art – Page 36 – The Creative Panic

The Family (#14)

February 2, 2011February 18, 2011 thecreativepanic4 Comments

thefamily2 — 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)

February 1, 2011February 5, 2011 thecreativepanicLeave a comment

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.

Self Portrait (#10)

January 29, 2011February 5, 2011 thecreativepanic2 Comments

There comes a time in any young artist’s life where he embarks on the road of self discovery and … *pfft* yeah, whatever! Today’s post is a self-portrait. Just an illustration of me by me.

Just to note:

• The fills in-between the hair outlines were handled with Illustrator Live Paint… lazy but necessary when coming off of a few drinks the night before

This illustration was done on the 29th January 2011. It was completed in 14 minutes.

Keep the Change (#9)

January 28, 2011February 5, 2011 thecreativepanic4 Comments

leadership_27012011 — The Leadership. F*@K Yeah!

Today’s ‘One a Day Project” image is inspired by a classic interweb stumble-upon when I came across an awesome alt-country-rock-folk band by the name of The Leadership.

I was cruising the nets yesterday looking for some inspiration for a branding job I was working on and through various click throughs and a random jump to wicked illustrator Bill Connors site (who also designed the band’s album cover), I wound up at The Leadership’s webpage. You can find their page here which features their new album Frontiers, streaming track by track.

Now, myself being a curious cat, I decided to have a listen and Sweet Sausage Jesus, I’m glad I did.

These dudes rock!

After an enjoyable listen to each of the eight tracks, I purchased the album and sent the band a message mentioning their awesome rock-ed-ness. I can seriously say I’ve been playing the album on repeat ever since. Stand out tracks for me would be Keep the Change, Little Black Book, the amazing “how-alt-country-rock-should-be-done” Bring it Back with a Gilmour-esque guitar solo to melt your eyeballs and Flesh & Bones featuring something rock has been missing for a while… a kick-ass sax solo that perfectly fits the track.

Anyway, as the “One a Day Project” is me drawing something in 20 minutes or less, Im naturally going to pump out something that is close at hand and in my mind at the time, hence today’s image features The Leadership. The image looks pretty random but it does reference a few lyrics within the above tracks and hell, I had 20 minutes so give the man a break! *hehehe*

Check out The Leadership here… Well worth the effort!

This image was drawn on 28th January 2011. It took 22 minutes to complete (yeah I know, I went over the 20!)

7 days a week, 365 days a year (#8)

January 27, 2011February 5, 2011 thecreativepanic4 Comments

Well, I’ve now kept up this little project for a whole seven days! Seven images have been uploaded (not including this one) with such diverse subjects as Sausage Jesus, Ken Oath – Aussie Mystery Man of Mystery, Leeroy Lion with the mash potato mane, Carl Sagan and a little tribute to Australia Day. Please, have a look back through the first seven images and leave a comment. I’d like to know what people think of my apparent insanity!

To begin the second week I’ve done a little drawing based on the project itself. Just One, 7/365.

Just one drawing
Each day of the week (7)
for 365 days of the year

If I keep this up for a full year Im going to be pretty chuffed.

Im really digging the typography on this one, as most of the drawing time was spent on getting the text right.

The below was drawn on 27th January 2011. It took 19 minutes.

Just One. 7/365 — Just one drawing every day for one year.

The Pale Blue Dot (#6)

January 25, 2011February 5, 2011 thecreativepanic2 Comments

Carl Sagan was a pretty cool guy and a hero of mine. Sagan was also an astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist and author and many of you would probably have seen one of his most famous docos, COSMOS. Space and the betterment of the human race was his thing and he did it very well.

The best introduction to Sagan in my humble opinion is a little clip called Pale Blue Dot. The first time I saw the below video I was pretty floored by it. It begins with an photograph (which the clip is named after) of a tiny speck in the vastness of space… that speck is the Earth as taken by Voyager 1 at a distance of 6.1 billion kilometers. Im not going to try and put words to what I felt and thought, as Carl Sagan has already done that a lot better than I could as he reads an excerpt from his book (funnily enough called, Pale Blue Dot).

