Merry Christmas

Well it's been a flat out Christmas rush for me and I'm off for a break. Thanks for stopping by over the year and I'll have heaps of stuff to post once I'm back.

I'll leave you with some Christmas card comissions.

Luke

Larry David take 2

After my first crack at painting Larry David using acryllics I was asked to give it another go for a trade with colleague Anton Emdin.

So I did and he liked it.

Whippy Characters

Following on from the Whippy Kiosk logo I posted a while back, the company asked me to come up with a girl and boy character to replace the Micky and Minnie mouse cartoons they were using on their vans...

2010 Stanley Awards

Well the weekend just past was home to the 2010 Australian Cartoon (Stanley) Awards in Melbourne. I went along to meet special guests Stan Goldberg (Archie) and Jason Seiler (caricature smarty pants) and to catch up with colleagues.

Seiler put on a fantastic master class, which promptly put my drawing skills into perspective, and Stan regaled us all with stories from his involvement in the US cartoon industry for the last 50 years...

On the Saturday night the annual awards were held and I was lucky enough to be nominated in both the caricature and illustration categories I entered. I was deservedly beaten by David Rowe and Anton Emdin, respectively, and the night went on from there to be a hoot! Plus I have video of Jason Seiler pulling some killer dance moves, which I'll use for blackmail down the track...

I was also voted in as the Victorian/Tasmanian President for the Australian Cartoon Association and hopefully the next two years will be a fun ride.

So below is the work I submitted to the awards and some photos from the night (thanks to Jason Chatfield and Judy Nadin).

Well until next year I guess and one step further...

Caricature Submission
Illustration Submission

Caricature nominee Judy Nadin, Me, and the lovely Stacey

The after party

My friend the muppet...

A good friend of mine recently completed his Phd, so as a graduation present I organised to get a puppet made in his image..naturally.

Luckily he does look like a muppet (sorry Brett) and it wasn't too hard of a task for a local puppet maker (every town should have one) Kerryn Jean Patton.

It was possible the funniest thing I've ever seen when they were finally united on Friday and the puppet's presence has changed the way we make fun of our friend for ever!

Tom and Alex Caricature

Okay so further to the caricature of Ollie Wards below, he asked me to do a caricature of the radio hosts Tom Ballard and Alex Dyson so he could surprise them on air.

The caricature is below and although I had some pretty shitty reference photos it came up okay and got a good laugh when it was revealed - check back later when I figure out how to post the audio of when they saw the caricature for the first time.

Ollie Wards

Ollie Wards is the producer for Australian youth radio station Triple J's breakfast program. He mentioned on air that he had a list of 40 things he wanted to do before he was 40 - a premature busket list if you will.

Number thirty something was to get a caricature drawn of himself. I volunteered my time and the result is below.

Photoshop 4 hours.

Heston Blumenthal

Been a bit slack on the posting - mostly been working on some stuff that I can't share at the moment. But I had some spare time yesterday afternoon so I had a crack at chef/scientician Heston Blumenthal.

Photoshop, 4 hrs.

Whippy logo

I got this rush job late last week. An ice cream van company that needed a new logo pronto. They had comissioned a "cartoonist" to do them a logo, but that unscrupulous individual ripped off someone elses logo and claimed it as their own concept.

Naturally this was brought to my client's attention by lawyers and so the need for a new logo was born!

It's an icecream. Nothing complicated and a little too close to the original logo, that caused all of the issues, for me - but it's my clients logo now and the result isn't too bad.

Acrylic Painting

I spent a couple of hours over the last few afternoons having a crack at painting in acrylic. I had a false start a few months back, it was my first ever go and it was an unmitigated distaster, so I had a bit of a breather before I tried again. I tried black and white this time, to make it easier on myself and I also chose to paint a caricature of Larry David, which also made it easier.

Any way I'm pretty chuffed for a first real go.


And a sequence of how it came together

When a super studio becomes a MEGA studio!

I've been in my new studio for 10 months now and as super good as it is I felt the need to update a few things...mostly after a friend begain building his new music studio at his house.

Anyway, I updated a few bits of hardware and rebuilt my desk to make better use of it's enormouse size and to build in my light table.

It was all completely unnecessary, but sometimes I get a hankering to design and build something and luckily it didn't turn out crap!

Scarlett Johansson

I've spent the last week or so drawing a lot of ugly blokes, so I thought I'd give myself a break and draw someone who wasn't...

3 hours, 100% photoshop

A few commissions

Here are a few commissioned caricatures for clients around the country. I've been renovating my studio desk the last week so I've just been doing the work I actually have to get done...

Kristina Keneally

This is an illustration I did a while ago for a magazine in the US, but I've been waiting for permission to use it. They haven't gotten back to me either way, so I thought I'd post it regardless because it came up a treat.

For those who don't know Kristina Keneally is the Labor Party Premier for the Australian state of New South Wales. She's originally from the US, hence the interest from a US mag. She's jumped into a position that's really a sinking ship, after years of mismanagement from her predecessors.

I don't really care though because I live in Victoria...

Enjoy!

Master Chef Caricature

I love cooking shows, I always have and in fact I spent most of my uni degree watching them...and naturally I got hooked on Masterchef Australia which concluded last night.

I was approached by, then finalist, Adam Liaw to work with him on a caricature and quick logo for his food blog (adamliaw.com) during the week. I knocked out the work and then what do you know he won the whole competition!

I'm just glad that after watching the show for so many hours it actually resulted in me getting some money! If only that system worked for The Simpsons...

