trying Padlet

Created with Padlet

I'm trying out 'Padlet' . What do you think? Check it out at   http://padlet.com/wall/honzapics

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.

Love Joy Peace Hope

Wild

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

Magpies

Magpie season is well and truly under way, and as a service to Honzablog readers, I have produced this handy guide to Magpie safety for you to print out, laminate and print. May it serve ye well!


Here is a video of an actual Magpie attack. Keep safe on those streets, dear reader!

Seasons

I used  to live in a town that was famous for having four seasons in one day. But now I live in a town that every day seems to be warm and sunny. But summer's coming, then the weather gets interesting!

Drawvember 1 - HOPE

What does hope look like? It is not mere wishful thinking, but the sure expectation of something better, unseen as yet, but coming. The bird sings in the pre-dawn dark in the certain hope that the sun will hear her singing and arise. Hope does not disapoint.

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 

 I have a little challenge happening on Facebook where for the month of November, or Drawvember as I have rather cleverly (in my own mind at least) renamed it, I will attempt a drawing a day based on one word suggestions of facebook friends. The first word suggested, and indeed chosen is 'hope'.   At the end of the month, I might get the image with the most 'likes' and develop it further into a painting or other more substantial artwork. Perhaps then I could auction it off as a fundraiser for some worthy cause. Use my art to bring real hope, not just a drawing of it!

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...

Contraption v

Way back here I posted a sketch of a mechanical butterfly. And now, here are pictures of a prototype model of it!

Suspend - Contraption iv

Suspended Seventeen Stories above the Street, the Spider man serenades his sweetheart with his Sack-but.

Illustration Friday old-timers may remember the contraptions topic of last year. I submitted two illo's for that, firstly of a mechanical butterfly , still my most visited post, followed by some sketches for this idea, including the background story of a man and his Arachnoflyvver. In that post I mentioned I had actually made a model at some point of the device, an eight legged mechanical abseiling device which actually worked, but had got lost somewhere along the the line.

Well, a month or so back I found that model, fixed it up a bit, made some scenery, and then photographed it and videoed it in action. You may find it here! Check it out, it's a bit of fun! In fact it was the last post I did. Been a bit slack lately (although I have been making a model of the mechanical butterfly mentioned above. Wait for that one!)

But now, this week's Illustration Friday topic is Suspend, and as the Arachnoflyvver is vehicle that relies on being suspended to work, it seemed imperative that I do an illustration of it. But yes, please check out my last post to see it in action.