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

photoshop brushes

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

Walking dude

Sartorialist denim man

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...

Hazy Bushscape

I was doing another landscape and was trying to give it a heap more atmosphere and haze...might have gone a bit too far, but I have a bunch of new photoshop brushes that were fun to play with.

Hazy Bushscape

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.

Stamp face

Stamp face 1

Here is a little cubistic stamp face i whipped up last week. Really soft rubber to carve, even softer than eraser rubber. The trick is to not cut too much off as it cuts like butter.

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...

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.