Waiting for beach weather

After coming away inspired by Matt Huynh's lovely ink works at the Papermill I did a few tests and spot illustrations. This is one of them, and after being caught in yesterday's downpour (which included heavy fat tropical rain mixed with little evil bits of hail) I decided to add a bit of colour and hopeful wishing. Fingers crossed for sunny weather.

Calendars don't help me remember anything

Illustration Friday: Dip

I was caught between choosing a dip in the pool and food dips.

I love drawing people swimming or just lazing by the pool

but I also love food...

In the end I compromised and did both.

So next time you're hungry and in need of cool refreshment

why not go down to your local dipping pool?

Everyone loves a good dip

But don't forget!

wait 30 minutes between eating and swimming

and apply sun cream

Going nuts on photoshop

Surrounded by so much black and white will have me go nuts every now and again. Such example above. Why are there explosions of colour shooting across this calm idyllic cafe scene? Who knows. It might have something to do with residual anger towards the central newspaper reading man for his acrobatic leaps in position. Or it might have something to do with me being recently addicted to MGMT's 'electric feel' and Cut copy's 'Lights & Music'.

Explanations aside for my light-show mood I hope you enjoy this brief stint outside of Kansas.

Bubble girl +fish

This image is part of a larger composition I was going to do for a Threadless T-shirt competition. Originally there were meant to be tons of kids running around and making giant bubble and balloon creatures.  It never got out of the sketching phase unfortunately.  The main obstacle in my image's path was an 8 colour restriction for a t-shirt print.  In the end I decided to forgo the competition and just make the image the way I wanted to. 

(I also ran out of time after mucking about with other projects and making the same sketch over and over trying to visualize it with only 8 colours.) 

This little girl is a bit of a colour test, so I'd love to hear any feedback.

After spending an hour circling through the five different blue's in the bubble fish

changing the opacity ever so slightly,

erasing something and then undoing 

and then re-doing and then deciding to try dodge it instead

I decided that she had to get off my desktop 

otherwise I would never get to any of the work I am meant to be doing today.

Illustration Friday: theatre

"I reckon this here's the best theatre in town," said Earl as the curtain rose.  

(Just a quick image for this friday after a nightmare of work was due and partially finished for this week...

wanted to play with the very 'high art' image people have of theatre, hope you like.)

Illustration Friday: impossibility

At first for this illustrations friday I was going to do something with Escher's impossible landscapes and shapes, my particular favourite is everyone bounding about in a spiderman fashion on 360 degree stairs.

But I decided that was a bit boring, and played around with finding your way around impossible spaces.  Someone mentioned GPS and I found my image.

Originally I was going to have someone holding a faulty map trying to get somewhere but I prefer the lack of negotiation you can get with a machine.  A map will never tell you where to go, it just shows you the roads and lets you mess up by yourself.  GPS, google maps and my friend hannah are didactic minions of hell! (I'm joking I love you google maps! ... oh and you too Hannah)

Machines will not take no for an answer, or 'wait I think there has been construction since you last updated because there is a park in the way of this road...how do I get to the place I want to go now?'

It is either "TURN LEFT AND WALK 50 FEET UNTIL REACH DESTINATION" or you turn the thing off.

So there is my impossible: impossible instructions.

I also added a 'start' similar to those you get in little puzzles, just to emphasize the drawing style of the buildings and the maze like quality of the city. 

(and record time! 4 hours!)

Illustration Friday Poise

This week's Illustration friday: Poise,
much too tired to blog properly, once again sitting in University computer room on a friday night.
Wish this was Illustration thursday.

Nevertheless I will now pop down to the pub nearby and see if friends are still around: 12:44am
horrible horrible time...

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

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.