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.

The "Bit List" Addition

After my honeymoon in Thailand I can add jelly fish to the bit list.

One Hell of a busy couple of months

It's been a busy couple of months, I finished landscaping my house, got married, and went on a honeymoon to Thailand. My work had to squeeze in between all of the above...which I kind of managed.

It was a great couple of months and coming out the other end I'm back in a position to work freely and effectively, the first time since we started building the house over a year ago.

This means more posts on the blog and less time crying in the corner of my studio trying to figure out how to get it all done, YAY!

The "Bit" List

I've got some good work to post as soon as I get the all clear from the clients. In the mean time I was doing a spot of gardening and raked over a wasps nest. I copped a couple of stings on my ankle and it got me thinking of a mental list I've head in my mind for a while - it's called The "Bit" List.

It's a list of all the weird and wonderful things I've been bitten/stung by in my 29 years and it keeps growing by the day - so much I finally need to get it down on paper (digital paper I guess).

Dog
Cat
Pelican
Emu
Budgy
Human (Baby, Child, Adult)
Guinee Pig (Gerbal for those in the US)
Goat
Horse
Rabbit
Lizard
Fish
Crab
Mosquito
Bee
Wasp
Ant (many types)
Spider
Scorpian
Centipede
Chicken
March Fly
Sand Fly
Flea


If I think of any more or unrepress some horrible memories I'll add 'em on.

Old Commission

It's been a while since I posted, so I thought I'd post something I've been waiting to be allowed to post. It's a advertising illo for an ongoing client. Much fun to draw! The final illustration was 1.8 x 1m in size so there was plenty of room to go bananas...sorry.

Happy New Year!

A little late I know, but I've been busy lazing around my house for a couple of weeks. I'm back in the studio and looking forward to a new year of more consistent posting on the blog, more caricatures, and I'm even going to have a crack at tradtional painting....god help me.

Here's a nice way to start the new year, I got the new Video Journalism Movement book in the post. I've been a part of this from the start and it's great to see all of the cartoonists complied into a neat book - plus it feels good to be published like this.

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.