Supergraph 2015

Hi there, hard to believe I haven't posted on my blog in almost a year (pretty close)! Things have really been quite hectic, particularly of late when I started a new full time job (unfortunately not illustration) in January, which leaves me very little time to do the things I love most.

Still, things are progressing well for me regardless. The first work I have to share with you today is a piece of work I recently did for IA's (Illustrators Australia, of which I am a proud member) booth at Supergraph 2015. Supergraph is an annual event for all things Illustration held right here in fabulous Melbourne.

I had 3 copies of my artwork available for purchase at the booth during that weekend, alongside many of the other great illustrators in IA. A big thank you to the anonymous person who purchased one of my prints, I do hope you treasure it!

If your mental arithmetic skills aren't half bad, you've probably realised that this means I have 2 prints left. They're still up for grabs, so if you're interested, please get into contact with me (since I don't as yet have shop functionality, plans are in motion though) if you're interested in obtaining it/them. Details of the prints follows:

Size: A4 - 210 X 297mm, with a 10mm border for mounting
Paper: 300gsm cotton rag paper
Protection: Cello wrapped and padded envelop
Price: Prints are available for $35 AUD each (Shipping included)
Availability: There are only 2!

Now that I've given you the sales pitch, it's time to see the work itself.

The title is urban evolution, which is essentially the concept as well. Many birds adapt to living in the teeming cities around the world. I decided to take the idea somewhat further, trying to imagine what it would be like for a bird to evolve in a urban setting. Then I started to consider the lack of trees which would make nest materials somewhat scarce. So, what if the mother bird could actually fly around with her babies inside pouches until they grow enough to fly themselves? (rhetorical by the way). I was inspired by Australia's many marsupials, which carry their young in this way.
 

 

Design wise, the bird takes many cues from birds common throughout Victoria, particularly ones which live in Melbourne's CBD. Colour wise, I considered the overall colours of a city. Bluish greys with bright orange yellows (lights). The pattern itself was inspired by sky scraper windows.

Background wise I wanted to have something that was truly iconic of Melbourne. How could one not think of trams? (once again, rhetorical). I didn't want to draw any particular model of tram however, so various parts of the design takes bits and pieces of various tram models Melbourne has had over the last 100 years. For the route number I chose the 86, as it's probably the tram I've used the most and is probably one of the more well known routes. There's even a cafe called the 86, which the tram goes past.

Oh, you may have noticed things look a little different (no, really) when you perused this post? Graphic design for me is a continually evolving skill, just like illustration. For some time I was unhappy with my current logo and really desired a change. I'm really happy with how my new brand identity came out. Evokes all the things I want it to, which was a great challenge by the way. Still not 100% sure of the colours yet though, so don't get too attached, as they may change in the near future.

Still got some big plans for this blog and hopefully a future website too. I'm a bit rusty on HTML and CSS coding but I'm sure it will all come flooding back to me when I start looking into it.

I've now also got my own Facebook page dedicated to my illustration work as opposed to posting on my personal profile you'll now find it there instead. Check it out here

Well that's all now, see you next time.

Horsey with magic birds and a revival

Hey there people!

Posts seem to come with two and today is no exception! As per usual I have two new artworks for you today. So without further small talk I'll get straight into it!

 

So this first image was done for my traditional Chinese new year illustration. You might remember last years work for year of the snake? This year being horse, I had the option to draw a mount, which I always love doing. A bit of further research showed that one of the five Chinese elements is also associated with the year, this year being wood. There are also colours, symbols, seasons and even planets associated with the element. This gave me plenty of direction in my self-brief.

I thought this time I got through the sketch and line-work stages much quicker than usual, though I still think I could be quicker. The biggest challenge in this work was working out a good and stylised way to "texturise" the wood, which I think worked quite nicely.

Now to the story behind logo on the wind barrels. It turns out the planet Jupiter is associated with wood, so I wanted some way to include that in the art. I remembered from a previous piece of work that all the Roman gods and thus planets had a graphic symbol to represent them, and obviously what you see on the barrels is the symbol for Jupiter. Out of pure coincidence the symbol also looks like a two and a four for 2014! I love it when things like that happen.

As you might've noticed I've included detail shots, which I think I might do from now on. Often I have  details in my work that really can't be seen properly in these web quality versions.

Now onto the next work...

 Before

 

  
After

This next piece is a little different from my usual work. It's actually my take on one of my sister's creations. That's right, my sister is an artist of sorts too. She dabbles in collage and crafts, mainly sewing and knitting. She does some great work, though she won't admit it herself. I'd be plugging her website here, but she doesn't yet have one yet.

So as you've probably gathered, the top image is my sister's original and the after is my take on it. I simply decided to do this because I liked her character, but also because I wanted to try "complexifying (tm)" a quite stylistic design.  

