Month: February 2011

The Modern Multi-linguist (#20)

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Rodney is a busy man.

The worldly gentleman in this day and age is a busy, hectic creäture. Gone are the days when one could relax in the study, sipping a cheeky Pinot and ponder the questions of existence. Likewise, the time taken to learn a second, third or fourth language is simply too much. This is why those who must keep up appearances enlist the help of the fine people at Google translate. The world becomes a veritable orgasm of multi-linguistics without the need for extended study be it French, Latin or German just to name a few.

Today’s illustration has taken me back to the “let’s get this stuff out the door quickly!” as opposed to the last few efforts which have taken me a little while longer to do. Nice bold lines, simple colouring and hand drawn lettering done VERY quickly! All done approx. 25 minutes for this one. Mad props to Mrs Simone Kain for the “I’m fluent in English and Google translate” phrase!

T-SHIRTS > Get this on a t-shirt by clicking here!

Much too sweet! (#19)

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Look Neave... this is what happens!

No, I don’t have a tooth-ache today, but yesterday morning I was explaining to my sweet-toothed daughter how chocolate, ice cream and lollies can rot your teeth if you eat too much of them… she looked at me with a puzzling look, promptly dismissing the idea with a ‘don’t be silly daddy!” and proceeded to her tuck into her second Kinder snack bar in a row…. kids!?

So, I thought I’d demonstrate the effects of too much good stuff through some cute character design and pretty colours, that’ll each her! *ahem* yes, well.. at least I got out today’s illustration…

You can own this little critter on a t-shirt by clicking here!

Reginald Theodore Swampthing (#18)

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Honorable, Romantic, Swampthing.

Today’s illustration is of the late statesman and all round gentleman, Reginald Theodore Swampthing. When not terrorising locals or devouring small fish and crustaceans, Reginald could be often be found tending to his stable of prize-winning racehorses, talking a nice stroll long the banks of the local river or serenading his childhood sweetheart and later wife, Penelope Margaret May Swampthing (nee Winterbottom).

Mr Swampthing ran for public office in 1962, becoming councilor (and later Mayor) of the Lakeside District. He served with dedication and gusto right up until his death in 1973 from an apparent pitchfork to the chest. No charges were laid as the Swamp Monster Protection Act of 1974 had not been passed into law, although it was common knowledge that the townspeople often enjoyed an old fashioned angry mob get-together after local football matches and Mr Swampthing may  have unfortunately been in the wrong swamp at the wrong time.

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Illustration notes

Knocked this fella out at 1.00am this morning… had the idea for a swamp monster thing, started drawing and an hour or so later here it is. It was colour to begin with, but really wasn’t feeling it so took the easy option and converted it to black and white, drew an old school photo album background and whammo!

As always, done in Illustrator with the Wacom board. Another reason I use Illustrator is I’m rubbish with a pencil and paper. With the computer I have multiple undos and can work a lot quicker than drawing on paper and having to rub out every second line. I will however, do a few ‘One a Day’s’ the old school way just to compare…. soon. maybe.

Superhopperus Maximus (#17)

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Superhopperus Maximus

Superhopperus Maximus – An amazing beast that although flightless, travels (at incredible speed) by hopping on its reptile-scale like underbelly.

I really enjoyed being a little more exact in yesterday’s illustration, using finer lines for shading and what not so I decided to carry that across to today’s image as well… more focus on nice line work and less on the think, solid stroke look I’ve been doing.

My daughter Neave and I were watching Pixar’s UP for the 723rd time last night and I have always enjoyed the part when Kevin, the crazy-arsed bird that follows Carl and Russell around makes his apperance. So after waking up this morning, I decided to draw a bird. (Take that Simone Kain!)

Inspiration for the style of the illustration came from Chris Edser, an awesome Adelaide illustrator whose work I really dig.

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Illustration notes:

Done completely in Illustrator with the brush and blob tools with my Wacom board. I use Illustrator as opposed to Photoshop as I want to retain the artwork in a vector format so if I want to enlarge at anytime, I can.

The paper texture was added at the end (just one taken from Google Images) and I popped in some text with the Texas Hero font, the go-to handwriting font if you need something that looks old! I should have hand-lettered myself but it’s the weekend and I want to chill out a bit so chalk that up to laziness. I drew in the wine glass stain for a bit of fun.

Frank the Unfortunate Sock Puppet (#16)

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Poor Old Frank

Taken from my forthcoming children’s book ‘The Misadventures of Frank the Unfortunate Sock Puppet”.

