Bite Me!

One of my new t-shirt design from over at my RedBubble store. This is the third in the series of Pop art lips.

Vote 1 for Werebear!

My Werebear illo is now a gruesome skateboard design. The only catch is I need your vote to make it a reality. If you're interested in casting your vote, mosey over to Popdeck, register (it's very easy) and rate the design (preferably a 5). If I get the votes, my design will be released as a numbered limited edition skateboard deck available for purchase on the Popdeck website.

Update 30th April- Voting has officially closed on my design. Thanks to everyone who made the effort to vote. Wish me luck!

Nick Cave

I've been a fan of Nick Cave's music for quite a number of years now. For those not familiar with the man and his many bands- The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party, The Bad Seeds and more recently Grinderman, here's some photos and info.

I've always thought he had the perfect profile for caricaturing. So when the idea of a Nick Cave drawing jam popped up over at the Drawing Board, I finally had the chance to put theory into practice.


Edit: 6th April- Added a second jam caricature of Nick Cave. This one was done with brushpen, felt tip pen and digital additions in Photoshop.
Edit: 9th April- The third one is the Nick Cave from my sketchblog. I didn't like the idea of doubleposting between blogs, but I think this one deserves to be added here as well. It seems to make quite a nice triptych.

Bettie Page

This was originally posted as a sketch on my sketchblog, but I decided to colour it up as a further tribute to the late Dave Stevens. Also Illustration Friday's current topic is Homage and I thought this was a fitting homage to Bettie and to the masterful art of Dave Stevens which I've always admired.

Coloured from the scanned pencil sketch in Photoshop. After adding flat colours, shading was added in low opacity washes with a hard brush on a layer underneath the pencils. The pencil linework (with the white background made transparent) was colourised. The layers were then flattened and some of the obvious pencil strokes were blended with the smudge tool to give it a more painterly look.

Young Sophia Loren

From a recent drawing jam over at The Drawing Board.

Recent caricatures

Some more of the gang from over at the Drawing Board's ever popular, 'Caricaturist's Caricature' thread. Here are their photos.

The digitally painted caricature was done in ArtRage, an ultra cheap, simple paint program whose limited toolset (when compared to Painter anyway) is the reason I find it so appealing.

Ringu

A digital painting of the creepiest movie monster of all time, Sadako from the Japanese horror film, Ringu (remade in the U.S. as 'The Ring'). I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

This was intended to be a 30 minute digital speedpainting for my sketchblog but I got a bit carried away. Done in PainterX with the Oil Pastel brush, then tweaked in Photoshop with some noise and textures. Here's a link to the PainterX version before any colour tweaks or noise were added in Photoshop.

For anyone sick of the recent spate of crappy Hollywood remakes of Asian horror films, do yourselves a favour and check out the original source material. You won't be disappointed.


19th Feb 2008- Two videos have been added to the tutorials section. One, a digital drawing of Einstein from over at my Sketchblog. The second, has combined my two early girl sketch and colour videos into one. Both have some rockin' tunes to accompany them. Enjoy!

You've come a long way, baby!

Recently I contributed art to an eight poster campaign for V Energy drinks which is currently being featured prominently Australia wide.

Besides the fact that the above billboard is three storeys high and on the busiest street in Sydney (which is quite a buzz in itself), this particular billboard's placement has a special personal significance to me. You see, seventeen years ago my very first job out of school was working at Woolworths in Sydney in this very same building. The Commonwealth Bank building below the billboard was where I opened my very first bank account.

I worked at Woolworths for 6 months as a sales assistant in the confectionery department, manning the registers, serving (sometimes very weird) customers, drawing on whatever scraps of paper I could find around the counter and going down to the 'dungeon' supply room once a week to load up on the week's lollies (which I always managed to screw up. Too much of one thing, not enough of another). Also occasionally I donned a three-sizes-too-big red jacket and stood around with my arms folded looking menacing, acting as store security. It wasn't a terrible job, but it definitely wasn't drawing and not soon after, I left to start working at Walt Disney Australia.

So when I encountered this sight a few days ago I couldn't help but take a snapshot of what was my first job and my current job positioned side by side. The colourful billboard dominating the drab building exterior. It was quite an epiphany for me.

Anyway, below are some of the other posters from the V campaign. The drawn cartoon characters were merged with the supplied photographs.

Waldo's Hawaiian Holiday

This is a just completed pinup for 'Waldo's Hawaiian Holiday', the graphic novel sequel to the 80's cult classic film, Repo Man.

The comic's written by Repo Man's writer and director Alex Cox with art by the briliant Chris Bones and Justin Randall. For more info, check details over at Gestalt Publishing's website.

Colour and designwise this was a bit of an experiment for me. At times I tend to be very literal with my choice of colours (pink skin, blue sky etc) and very conservative in my approach to design. So this time I tried to push myself further in both of those areas. Let me know if you think it works/doesn't work.

I was influenced by the comicbook work of Dave Johnson whose experimentation with design and colour is very inspiring.


---An important note regarding the blog feed--- On a different subject, it's been brought to my attention that there have been some problems with this blog's RSS feed and people not getting notified of my blog updates. The feed should now be getting automatically redirected to Feedburner and there are additional links to syndicated feeds at the bottom of the sidebar here on the blog. Let me know if you have any problems (unfortunately if you are you're probably not receiving this blog entry. Sigh)

Countdown to Cloverfield

All movie geeks out there have been feeling the buzz generated from the trailers of the new J.J. Abrams monster flick, Cloverfield. If you haven't as yet, check out the trailers and see what all the fuss is about.

