And the Winner is...Me!

I mentioned a couple of posts ago about the Michael Collins Caricature Award. It's an Australian award (great prize money) and it's been going for 4 years now. The award is one of the driving forces behind me improving over the last couple of years as everytime I enter I'm blown away by the competition.

The last coupleof years I've been entering digital artwork and although they've been well received there's still a bit of a stigma attached to digital painting - the judges still believed that they were just manipulated photos and it took some explaining for them to believe otherwise.

I believe that some great artwork has been overlooked for top honours in the past becasue it wasn't painted traditonally.

This year though they opened up a digital category and I took out the prize...thank you, thank you.

The prize money for this new category wasn't great, but I did get trophy (below) and hopefully it'll grow with the huge number of sponsors available in the digital painting industry and people like Terry Dunnett won't be over looked any more.

My winning entry
My, first ever, trophy

WIP

A little somethin somethin I'm working on...

Stanley Awards - Sydney 2009

The Stanley Awards are Australian cartoonings night of nights and this year were held in Sydney. Not a bad spot at all. The weekend had two days of conferences and two nights of frivolity, it was a tiring combination.

Guests of Honour were most notably Pat Oliphant (ex pat aussie pulitzer prize winning political cartoonist who changed the face of US editorial cartooning from the 60s onwards) and Tom Richmond (MAD magazine illustrating whiz and all round nice guy) who both did great presentations.

The night was spent enjoying drinks on Sydney Harbour, watching an impromptu strip show at a seemingly innocent restaurant, and the awards night itself.

No nominations for me this year - fair enough. But the night was great fun and representing the new generation were Anton Emdin and Dave Follett with their first Stanley Awards wins. I did come runner-up in the after party cartoon contest, the results of which are unpublishable, and scored me a nice bottle of Red - which I responsibly brought home.

Below are a few photos of the weekend and some sketches done while I wasn't paying attention in the conferences.


Some bridge I guess...

My lovely fiance, Stacey, and me.

The Awards night, just getting started!

Rolf Heimann


Pat Oliphant


Jim Bridges


Me by Tom Richmond...and yes I've framed it.


Taking life very, very seriously indeed.