Get at it.

Bam!

.....

Downey 'n Friends!

Poops.

FARTS ARTS FARTS ARTS

So the group exhibition I 'm involved with debuted last night. Was pretty fucking rad. We partied so hard the Man came to shut us down. And it's true what they say about the Man, he's the biggest douchebag of douchebags, the douche-ess of doucheland. Yeah you get the point, he's a prick. But the alas the good times and success of the night greatly outweighed that turd.

The farts from me for the exhibition:

"Hairspray Hustle"

When I was planning the kinds of works I wanted to do for this exhibition, the general thing that all the drafts had in common were that they featured the interesting and weird characters. This one and the one below were the only ones to make through past the draft stage, before I thought it was too dumb and got axed. I think that's what one the greatest challenges were when doing the work for this exhibition; the problem of being too self conscious with my work where it affects the completion of the work. 

This one features a threesome of glam rockers/sociopaths who are on the run from the Po Po, and have just looted something. What is that 'something'? Cans of premium hairspray? Bootleg copies of David Bowie porno tapes? Who know.

"Peking Dream "

This one came about after I saw a strange looking dude at Coles. The guy is like a caricature of him (slighty racist probably). I'm calling him Ricky.  I imagined he likes peking duck, hence the ducks; and 'peking' sorta has the word 'pea' in it, hence the peas. The nekkid chick is a ficticous girl, Haru, who works at a ramen shop close to Ricky's work place. Ricky goes there everyday for lunch. But he hates ramen, he's only there for the crush he has on Haru. Seedy fella. 

 That's really the best explanation I can offer for this piece, which is about as random as the actual work.

"Shooters" 

 I got a tad lazy/desperate with this one. I was running out of time, so I used a figure I'd previous drawn intended for a piece I scraped. No aimless back story for this one. Just sorta playing with the words 'Hooters' and 'Shooters'. I should have called it "Hooters and Shooters", that sounds way better. Oh, well. Bummer.

Done in watercolour and ink. 

"Bite"

I wanted to entitled this one "Shorty's got Bite", but the thought of dumbness hit me again. Drew a bunch of raptors in preparation for this, which heped a lot. Also, like the rest of the illustrations, I tried to really balance the colour I was using. Contrasty and harmoniously colours alway look sick. So I limited the colours I used, cause in the past I tended to vomit colour on to the page. Also check out the works of Afu Chan and Helen Jo. Super inspired by those guys at the moment.

Also also in water colour and ink. 

I'm pretty darn happy with the work I produced. I don't care if it doesn't get sold, the fact that so many people came to the exhibition, had look and appreciated the work was enough for me. 

Here's a bit of a test of the process I was using for the watercolour ones:

 I sign my work before its done. Yeah!

Ink lines got really chunky here. Managed to fix that when I started working on proper watercolour paper.

Here's the lineart for "Shooters". I wanted to record the whole process like before, but things got hectic and stuff. The background is different from the finished one cause its so fucking hard to paint tiny circles, and then the space around them in watercolour. Lesson learnt, Hellen Jo can keep that look.

EW POAST.

So what's been happening.
(Other than salving to the wage)
most recent to old

I received a pen I bought on the interweb a couple days ago. Rad to the Maximum. It's a Pentel Brush Pen and a new weapon of choice. The flow and line thickness is great and it doesn't even bleed into the page below. It works well in calligraphy too (as it was probably primarily designed for).
Some shit test drawings below.

The annoying  Perth Illustrators group on phasebook that hammers my notification box relentlessly, happen to do these weekly challenges, which I sorta dig. The first week's theme was Parrot and while most people drew from an image they found on google image search, I drew this:

(Yeah, I'm a mad dog. Ha.)

It's pretty unfinished. I still wanna take into photoshop to redo the linework and splash some colour onto it. Haven't really had the time though. Bummer.

The theme for the following week's challenge was Power. It was a kinda gay theme, but I came up with this:

Again this is pretty unfinished too. Hmmpf. It's 90's Pop Cult Nostaglia Power, featuring a giant Powerglove, Ganondorf (carrier of the power triforce duhh), He-Man ("I HAVE THE POOOWER") and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.



Also I've been doing some work for 1Up Microcinema on William street in Perth. 1Up is kinda a hybrid of things; it's a fashion boutique, cafe, confectionary shop, small run cinema and possibly a bar. Matt the owner asked me to do a couple of posters for him, one for promoting the cinema and another promoting the coffee he's pushing. 1Up sorta has this retro video game theme running throughout the store, so I thought I'd follow suit with the aesthetic. The posters are back-to-back on a A-frame sign outside the shop on William street (Should have took a photo. Dang). The idea was that when to walk into the city in the morning on William, you see the coffee poster, and when you come back in the evening after a hard day of doing whatever, you see the cinema poster. Let's cross our fingers and hope it works out EXACTLY like that. There are also smaller posters gonna be distributed around the Tafe area for maximum effect. Keep your third eye out for that.

And also also, I've got group exhibition coming up late this month. Probably got about a week to finish off my pieces. Struggle on. That's how this kid rolls.

Peace hombres

Head on strait

I think I'm getting into a rut. I keep leaving too many unfinished sketches in my sketchbook. I give up on them cause they're not looking the way I want them to. Generally when I feel this way, I just spend more time on it and I surprise myself; with the drawing evolving into what I see in my head. But this isn't happening anymore and it's making me feel quite discouraged to draw. Maybe I'm just getting distracted to easily. Or maybe its because I'm forcing myself too draw when I don't want.

I should draw other things.

/vent.

Shits and shits

The sketchbook is full of unfinished doodles at the moment (now by 'full', I mean two pages), so time for some rambling.

Well here's something I did for the 2011 Semi-permanent book, and I'm 75% sure it got in (I got an email back = official?). I really regret submitting it though. Out of my own stubbornness I was determine to create something new for this project. But falling back on old habits, I left it to the day before the deadline to start working on my submission. Yep, what you see below is the product of a >24 hour scramble. Cool bro. Although, I'm not entirely ashamed of the piece, I mean the concept is kinda really dumb but that's what I going for I guess... Its just really rough/rushed and needed more time polishing those edges... next time though, fo shoo.

Also here are some photos I dug up from my phone of the amazing encounter I had last year with Mr. Turtle. It just ordinary week day, walking through the park to the Maddington traino,  when I saw him just sitting there, I thought he may have been hurt or maybe even dead. After having a minor breakdown on whether poking him would be a legitimate way of checking if he was ok, I realised that despite the wellbeing of the turtle, that this was definitely an occasion to be taking photos. How many times can you say you ran into a turtle on the way to school (without that anecdote involving a car)? Just once for me. And that was enough to want to lock this guy's mug in amongst the dodgey drunk photography of my phone's photo library.
But it seems as I was snapping away with my camera phone, the flash must have pissed him off and ran as fast as turtle could, which is surprising faster than one would imagine ( I've witnessed it with my own eyes now, I know the speed in which turtles travel.)  He was ok. The RSPCA could rest at ease. Crisis averted.

~Le Photographe~