Who's that handsome Devil?

I got to do some cartoon workshops recently, the first since the move to Victoria, and it was great to get out there and do a bit of teaching. Plus I got my mug in the local paper, can't argue with that.

Beard Envy

Well I've been flat out, but I did have the pleasure of heading to the opening of an exhibition by a childhood friend of mine a few weeks ago. His name is Neils (Nails) Oeltjen and we hadn't seen each other for 13 years or so. He's always been a great artist and is making a name for his work around Australia. It's, not to sound too arty farty, really bold but delicate, using spray paint to add depth and colour and then layering detail and texture on top. Very cool.

Anywho below are a few photos and sorry they're such low quality my camera phone sucks in dark rooms.

Well I suppose I should do a review, it could become a standard thing here.

Level of Work: Awesome, if I had some spare dollars I would've have bought a couple.
Venue: Nice, Somewhat of a fire hazard with cardboard walls and all.
Nibblies: Only lamingtons - awesome.
Number of Free Drinks: Endless and Little Creatures too!

Not a winner...

Last night I was at the opening of the first Out of Controller Exhibition/Competition in Melbourne. I entered, but to my dismay didn't win (not even a door prize, which I think was jinxed by my brother saying "I never won a door prize, never will."

The exhibtion was based on what Nintendo characters get up to out of the games. It was good to see a smattering of digital art work getting amongst the winners.

Here's my review:

Level of work: Good
Venue: Fire Hazard
Nibblies: Average
Number of Free Drinks: Only 1! terrible...

Toshiba Event

I was recently invited to help toshiba promote their Tablet PC range at a Teaching Conference. I was there to caricature using the machine and found it a great new way to do live gigs. I had a great time at a great location (Lorne, Victoria). Stay tuned there may be more to this story soon...

New Matilda Cartoon Comp

Excellent Australian news website New Matilda is holding their first Political Cartoon Comp. Not only am I trying to win some cold hard cash but I did the promo illustratins for the competition.

To have a look or to vote for my cartoons head to http://www.newmatilda.com.

Happy Voting!

New Matilda Cartoon

sketching

Here are some different sketches that have popped out during the last little while, all different but all fun.

Basset Hound

I was just fiddling around the other day and decided to caricature a dog, I've done them as live caricatures before, so I thought I'd put a bit more effort into one...

World Youth Day

In light of many people's joy about world youth day a couple of weeks ago, I decided to make fun of the Pope through caricature. He has a great face...

Winston Churchill Caricature

I thought it's be interesting to find out how a black and white caricature would turn out, so I chose Churchill 'cause all of the photos of him are in black and white to start off with so it would suit him.

It was a big job taking over 20 broken hours to complete (less than the damn Keith Richards one because I made sure I had a decent reference this time!). It was done digitally using a Wacom Intuos 3 and photoshop. I use low opacity and flow to build up the texture using a rough round bristle brush.

Anywho here's how it all transpired...


The base was a quick sketch done manually, after a couple of aborted digital attempts pissed me off.
Step one was, as always just to lay down a new layer over the base and fill it with a mid tone with some texture, then drop it's opacity, add another layer and start blocking in colour.



As you can see I also added a cigar and hand from another reference, and am adding more detail to the caricature, but still essentially blocking it in.


After the general tones and shadows are are done I start around the eyes and work my way out, I only managed one eye this day, but it looked alright so I gave myself the rest of the night off.

The other eye, nose and mouth are all pretty well done here and some more attention is given his jacket to provide some contrast.

Next step is to move out fom the main features of the face, so I detailed the neck and bowtie and added some shape to the cheeks.

Adding detail and skin texture to the eye brow and wherever I feel like it, slowly bringing it all together.


Finishining off the eyebrows (a pleasure to do Sir Winston) and am just refining the remaining areas.The final skin details are added and I start to think about that hand...


