The Hydrant

There's a country town that I visit occasionally for work and every time I go there I see this same fire hydrant. Every time I take a picture of it and say to myself, "That is a beautiful hydrant, I'm going to paint that one day". Well, I finally got around to it! I just love the shapes and shadows the hydrant casts, especially in the country sun, so rather than my usual pen and ink approach, I decided to paint it which really helped illustrate the light.    

2017 in a Nutshell

Goodbye 2017! It's been a busy year which is why I haven't been posting as much, but I've taken on alot of illustration projects and jobs which is awesome but also leads to less time for blogging. So instead of just ignoring the second part of 2017's illustrations, I've decided to make a MEGA-POST of 2017's highlights. Here they are:

31 DAYS IN CHINA (minicomic)
Halfway through the year I published a set of 3 minicomics titled 31 Days In China. It was a collection of sketches from a visual diary I kept while travelling through China. I also recorded a series of Podcasts to accompany the minicomics. There's more info, some pictures and a promo video here.

ALNITAK KID COLAB (animated GIFF)
I've worked on a few projects with musician and long time friend Alnitak_Kid, but I think this was one of my favourites! He gave me a 30 second loop and asked me to create an animated giff to accompany it. Check out the video here.

CATEA CANISTER
I wanted something unique and one of a kind to put my tea leaves in when I travelled and after not being able to find anything online that I liked, I decided to make one myself. This was the result...a $2 glass canister that I made a moulded cover for and decorated with a painting of a Chinese Cat. I made a little promo video for it that can be found here.

CHINA MONTAGE
I have always loved collage but never really had an extensive library of images to work with that I had the rights to until I got home from China. I wanted to explore the art of collage while creating an image with meaning and a story, so I began to trawl through my library of images from China and created the picture you see below. It speaks of the chaos, diversity, beauty and intensity of China, a country that I fell in love with. Collage is definitely a medium that I want to continue to work with and explore in 2018! 

DARK GREY SPOT (minicomic) 
In June 2017 I received some bad news from the GP which led to specialists, scans and even a biopsy. Dark Grey Spot is a visual journal I began to work on as a way of clearing my head and processing what was going on. It is a collection of my thoughts and experiences that I put down on paper and turned into a minicomic.

It's free to read online here.

FRAMING PRINTS
A cool piece of gear I got this year is a Mat Cutter for framing. It has meant I can frame all my own prints with custom matting and I've been able to sell a few of my prints without the added cost of sending them to a framer.

PICCADILLY KITCHEN CARDS

My mom runs a cafe in the Adelaide hills called The Piccadilly Kitchen that is adorned with all sorts of foxes. To celebrate Christmas she wanted to create a card with a fox that she had drawn. So in a collaborative project between mother and son, I coloured and laid out the illustration and send it to the printers. The end product came out really nice on 300gsm recycled matt card which sold at the cafe.  

SCHOOL OF CHINESE MUSIC & ARTS
I studied a 10 week course at School of Chinese Music and Arts on the Guzheng (Chinese harp). While there I made friends with the owner and asked if she needed help with some branding in exchange for some more lessons. I presented some ideas and she loved them, so I went ahead with the project, designing a brochure, business cards, a banner and letter heads. This was the result.

Translucent Octopus

I was listening to the creators of Finding Dory speak on The Pixar Podcast and it inspired me to do this illustration. I found myself admiring the incredible storyboards for hours, paying special attention to their treatment of light and colour. I learned a few new techniques as I coloured, my favorite being the glow that comes from the center of this translucent octopus.

Spacegirl

I've been doing a lot of sketching and ink drawings, living in a world of black and white and last week I got tired of it. I wanted to create 80's style, super saturated, colour washed eye candy. I started scribbling some ideas and came up with Spacegirl. I wanted a nostalgic VHS style, Saturday morning cartoon feel that could be a comic cover aswell. Such a fun illustration to colour and I'm real happy with it.

Fox of The Orient

A handful of artist were selected to create fox themed art to celebrate the opening of local Adelaide hills cafe, the Piccadilly Kitchen. We could do whatever we wanted as far as mediums, so I decided to switch things up a bit and merge ink, cut paper and photography to create my oriental fox. I picked up a newspaper from Chinatown and used that as the backdrop.

