Punk

Illustration Friday says Illustrate a Punk. I did it twice, Here's one with markers,

 And here's one done in Autodesk Sketchbook

Steam Punk

Steam Punk. It is an aesthetic that I quite enjoy, with all that brass and Victorian retro-ness. An alternative view of the late Industrial Revolution, with its Meccano Engineering and delicate Art Nouveau design. Pistons, tubing and Steam power, bring it on! 

The one thing that annoys me a bit is the 'cogs on everything' idea. 

I like cogs, they are a brilliant way of transferring, changing and modifying motion, but I don't like cogs that have no purpose. A cog has to DO something, even if that something is a mystery to the on-looker. A cog whose sole purpose is to sit there and look steam punky is a cog with no direction in life. That is a sad state of affairs. If you look inside and old clock (not a digital one) you will find a lot of cogs and gears, some spinning fast, others barely moving, but they all work together for the one goal, to provide an accurate measurement of time; nothing is superfluous, and everything works by clockwork.

 I mean, a top hat with goggles is pretty cool, but a hat with goggles and gears, that's just a bit weird. Unless those gears and cogs add to the functionality of the hat, even if it's in a fairly obscure way, they really shouldn't be there. Ah, but it's decoration you say. Well, why not use a stylised bronze Art Nouveau Ostrich feather? Save the cogs on your hat for opening a flap on the top to deploy a hidden harpoon gun or some scientific apparatus! Cogs are functional. They are made to do something, let them do it!

Anyway, when I think of steampunk, I picture a bloke with a pink Mohican having a steaming cup of English Breakfast Tea, probably with a scone... 

Illustration produced using Autodesk Sketchbook.

catatonic

[kat-uh-ton-ik]  

• Examples

adjective

1.

having catatonia, a syndrome characterized by muscular rigidity and mental stupor:

The schizophrenic remained in a catatonic state.

2.

appearing to be in a daze or stupor; unresponsive:

She had the catatonic expression of an avant-garde model.

noun

3.

a person who suffers from catatonia.

The Dangers of Love at First Sight, a poem for Valentine's Day

I Wish I Was...

This is a link to a Prezi I made of a picture book I produced for Childrens Book Week in 2011. It is called I Wish I Was... and deals with the childhood dreams and aspirations of kids. Hope you like it!

Worn

A worn old pair of All-Stars as worn by me standing on the worn floorboards at my old back door. The worn blue paint of the exterior doorsteps contrasts nicely with the worn sealed timber of the interior. Worn. Its funny how if you use a word often enough it somehow becomes strange and meaningless. Anyone else feel this?

By the way, this painting in Acrylic won me second place at the fine art section at my local show a couple of weeks back! I'm putting the $25 prize money towards arts supplies, or maybe a better camera bag.

Wild

Elephants; wild and civilised. Natural or anthropomorphized...

work in progress

And, in a continuing theme of 'things with wings', here's something else I've been working on in the last little bit. Pencil, Canson coloured paper, lots of cutting out of shapes, and some balsa for spacing and mounting. Nearly finished!

The Sky Shall Not Defeat Me!

The Sky Shall Not Defeat Me!

Last Thursday, my local library hosted illustrator and writer Gus Gordon as he talked about producing picture books. Mostly he showed us his new book, 'Herman and Rosie' and gave us a very interesting talk into what made up that book. It's a great book about music and being alone in a big city, and very evocative of New York. He made a lot of use of collage to enhance his crayon and wash illustrations, and so I thought I'd play around with adding textures to a drawing.

This is a recent sketch I've being working on, so I thought it would be ideal, as this week's challenge for Illustration Friday is 'Sky'. Our intrepid Aviator is ready to take on the sky on his own terms, determined and resolute, the Sky shall not defeat him this time...

variety...

I've just glanced over the things I’ve done for Illustration Friday this last month or so. I hadn’t realised that there was such a variety of styles and techniques! Going backwards from here we have

• ·         paper sculpture combined with carved MDF to create a kinetic artwork
• ·         drawings done in Flash using only the shapes tools
• ·         a cartoon done with a fineline pen and markers
• ·         a cartoon cat scanned, vectorised and coloured in Flash
• ·         a watercolour
• ·         two photos and some drawn elements combined in photoshop
• ·         a gouache painted paper sculpture mounted on a flash back ground
• ·         another cartoon scanned and coloured in Flash
• ·         my old blog header, done in photoshop, probably, with photo of my head which I traced and cartoonified, probably in Flash using my old Wacom tablet
• ·         scan of my sketch pad with other graphic elements added
• ·         fineline drawing
• ·         google sketchup 3d graphics
• ·         and a drawing done with a biro

I have a bunch of other vector drawing programs, but I still like the style that Flash mx gives me. But then, I guess I’m a little weird…