New Australian Creative Cartoons

Christophe

ACA member and 'It's a Jungle Out There' cartoonist Christophe Granet was kind enough to go out of his way and pick up a couple of bargain Gerald Scarfe books for me the other week. As a thankyou I drew a funny picture of him (and I paid him for the books of course...).

Julia Gillard our Prime Minister

Our new PM, Julia Gillard, has a cracking good head to draw and so the other night I was seeing how simply I could represent her. I got it down to a couple of shapes that I made into a collage last night.

Tim Burton

I had the pleasure of visiting the Tim Burton retrospective that opened in Melbourne yesterday. I highly recommend it to anyone who can make it to ACMI in Melbourne city or who has the exhibition cross their paths in the future.

I'm a bit of a Burton fan, he's made some great movies and some shit ones, but they're always Tim Burton's...if you know what I mean. So in that regard it was great to see his work from a teen onwards as he found his feet and his style.

I found that there was some definate stylistic leanings towards Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman, but that said I think it's hard for any illustrator trying to find their own style not to reference these two legends.

Either way I'm gushing, it was super and you must see it. And if you're going to go, buy the tickets online before you head down - the line is waaaaaaay shorter!

Rudd is gone

Well, in a unexpected/expected turn of events yesterday Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was ousted from his position. He's only been in the Job for 2.5 years and now is great big melon head is outta there. I know many cartoonists were a little bit worried when he won the election in 2007, because his head is sooo plain and coming off 11 years of drawing John Howard's head it was a big difference.

But they all found their way and below are a couple of my versions of Rudd's head while he was in office...

Who's a pretty boy then...

I'm seem to be in a sketching and posting mood so I just knocked out a self portrait to replace my various avatars and to put on my new batch of busniess cards.

Let the visual comparisons to Dave Grohl begin!

Dave Grohl 30 min digital sketch

The last one was shit so I tried the digital way for 30minutes to see if I could crack his face. I'm not sure how many people have said I look like Dave Grohl in the past but I'm not sure it's a good thing...

Dave Grohl 25 min ink sketch

Here's a quick ink sketch of Dave Grohl I did yesterday. The caricature is pretty rubbish but it was more of an exercise in style and technique to see what works for me. FYI I used black ink, an old rigging brush, toothbrush and a 0.4 and 0.6 artline.

It's something I guess...waiting for the go ahead from a few clients to post some more commisioned work I've done.

20 minute ink sketch

it's an elephant...

Ol' Dickeyes

This was a little gift left in my studio from Ginger Megs cartoonist and all round nice guy Jason Chatfield when he visited a while back.

The concept stems from a drunken train of conversation on my Bucks night...nuff said.

Editorial Exhibition

My editor from the Video Journalism Movement has sent through some photos of a recent cartoon exhibition on press freedom that I was a part of in Amsterdam. The exhibition was an apparent hit and there's now talks of it being on the move to Lima, Moscow, and New York!

The exhibtion looked brilliantly put together and it was a shame to be so far away from the launch (although any future "business" trips to Holland sound okay by me).







My contribution (top): Nothing like a colo-rectal examination to bring out the laughs...

newmatilda.com is no more

satirical/informative Australian news website newmatilda.com has pulled the pin due to lack of advertising revenue after 6 years. More importantly they have pulled the pin on the newmatilda.com prize for political cartooning after two years.

I'm devastated, not only had I organised my entry for this years competition, but I was on a good run, 5th in 2008 and 3rd in 2009, and anyone with even the slightest understanding of numerical patterns knows that that means that this year I was a shoe in for 1st (and a cool $6000, although being in financial difficulty probably isn't the best time to give out 6k, and winning it and never getting paid would've been a real kick in the dick, but I digress...).

Anywho, this years entry in the now defunct competition is below and hopefully some of you guys get a laugh out of it.

What a jip.

Pretty house photos

As anyone who has looked at this blog knows I've been designing and building my house for the last 18 months. It's been the longest project I've ever done and most definitely the hardest. But now we've been in for 6 months, the landscaping is done and it's starting to look how I imagined.

My main reason for the photos is that I have unrealistic expectations of how my house should look after trawling through dozens of home magazines. It's like if people look at models in magazines they feel pressured to look that way. I had the same problem with the house...So the other night was clear and calm so I took a few photos and I'm pretty chuffed with the result.

Character Design

I love doing character design, but it doesn't come along too often. Here's a couple of characters I developed for a garden expert. The characters are to be used to teach kids about eating healthy, gardening and the like.

The characters are based on real kids who play the character sat schools and events, so it was bit of design and a bit of caricature, which was good fun.

It's a Chicken!

Here's a comission for one of my regular clients in-store promotion.

It's a chicken...a big chicken.

I'm currently working on their next promo and i've got 4 posters to do, so I'll share them when I can.

Australian Creative Magazine Cartoons

I have a regular gig doing a cartoon for one of the columnists in Australian Creative Magazine (advertising industry mag). I've had the job for a while and a few months back the column changed authors and the new author was looking for a new style to represent his writing.

He mentioned Ralph Steadman as a guide. I was so happy that I jumped aboard with a Steadman rip off and they were happy. Since then I 've been working with that style and trying not to make it too much of a rip off, but generally I don't care - Steadman is such a legend I have too much fun trying to work like him.

The other bonus is that the artwork is done with brush and ink (finished in PS) - something I'm not great at but love to do, it makes me feel like a real artist.