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.

Hugh Hefner

This caricature has been floating around for a while and I finished it off a couple of months ago, in time for the Michael Collins Caricature Award here in Aus (which I won the digital category...more on that later).

What am I playing at?!

Hey, sorry no posts for a while I'm in the final throws of building the house and we should be in less than two weeks.

I have a heap of stuff to post when I find the time. So to keep you busy I've included the most recent (Australian band) Grinspoon video, to which I contributed a quick caricature of Marilyn Manson. The whole video is in the paper craft style, not really suited to me but I snuck one in (at about 1:10), blink and you'll miss it though...

I'll be back soon posting from the new studio, oh yeah!

New Matilda Cartoon Competition Entry

A while ago I mentioned the New Matilda prize for political cartooning. I urged everyone to vote for me, which worked because I made it into the finals.

The final entries were voted on by a panel of judges, including Australian cartooning legends Bill Leak and Peter Broelman, and I was lucky enough to come away with third place.

Not too shabby.

So here's my entry, thanks for those who voted, and I have a few editorial carton outlets at the moment so as soon as I'm allowed to post them I will.

To put the cartoon into context, it was drawn of the back of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's multi billion dollar economic stimulus package. Some said it wouldn't work, some said it was too big, some said it would really f**k the economy...all good fodder for a cartoon.

Re: Quick Portrait

Here's a quick painting I did of a friend's son for his birthday. It was nice to be bit more serious in my work and I had to keep telling myself that it's a portrait not a caricature...a good fun couple of hours though.

Recent Commissions

Here are a few recent commissions for a national clothing store's promotions. They're all pretty large (1m +) so there tends to be a lot of detail going on in tight deadlines, but I'm happy with how they turned out. The seagul was a personal favourite - just subtle caricaturing.

Recent Work

Here's just a couple of recent things, a commission and a live caricature. The commission is an A3 digital painting and the live piece is A4 and about 4 minutes ink on paper.

Train sketches

Here are a couple of sketches I've done recently on the train trip into the city...


Old Man


Kin Jong Il, He's definitely fodder for caricaturists and this one was inspired by Terry Dunnett's cracker caricature, see it at http://tel5521.blogspot.com/

A Giraffe...okay it was a long trip..

The New House...so far

This is a post for the family and friends who are eager to see how our new house is coming along. It's looking good and hopefully we'll be in by the end of July.

For those who aren't up to date, we are building a new house, I designed it and am excited to see it come together. It's also the reason behind my sporadic posting on the blog as all of my spare time is spent at site working or in the studio designing the details to finish it off.

Very exciting!Front entrance


Rear of the house, living on left and sleeping/working areas on right


Interior of the Living/dining/kitchen


Um...stairs

Entrance
My new studio, oh yeah!

Helena Bonham Carter Sketch

Been a while between posts so I thought I'd pop up a sketch. Will have more posts soon of some different work I've been doing.

Dame Judy Dench

Here's a caricature I did of mature age hottie Dame Judy Dench. I had it in the pipeline for a competition but I mis-read the entry date so I had to knock it up in about 10 hours. I'm happy with the result but I'm not sure if I got it in on time for the comp...I haven't heard from them and that's never a good sign!

Dr Seuss WIP

Nick Cave WIP

It's been a while between posts so I though I'd pop up some works in progress, as the other work I'm doing I can't post...yet.

First Nick Cave,

Wacom Product Launch

I was lucky enough to be involved in the Wacom Intuos 4 launch in Melbourne last week. I was the artist on the night and used the new tablet to whip up a caricature of Hugh Hefner in about 90 minutes while the tablet was launched. It's a painting I'm working on in my spare time, but I took this opportunity to give the colouring a run through.

It was a great event and even greater because the kind hearted people at Wacom gave me an Intuos 4 as payment, and it rules.

Even though I was on my best professional behaviour (sober) I will review the event as is traditional here on the blog.

Level of Work: Not too shabby!
Venue: Belgian Pub on Southbank, can't get much better.
Nibblies: From what I saw/smelt they were excellent. Stand out were mini hotdogs in mini buns, with mini mustard squirted on top.
Number of Free Drinks: Open bar, all the trapist beer you could want. I had none...

Kevin Rudd unveiling

Here's the full verison of the Kevin Rudd caricture snippet I posted a couple of weeks ago. The campaign is now on so I can post the full image. It's nice to work on something as ridiculous as this and the client sent me through a full size (1.8 x 1m) print which is great.

I put it up on the wall but me fiance made me take it down...

Pencil Sketch

I know it's imperative to do some sketching everyday, and I do but it's mostly work related warm ups, so to have the luxury of sitting down and just doodling for the sheer pleasure has been great in the last couple of weeks.

Here's a quick sketch I did over the weekend of architectural mad man Frank Lloyd Wright.

-mechanical pencil on gloss paper 20 min.

Landscape Practice

Monster Sketches

Sneak Peek

Here's a sneak peek of a commission I had recently. It's the biggest illustration I've done to date (1.8 x 1m) and it was a quick turn around.

The client made me alter the expression from this, to be more engaging, and it turned out well but I do prefer it this way.

I was a bit freaked out about the level of detail I would have to include at this size, but it turned out not to be too big of a deal. I'll post the full image once the client gives me the go ahead.

Ye Olde Way.

I did a pro bono job for a local community group recently and I afforded myself the luxury of illustrating with brush and ink, the old fashioned way! As much as I admire fine brush work (I'm a great fan of the loose lines of Bill Watterson) I've never really used it in my own work either because of deadlines or a fear of it looking shit.

Well I did it for this job and I had a ball! I think the results are okay and I really impressed myself with how natural the lines look and the little nuances that the brush gives the line weight. I used barely thinned india ink and an old rigging brush that I had lying around.

New Matilda Cartoon Competition 2009

It's on again, the newmatilda.com cartoon comp. As well as organising my entries to try and win some cash, I was asked to do the promo illustrations again and below is the main logo caricature that I did.

Last year I put together a Kevin Rudd and this year I went for Obama.

I was happy that the client went for this idea, because I thought it was damn funny (not always how the client sees things...), and they thought it would be good to give some flack to Obama as he hasn't seemingly done much wrong yet. It's a digital piece put together in about 12 hours or so. I would have liked a bit more time to work on the hands but it was a tight deadline and the final image was going to be scaled down and only 72dpi anyway.

I'm thinking of putting up a piece by piece of how it came together but we'll see how I go.

Head to http://www.newmatilda.com to check out the comeptition heats and some good old fashioned web based journalism.

Some More Live Work

Another day another wedding, I managed to keep up the pace of the last live post I made, which is a good sign that it wasn't a one off. I might slow down next time and add some more detail, but we'll see what happens when the pressure's on!