I tried to keep as close to the original as possible, however I did tweak the colours a bit and decided for fun to add some birds, two of which are birds my sister likes (namely the fairy wren and the barn owl), the others are made up. The particularly daunting task in this image was the pattern on the skirt. I couldn't decide whether to opt for a scan of a illustration from the same book as the original or attempt to draw my own in the same style. In the end I though it might look at bit too busy full of really complex line work, so I opted to do it myself and rather pleased with the result.

Vicky was actually really proud that I used her creation, which made us both feel good!

One last thing to post, I lied. A while back I worked on a new version of my 2012 image (year of the dragon) So I though I really should update my blog with the improved version, so here it is.

Pretty much the only major change to the original is the pattern on the kimono, which was supposed to look like stylised fire works, but I don't think it really worked that well. Most of the rest are just adding more detail or tweaking shadows.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I've recently joined 'Drawcrowd,' a community site for sharing illustration and concept art with other artists. It was created by the ever generous Feng Zhu, who I ranted about before. He continually gives back to his industry in ways that are awe inspiring. So what are you waiting for? Check it out here! You can find a link to my page on Drawcrowd in the contact section of this blog.

Well that's it from me, time to get back to drawing. What's next you say? Well it involves penguins!

Thanks for reading.

New Year? and a foppish DI

Hi there, as you probably expect, the reason for this post is to show some new work. It's almost impossible to believe that I haven't updated since April, but that's the truth. So anyway here's the new stuff.
 

This first piece I did for the new year, but never quite finished it for a while. As you can probably guess, 2013 is the year of the snake. As with my 2012 artwork, I decided to keep a somewhat Japanese feel, but I also at the time on a whim decided to incorporate Art Deco elements in the clothing and bottle design. My sister thought the pattern on the kimono looked like stylised bamboo, which I'm okay with. I'm particularly happy with the design on the bottle, though there's probably way too much detail in the label, as you can't even make most of it out at 100%. Still it was fun to do, I just need to make sure in the future that I stop zooming in so close. I've included a detail shot of the bottle. Serpent's Kiss - Seductively deadly.

The second I have for you today is a present I drew for my mum. If there's two things she loves, it's her Tonkinese cat Bashir (As in Dr Julian Bashir) and murder mysteries. Enter DI Tonks! Being a cat I believe he would have a rather foppish dress sense and I also trying to incorporate fish into the design. The tail waistcoat was based on fish scales and the shirt is herringbone. Yes, that's a fez, just because, you know, fezes (what the hell is the plural of fez?) are cool. This was my first attempt at full background in watercolour, so I'm pretty happy.

Number three is my fifth work in my patented 'Quick Concept series,' This time combining a bird (vulture) with a sniper. The limited palette worked quite nicely I think.

Well that's it for now, I've got a few more pieces ready to upload but I'll do that next time
 Bye!

Keeping up with nature

 So without further stalling for time I present to you a somewhat recent illustration I did for a very good and very far away friend of mine. The Record Keeper of the Forest!

My friend is a big fan of nature, so I wanted to try and craft my artwork with a strong natural appeal. I wanted to come up with a character that would be really interesting and different. Rather than going the road of fairy or dryad, or any other countless fantasy creatures, I tried to think of a unique character and one that could sit in a tree at that. I tried to imagine what an office worker might look like if they worked in a forest. Even nature needs to keep track of it's assets, right? The blue bird is like an assistant, who bring up scrolls from storage for her to peruse.

I was really happy with how the face came out on this one. There's something I can't quite put my finger on. The main challenge here was the tree itself. As one of the largest elements in the image, just doing cell shading didn't seem appropriate. Especially since I was playing up the naturalness of the illustration, I wanted to express the texture of the tree. So it took quite a lot of playing around before I was satisfied. Textures in this style can't be too realistic, otherwise they don't fit well with the flatter parts. But hey it worked out in the end. Sorry about the lack of updates lately, I've been really hunting trying to find a job.

I'm also now a proud member of Illustrators Australia! Which is a professional body of illustrators in Australia, hopefully I'll be able to pick up some jobs through them. It's also good to be part of a larger community, so hopefully I can start making connections too. See my IA profile here.

Until next time, (note that 'next time' is not bound by any standard measure of time-space relationships).

Watercolour practice

Hi there,

Just as I promised, here's some work I've been doing in watercolours. It had been a while since I last used them, so I thought I'd do some quick practice pieces.

The concept for this piece started with a desire to draw a girl wearing seifuku. Playing around with some shapes in the background, it started to remind me of a shrine erected after a war. So I decided the girl could be part of an naval honour guard to keep watch over the navy's archives. I decided to give her a trident as a pole-arm. It is great weapon for guards and the connections it has with Poseidon, Greek god of the sea.

Inspired by my friend Levene's 'Animal in a day' artworks I decided to try doing concept art without a background and much less concern on a narrative. Instead, just picking a couple of words and trying to put them into one character design. I often try to put too much thought into an artwork, so this a great way to practice coming up with a concept quickly.