The main fascination is that no one knows what the monster looks like. There have been theories aplenty on every movieloving forum on the internet, from Cthulhu to the Devil, and Voltron to a new improved Godzilla. I too have been collecting the clues and forming many theories of my own as to the identity of the monster. So from now until it's release on the 17th of January (yes that's right, Australia gets it one day earlier than the U.S.'s 18th release. Wheee!) I'll be putting pencil to paper and drawing some of my theories as to the identity of the monster. Some are based on info and quotes from the trailer, the viral campaign and Mr. Abrams himself. Others are just ridiculous flights of fancy.

Enjoy!

MONSTER THEORY #1- RAT MONSTER


WHY- Creator J.J. ABRAMS has been quoted as saying that he came up with the idea for the monster when him and his son saw Godzilla toys in a Japanese toyshop. He wanted to create an American equivalent. A monster that America could call their own. So since this movie takes place in the Big Apple, my theory is that he chose a vermin that is synonymous with New York City- Rats! Taking it one step further I chose the ugliest rat around, The Naked Mole Rat and mutated it for the role of the monster.


MONSTER THEORY #2- FISH MONSTER


I tell ya, drawing can be a fickle mistress sometimes. After completing the Rat monster above, I went through countless of sketches and failed drawings for this fish monster. I had a definite idea in mind but just couldn't translate it to paper. Then one day, I'm doodling while scanning in work drawings and lo and behold, the drawing just materialised. Guess I was just trying too hard at first. Anyway...

WHY- The sea is an obvious choice for the origins of the monster. It enters the city via the harbour (decapitating The Statue of Liberty in the process). A giant sea lizard had been done (Godzilla...duh), so I researched fish that live in the local area. The fish used in this mutation is an Atlantic Wolf Fish merged with some fossilised dinosaur bones to become the monster.

17th January 2008- Saw it tonight. Top stuff! A bit short, could have been 30 minutes longer, but it was an original and clever little flick. The monster was pretty cool too (none of my theories were right, but I figured that was the case)

Four in One

As the title suggests, I've crammed four different topics into this one post. Mainly because I didn't want to push too many of the good, older posts off the main page with lots of crappy little ones, so I've combined these all into one.

More Cartoon Cheesecake

A while back I posted some fun interpretations of popular cartoon characters as saucy cheesecake pinups. There were a few others from that batch that I never ended up posting, so here they are for the first time. You'll notice there's cropped thumbnails linking to the main pics, however the content is pretty tame and there's no nudity.

Below are Nani from Lilo and Stitch, Sailor Moon, Archie's Betty and Veronica and the answer to 'Why they call him Jughead?' and Thundercats' Cheetara.

Redbubble

Some of you may have noticed the new links in the Shop and Tshirt sections for my Redbubble store. Redbubble's a great little community based website with a marketplace to create and sell your own custom merchandise. I have loads of shirts and prints for sale over there so check 'em out.

Battle Scars

I posted the original of this 3D piece, waaay back in my first blog post. Recently when I decided to polish it up for sale as a print over at Redbubble I added a few extra elements to add more depth and detail. Here's a link to the original. Let me know if you think these additions have added or detracted to it's appeal.

VB Warnie figurine

Recently I was lucky enough to get my first toy design job. It was to design a talking figurine for beer makers VB, of legendary and controversial Australian cricketing spin bowler, Shane Warne. Currently you can purchase the toys after collecting barcodes from the cartons of the beer or purchase them online at VB's Summer of Spin website. 

Below you can see some of the many different designs and poses that were used as a guide to create the figurine and the 3D artwork and animation that appear on the cartons and website.

Here's a link to a photo from the unveiling of a statue-sized version of the figurine.

And here's the finished figurine...



On a different note, I've noticed one or two broken links on my older posts and have fixed them. If anyone comes across pictures that don't load in earlier posts or the gallery section, please let me know and I'll get on it. Thanks.

Is there a Doctor in the House?

A caricature of Hugh Laurie as that big, lovable jerk, Doctor House. Looking haggard and disheveled as always.

Done for Diluc's Caricature Challenge website. Brushpen and digital.

Well, this is awkward...

Hello...testing, testing...is this thing still on?

I'm FINALLY back from my extended, unscheduled blogging break. I could lay the blame for my blog's neglect on a brief obsession with Ebay and Asian horror films, but truthfully I just needed to take a break from it all while focusing more on my paid drawing work, spending some quality time with family, pursuing other hobbies and just recharging the batteries.

A big thanks to everyone who hung around despite the lack of new posts. I'll try and keep things rolling along regularly from now on...


As you may have noticed from the previous post, my Commando character won the first round of Drawing Book's, 'Los Fugitivos' battle (mainly due to the unintentional promotion of my character here on this blog. Thanks to everyone who voted!), so that means I'm going through to the next round to face a fresh slew of ugly and amusing challengers. One of which is the rolling pin weilding 'Snail Lady' created by the very talented Jason Paulos. Much like the Skull Girl from the previous post, I was asked to draw my version of his character for the PROMO POSTER, so here it is...


Los Fugitivos Round 2 is being launched in late November but here's a little SNEAK PREVIEW of my character's reaction when he encounters his new challenger. Should be fun.