Letters

In my spare time I create music under the alias jPEG invisible. I recently made a song called Letters where I tried to capture the feeling of receiving a handwritten letter. After I had finished the song I began mapping out an illustration that reflected the ideas in the song. A few days earlier I just happened to find a pile of old postcards that my wife and I had collected from op-shops over the years. I took a photo of them, which became the backdrop of the illustration. The foreground image is one of my old illustrations that I recycled titled the storm. They worked so well together in creating the feel that I was after that the only other thing I did was add the title.      

 I created a stamp inspired title to blend in with the postcards

The collection of postcards that formed the backdrop of the illustration.

Nickelode-billy

Like many other kids, I grew up watching all sorts of cartoons. In amongst all these cartoons one company seemed to tell better stories with more memorable characters. For as long as I can remember, Nickelodeon has been inspiring creativity in me. Whether it's a cat and dog joined at the stomach, a pair of angry beavers or a football headed kid, Nickelodeon has always created amazingly odd and lovable characters in wonderful worlds. One element that I have always loved is the zoom shot that shows a static picture of a character in full painted detail. After years of being inspired by these shots I decided to create on of my own Nickelodeon inspired characters, a hillbilly crossed Nickelodeon I like to call Nickelode-billy.

Imaginat-gun

I've spent today designing the ultimate multitool for my imagination. It's loaded with a video camera, a keyboard, art supplies, a spanner and a multidimensional magic megaphone...and that's just on the outside! It's really just going to be a production stamp for a website I'm creating that encompasses music, illustration, videos and making stuff. I'll let you all know when the site is running.

Deep Sea

Nothing compares to the look and feel of old colour images printed in books and comics. The offset colours that didn't quite match the lines and brown tinged paper always attracted me to the images. They seemed to have an imperfect handmade feel that you don't see much these days. In this illustration I tried to replicate this feeling mixing my love of halftone patterns with early 90's Johnny Quest style colouring. You can really see the intent of the illustration in the zoomed up version below.

Devotion

Try new things! That's what my new years resolution was and it's no different with my illustration. So yesterday I decided to try a lino print which ended up being a very rewarding experience. I wanted to create a print that tipped it's hat to iconography but that felt more personal. This illustration speaks of the time I spend with God, reading and thinking. It represents the flow of biblical understanding to my head, my heart and my hands.

Biker 30

My brother recently turned 30, so to celebrate I created an illustration for him that would capture his love for motorbikes and skeletons, while also incorporating the number 30 somehow. The above illustration is the result. Rather than my usual half digital process of colouring, I created the picture all by hand and transferred it to a piece of wood and put a simple frame around it which was the icing on this birthday cake.  

Summer Rain

There is nothing more incredible than the smell of rain before a summer storm. The tar cooling down at my feet and the black sky above trigger so many memories I find it hard to keep track, or keep my eyes open. I can't explain in words what it does to me so I made a mock comic (perhaps the worlds shortest?) to try and illustrate this sensation...whatever it is?

Pop Asia

It seems that most Saturdays I find myself watching SBS Pop Asia, an hour long program dedicated to the best pop music videos from around Asia. I don't know why I enjoy it so much but I have a feeling it's to do with the incredible amount of effort each artist puts into making their hair look so perfect. Maybe it's also the cheesy, sometimes nonsensical storylines that follow the music. Anyway, this is my tribute.

3 Style

In an effort to experiment and push my style as an illustrator, I created 3 illustrations of the same character in different styles. It pushed me a little further from my comfort zone and taught me a few new tricks which I'm hoping will add something fresh to my work.

The first illustration was done with ink and brush in a comic style similar to alternate American comics. I was pretty comfortable with this style but adjusting to the bold line work took some getting used to.

The second illustration was done entirely in Photoshop but made to look like cut paper and pastel. This is a style that I always find in Disney and Dreaworks "Art Of" books; it seemed like it would be the easier of the 3 but turned out to be the hardest.

The last illustration was a simple graphite sketch with basic flat colours, similar to the Gorillaz characters created by Jamie Hewlett. I learned something new with each style and look forward to where it leads.

Skate Bird!

I rented a book from the library titled The Fundamentals of Illustration. It had a few exercises at the end of each chapter that intended to grow your skills as an illustrator. One of the exercises was to create an image without drawing, which meant no pens, pencils, paints or any other hand-directed media. Instead they encouraged you to "draw" with paper, found objects and photos. This was a big leap out of my comfort zone which relies heavily on drawing; but I'm happy that I tried something different, otherwise this super cool lentil faced skater bird may have never been created.