The reference for the hand wasn't that great so it was a fair bit of interpretation and staring at my own hand. I also scaled it down to make sure that the face was the main focus. added some more background texture and we're done!

Robert Mugabe

What a face! Just a quick 15 min digital sketch.

Keith Richards

Here's a caricature of Keith Richards I've been working on. It's in the same style as the Barrack Obama one below, but this one took forever. I think there's a lesson in that about choosing terrible reference photos...don't.

A kind colleague pointed out that carciaturing Keith was a bit of a cop out because he's so freakish, but it was fun none the less.

Barrack Obama Caricature

Just a quick note to post a caricature of Barrack Obama I did last week. I went the whole hog and am pretty happy with the result. I'm looking forward to doing more in this style but they're pretty labour intensive so they'll mostly be a spare time thing at the moment, but that said I could have one in the pipeline for an online client soon...

Brad Pitt

I was working on a Brad Pitt caricature this week. I went into a lot more detail than I normally would and am happy with the result. I though I'd post the different stages of the illustrations development so you could see how it progessed. FYI it took about 8 hours all up.

The Mars Volta Redux

Cedric was too tall in the last one so I smooshed him. It allowed me to add more fro, which was of course a benefit.

Quick Sketches

Just a couple of quick sketches (Sylvester Stallone and George W), I'm thinking of drawing a caricature of him a day until he get's ousted and then sending them to him. I imagine by November they won't be too flattering.

One was done digitally the other in front of the tv.

24 Hour Comics

Well, I'm officially obsessed with the thing now, so I have been trawling through all of my files seeing what unseen nuggets of brilliance I have. So far no luck, but I did stumble across this. Last year I was a part of 24 Hour Comics (24hourcomics.com), which essentially is an event where artists all over the world spend the same 24 hours drawing a 24 page comic, sounded fun, but it was gruelling to say the least. It was good to see where people's ideas were heading after 17 hours, and needless to say there were some weird things popping up. I do belive that if you google me, somewhere in the results is a run down of the Perth event that I was a part of and some pretty handsome photos of me..

Anywho here is a sample of the work that I produced, I still think it's funny but the artwork isn't my finest and if you want to see the rest you can find it at www.no-where.com.

Big Willy Style

Thought I'd post an initial sketch (Will Smith) that I did in front of the tv the other night and how it looked after I spent a couple of hours colouring it. I laid down a black base layer and then worked the colour over the top, using the sketch as the base and working the colour from a magazine photo of the fresh prince himself.

Sketches

Just a couple of quck sketches I did the other day: Brad Pitt and Ricky Gervais

Caricatures of note

I thought as I am primarily working as a cartoonist/caricaturist I should post something related to it. Here are two quick caricatures that are drawn digitally, but with a pretty dry brush in photoshop, which is something I would like to work at because I think it gives a nice finish and almost makes me feel like a real artist

The caricatures are of Australian model Gemma Ward, by far the most alien looking person ever, and musical duo The Mars Volta, who I just got tickets to see in June, and if they don't cancel on me this time I'll be a very hapy chappy.

My Babies.

While I was in Perth for the Literature Festival I side-tracked to a housing development that I designed. I was hoping it would be finished and it was! It's the only development that was all my work, when I was a designer, even though some of my innovative ideas were pushed out during the approval period, It still looks alright.

It's a nice feeling to see something that you create from scatch built at such a massive scale, and have people buy them!

All Saints' Literature Festival

I was invited to present some workshops on cartooning at a recent Literature Festival in Perth. It was my such festival of words and they treat you like royalty at these things (I'm assuming they had a certain level of support for their other guests, like Mem fox of Possum Magic fame, and I just got to come along for the ride).

I presented three 2 hour sessions and to a range ages and was even on a panel talking with students about creative careers after school. It was great to be around people who have had success in their respective creative fields (Jamie Edis, www.ezone.com, Jan Latta, Travis Tischler, and Sophia Zielinski who made a 5m high, found object, geodesic dome in her back yard!)