Illustration notes:

I had a lot of fun with this one. I knew I wanted to do a sock puppet as I had seen one drawn into a piece in the latest issue of Juxtapoz. I began drawing the sock with a mental image in my head of a snake puppet like we used to make at school. I drew a hairy arm holding the puppet up but it looked kind of ordinary so that was scrapped and drew the puppet lying unused. Next were buttons for eyes, a funky mustache and the obligatory felt forked tongue and I was in business… but a single sock puppet an interesting illustration does not make.

I had a quick think on what constitutes an iconic sock (yeah, I did a WTF to the phrase iconic sock too). Naturally, the good old footy sock we know and love with those bands of your favourite team colours looping around came to mind. That solved two problems as the black and white wasnt working all that well for contrast so colour would be useful.

The footy sock obviously conjured up memories of rabid supporters and their hatred for the opposing team. I thought it would be a bit of a laugh for our old sock puppet to had a big night out on the sauce and wake up in his least favourite team’s colours.

Now, I’m a South Aussie, so I had to go with either the Crows or Port Power. The black, white and teal of Port is what I tried first but it looked a little *meh* so Frank the Sock Puppet was going to wake up in Crow’s colours! I also threw in the famous Graham Kennedy crow call reference for those with a keen eye, it’s still swearing but not as bad as fuck. It is a children’s book after all!

Happy Thors-day (#15)

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JÖNSI. FEAR HIS BOWTIE... FEAR IT I SAY!

Thursday is the fourth day of the week according to the ISO 8601 international standard adopted in most western countries. In countries that use the Sunday-first convention and in the Judeo-Christian calendar it is the fifth day of the week. It falls between Wednesday and Friday. The name is derived from Old English Þūnresdæg and Middle English Thuresday, which means “Thunor‘s day”. ~ Wikipedia

Thunor is of course THOR, the mythical god of thunder and lightning, the wielder of the mighty hammer Mjöllnir and character of the Marvel comic and soon-to-be released blockbuster movie. So to celebrate Thor’s Day (Thursday) here is a little illustration of Thor’s lesser known hammer he uses on formal occasions… the mighty fearsome *ahem* the well-dressed JÖNSI!

[EDIT]  I uploaded a different version, one with some more shading on JÖNSI. I think it looks tighter… and I just wanted to type JÖNSI again. JÖNSI.

The Family (#14)

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Don't bring fists to a knife fight.. bring the Family.

The Family. A bunch of scary-assed redheads from hell.

  • Skullbones – The youngest brother… dyes his beard black but keeps it ginger on top
  • Bob – The eldest brother… loves disco, and knuckledusters. Dyes his fro black but keeps the stubble red so it hides the blood.
  • Sheryl – The sister. The meanest of the lot. Dyes her hair black but lets the red show through.

A little departure from the style of the earlier ‘One a Day’s’ in that I used the pen tool in Illustrator for the clipping masks (beard and hair highlights). The rest of the head, hair and text were freehand with the paintbrush tool. The character Skullbones resembles a character I had drawn before so I got him done quicky but the other two were completely new. Needless to say this one took longer than the regular 20 minute time limit (around 45 minutes) and honestly, when I have the time I’ll spend a little more time on tidying up each illustration from now on and push the time out to 30 minutes or so. It’s great to give yourself a time limit as I tend to over do things when I don’t restrict myself, although there are pieces of the other illustrations I’d tighten up given the chance. The redhead-ness of the family was only decided on before I exported the AI file to jpeg… I think it worked out pretty cool!

Just a note on the process of the ‘One a Day’ Project, while the illustrations are completed within 20 minutes, I do spend a bit of time before hand (in the shower, on the bike or in the bed) thinking about subjects and setting things out in my mind like style, colour etc. White Winter Hymnal is the exception to this rule as what I wanted to do was an owl which didn’t work (and ended up being yesterday’s piece).

In the next few days I’m going to video my screen and “try” to do a running commentary while I draw a ‘One a Day’ illustration so you can get an idea of how I go about it.

HAL’s pet OWL (#13)

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OWL-9000

Headache. That’s what I got and it ain’t going nowhere.

Today’s ‘One a Day’ is, to be honest a “let’s get this stuff finished so I can go and lie down” kinda deal. My brain just isn’t up to the task of anything witty or insightful.

Introducing OWL-9000, HAL-9000’s pet Owl. Kubrick actually cut nearly all of OWL-9000’s appearances out of 2011: A Space Odyssey but if you look closely in the scene where HAL is reading Dave and Frank’s lips while they are discussing what to do, you can see OWL’s little antenna pop into frame. True story! OK, OK… that’s my brain starting to shut down. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be headache free and ready to move forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom… ahem… time to go.