curious cafe

Hidden away along bronte road is the curious cafe,
lovely little place for a road side location, and had a nice time drawing the inhabitants.

Illustration Friday: Subtract (re-coloured)

I wasn't at all happy with last week's submission for subtract. So I touched it up and added more form and colour into the image and cleaned up the composition as well. (You can still see it in all it's very unimpressive original flat-colour blockout beauty below.)

My favourite part of this picture are the candy coloured girls in the foreground. Frankly I think it took so long to colour because I kept on thinking about candy and would have to take snack breaks.

....caaaaanndy...

Also while I working on it there managed to be both a major blackout in Syndey as well as a server maintanence issue.


And Above is the original basic photoshop colour on my illustration friday topic: subtract.

Illustration Friday: Legendary

Unfortunately I ran out of time and as I 'speak' I am fearful of the night guard kicking me out of the University computer lab.  But unlike my first Illustration Friday attempt: Climb, this one actually made the time limit without a piece of technology around me disintegrating.  

I'll probably come back later to this piece and work some more color into it.  Especially the fish, right now with everything else white it looks okay. But I would prefer if it if it was harder to spot the fish, or harder to see when fish ends and water begins; to kind of play with the notion of how big the fish really is.

In this version with it's body continuing around the fishermen it is bluntly implying that the fish is in fact huge.  But with its lower body camouflaged it could just seem as if the fish is in the foreground, and just looks larger.  That was my intended concept, but even if it didn't fall out the way I wanted I am still happy with the overall composition.

If you don't understand what the image is about (I guess its a cultural thing) it's about the ever famous 'One that got away'.  It seems to be an overriding theme for people to swear on their mothers that they saw and/or almost caught a fish "THIS BIG".  And I wanted to play with that more domestic or local legendary aspect rather than the usual: Robin Hood and King Arthur.  

Little bits I missed out: I forgot to add the name of the boat on the prow: Loch Ness.  Just a little bit of fun. 

And for a final comment I was going for: Jillian Tamaki / Yuko Shimizu /Matt Huynh look 

All very very talented amazing people! Their links are here on my blog.  Matt has just come back from an Internship with Jillian Tamaki and is a recognised artist/comic writer/illustrator down here in Oz.

Time taken to 'finish' this work: 6 - 11:32pm (not including conceptual drafting)

Number of times I said fish in this post: 7

St Patrick's Day Fair

I was meant to go to the Archibald exhibition this weekend.  I don't know what possessed me to go to a museum on a sunday.  The queue for tickets was horrendous.  I then decided to go to the St. Patrick's Day Fair and eat a very Irish chicken burger.  

Best decision ever.  

I'm sure I would have learnt something profound and had a worthwhile artistic experience in the AGNSW, however I'm also sure I would have killed someone in that crowded pit they called a gallery. Not that it wasn't any less crowded at the fair, but everyone was wearing green and it was a beautiful sunny day.  

And I got the enjoyable experience of watching children make a pile of shoes on the floor and jump into the Hyde Park fountain.  Such is drawn above.  (Note: stupid jester hat with floppy dangling bits and bells does not exist on statue, I just added that since everyone else was wearing one at the fair.)

It was a good day.  It was sunny, but I got cooled off every now and again with the soft spray of fountain water in the wind, which I usually flinch from due to the association I have of fountain water to spit and cigarette butts.  But on that particular occasion it was refreshing, probably due to all the people having fun in the water. 

Illustration friday: Intricate

Try  looking up 'intricate lace' without getting undergarments.  Sure it might not be on that first page, but between table cloths and lace patterns will be a very scantily clad woman.  

I wasn't going to do this week's illustration friday, but then changed my mind last minute.  The result is something that looks nice from far away, but not so much on a zoom in.  

I was just trying to practice my photoshop on this image, but here's hoping for a winner.  

Process Work for A Float of Crocodiles

Earlier this year I was part of a group exhibition called 'A Murder of Crows'.  It was a show based on collective animal nouns and, as promised, this is the process work for my image.  

The first image isn't much, but usually it never is.  

I researched into various animal nouns and the one that struck me the most was 'a float of crocodiles'.  I had a wonderful image of crocodiles that had camouflaged themselves as pool toys.  So I did a small sketch and moved on from there to get images of crocodiles and children that would fit into my rough composition.

After finding a few resource images I made a rough composition and continued to refine it until I was happy.  Since it was a very complex image I did the first few sketches by hand but then surrendered to photoshop.  I am very particular about composition so this was probably the longest-or at least the hardest-part of the process.

    
   
Usually I know what 'style' or 'look' I am going for, and the composition follows this knowledge.  But this time I didn't know if I wanted to go for a fairly realistic image or follow a style more derivative of children's illustrations.  I did want a particularly happy perky image to off-set the horrible fact that children were obliviously swimming with crocodiles.

 So I looked up various advertisements and played around with watercolours till I was happy.  

(the kid below on the right looks like the cover boy of Mad Magazine!)

I decided on the kid on the bottom right hand corner, watercolours with a pencil outline.  I had originally wanted to screen print the image, but as the composition got more complicated and the costs started to count off in my head I decided to go with a more familiar medium.  But with the strong pencil outline and the big washes of colour I felt like this style was close to my earlier idea.   

I tested a few images with this style and felt the water was looking crap.  So in the end to get the right 'flatness' similiar to screen printing I used acrylics; and when that didn't work I used the computer.  I showed the above image to the rest of the 'murderous crow' crowd and got some lovely feedback.  Everyone felt it would work better if the crocodiles were less visible on first glance.  (To get more of a 'Where's Wally' sort of effect)  And I agreed with them completely.  So after making my crocodiles much more green I did the final image.     

and Ta Dah! the final image!

Don't you want to buy yourself a Crocodile float? 

berkelouw: The same site for the group show!

This beautiful refurbished warehouse has now been made into a bookstore/coffee shop.  The barista is also known as Tom Ferson: an artist and a musician.  He shares my interest in scavenging and his work will be visible on the 4th of March show!

Max Brenner: Chocolate is good for you

A recent on-site sketch, in a very moodily lit Max Brenner.  I swear my eyes are becoming more myopic with all these low electricity/candle lit cafe's.  

Group Show at Berkelouw Books 4th March

I am a part of a wonderful group show with my fellow ex-COFA's

Happening on the 4th of March 

at Berkelouw books: 

Newtown, O'Connell Street

6-8pm

There will be booze!