Happy New Year

Yeah, I know it's a bit late, but I was on holidays

Endangered Species?

There's moments in time that cause you to look at the situation going on around you and react in some manner. Be it hunker down and try and ride out the storm, jump on the next boat sailing past or try and find a new boat to set sail on. Either way you find yourself evaluating what you've done, what you're doing and where you want to go; and probably most importantly of all, who'll have you. Yes, a traditional guy like myself can feel like a dinosaur.

One of these moments happened about six weeks ago. The company I was working for let go of most of the staff without much notice at all. Well, I was actually leaving for the day when it happened. I can't exactly say I couldn't see it happening, the storm clouds had been brewing for a while, but a regular paycheque is not something I'm going to knock back so I'd been modestly content to keep working in spite of the unravelling situation.

Who's to blame? I think that there's many factors at work, but my thoughts are apparently liable to get me sued for defamation. Which is unfortunate for all the staff that have been stood down especially leading up to Christmas.

The situation leaves a lot of people scrambling around looking for scraps of work.

It's also a good opportunity to draw another Dinosaur doing something silly.

Right place, wrong time

Down at the local supermarket, about several billion years too late

Another in 1800 drawing

Princess purge

A bit of housekeeping...
Here's the roughs for the princesses from the mural I did for my daughter. These were all done fairly small, about 4 inches high, then scanned and enlarged to A3 size to be cleaned up as I've already shown here, here, here, here, here, here and here .
I altered Belle from what I had here in the rough, as in the final composition she was too similarly posed to Aurora who was right next to her.

doodles

Play around with some ideas...

Gentleman

another in 1800

Another crack at the in 1800 exercise. I've missed the last couple.


digital art in photoshop

Mascot concepts 4

Here's the roughly coloured final concepts for the image makeover for the football club I was working on. Keen eyed Aussie rules football supporters will be able to tell which club it is, and hopefully which players I've tried to capture the likenesses of.

In 1800

We've started a new blog at work in which we all have to do a picture within half an hour on a set theme. A bit of a drawing exercise to flex our artistic muscles.
Here's my contribution to the first one - "Human kids at the Alien Petting Zoo"

Half an hour is a fair ask...

Oh, and by the way, this is a purely digital image

Disney Marvel merger

I couldn't help myself.... my comment on the recent buy-out of Marvel by Disney

Mascot concepts 3

Unfortunately the anthropomorhic quality had almost disappeared by this stage...

Mascot concepts 2

By this stage the client wanted the footballers to look like superheroes, not only in stance but also their physique. It was a bit of a flashback to high-school days and Marvel (superhero) figure drawing 101. Here they are unadorned...

Mascot concepts 1

Here's some concept art for a football club image makeover that I worked on last year.

Obviously a lean towards the anthropomorphic side.

More to follow...

Fairy doodles

Apologies for the lack of posts lately- crunch time and then a well deserved an appreciated break

Me at 100

Gotta love the smell of a meme on a Monday

Disney Princess Mural

Finally, it's finished, the Disney Princess mural that I've been working on for my daughter for the past 2-3 months. It's been an interesting process- I've wondered at times what I'd gotten myself into, bending around in funny angles trying to paint sections; but I'm more than happy with the result and so is my daughter.

Here's the process outlined below. Click on the pictures to enlarge.

Rather than do a more traditional wall wrap-around mural like these two here and here than further inspired me to get moving, I opted instead to paint it on my daughter's sliding wardrobe doors. I figured that they would never be obscured, so it would be a great "canvas" for a mural.

Here the doors have been painted with the base coat-

Now the artwork was enlarged to size (the two large pieces are A0 size) and positioned with the linework to be carbon transferred onto the doors-

Me starting with some of the colours. Unlike the previous mentioned murals I didn't think that placing the mural on the bottom half of the doors would result in me cramping myself onto the floor in order to paint the low sections-

More colours done-

The bulk of the colours are now painted-

The whites are now painted-

Filling in the eyes, and now ready for the black-

In order to make life easy on myself I decided to paint the linework with the surface flat-

What a task this proved to be. "OO" paintbrush and thin lines = lots of hours and a sore back-

Nearly there-

First door in place-

Second door in place-

Ta Dah!!! All finished!-

Close on right-hand door-

Close on Tinkerbell at the top of the right-hand door (there's fairy dust coming off her wand also, which unfortunately isn't too visible in the photo)-

Close on Left-hand door-

A very happy little girl with her Princesses-

The aftermath, lots of paint sample pots and a few exhausted brushes-