

This is a bit more modern and was tricky to make as a vector because of the underlapping and overlapping but it makes a great all over pattern. It could make a great fence.

Here are some other little self contained patterns that you might see on a bowl, a buckle or the head of an axe, etc. overlapping forms that combine to make other shapes.

This final design was pretty common in one form another (not always with fish) and can be found on the bottom of a bowl which makes good sense, especially if you are having fish soup.

 Anyway, that is my little rant about patterns, I am always on the look out for them and they can be found just about everywhere people have had a bit of time to decorate a functional object. It happens less now days but good patterning is all over stuff from before the middle of the 20th century, buildings, manhole covers, fencing, balconies, brickwork, tiling, ceramics, wrought iron, carved wood, porcelain, anything just go into a city and look for it.