Seriously… watch this clip. PALE BLUE DOT – YouTube.

</gushing hero worship>

Now, the drawing. I was trying to come up with an iconic symbol to represent Sagan… In the end with lots of stuffing about I was running out of time so I used his head with that wonderful mop of silver hair he rocked later in life! 🙂

Here it is: This drawing was done on 25th January 2011. It took 20 minutes.

Leeroy Lion with the mash potato mane (#5)

January 24, 2011February 5, 2011 thecreativepanic4 Comments

OK, it’s early Monday morning… thought I better knock this one out now as work will be hectic this week as it is most weeks!

This drawing was done on 24th January, 2011 at 7.05am. It was completed in 20 minutes.

So, the story behind Leeroy Lion with the mash potato mane. I really dig Dick Bruna books… always have. I love his simple style and bold colours. I was reading a Miffy book to my daughter Neave a few nights ago and thought it would be cool to do Bruna-style character of my own. Luckily this thought stuck in my head and I remembered it! Now, I’m not comparing my skills to Ol’ Dick’s. As you can see the inspiration from his style is there in this drawing but this is my own take.

Now, most of the time it takes me ages to get animal faces right, but for some reason I can do lions pretty easily… only a few shapes and it looks pretty good so I began with a lion’s head. I was drawing away and was trying to make the lion not too scary as this was meant to be a fake children’s book character after all. As I was drawing his mane started to look “sloppy” and reminded me of mash potato – Mash Potato Mane! I LOL’d and got to refining the look and adding in some colour.

At this point i was about 17 minutes in and I really wanted to hand draw the helvetica text but to be honest it looked like crap so I ended up using the proper font… lazy I know, but I wanted to knock this off in 20 minutes. And the name Leeroy? Sometimes, for a laugh I call my little brother Liam, Leeroy. He also happens to be Neave’s uncle and her favourite person in the world, so this drawing is a bit of a dedication to Liam and Neave’s friendship.

leeroylion_24012011 — Tasty and Dangerous!

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW! (#4)

January 23, 2011February 5, 2011 thecreativepanicLeave a comment

Yew!
from “You Beauty” (Australian Slang)

1. Heard when someone is excited or pleased with a situation, event or prospective engagement of a future event… and stuff.
2. Popular with surfing, hang-gliding freaks named Alex.

Inspired by my brother from another mother Alex Cleland… did the “yew!” first then remembered back to the days of old in primary school when everything needed that bubble-text, drop-shadow, 3-d coolness so I added that. The diamond-y heart-ish shape just formed around it from then, no reason other than I thought it looked cool as…. that’s it!

This drawing was done on Sunday, 23rd January. It took 17 minutes.

WristWatch® RockClock (#3)

January 22, 2011February 5, 2011 thecreativepanicLeave a comment

The WristWatch® Rock Clock is an Australian Precision timepiece and disco-resistant to 40 feet.

I did this drawing on Satuday, 22nd January 2011. It took 19 minutes to complete

I wanted to do something that would kick ass as a t-shirt and I wanted to feature a very hairy arm in some way. If you would like to purchase this image as a t-shirt, please email me and if I get enough interested I may consider thinking about feigning interest in producing t-shirts. But seriously, I really dig the way the word Rock looks when written in my style of script and started off with just that word. After a little while of playing around with a few different options of how the word could look I got the feeling just one single word might look a bit *meh*. Some clever wordplay later, I came up with “Time to Rock” which in a short while generated the same *meh* feeling… and at that very moment, for some unknown reason I looked at my long, pasty, hairy arms and wondered why I didn’t own a wristwatch…

Whenever Im on the phone with someone and they ask me if I have time to do anything or want to make an appointment and give me a specific time (or I to them) I look at my wrist like I have a watch on, even though I have never really worn a watch for most of my adult life… its weird and I’ve done it in front of people I’ve been with and they have LOL’d… lots

</funny story>

Anyway, yadda yadda yadda, Wrist watch, rock clock… you see how I made the connection!

Ken Oath, the Australian Mystery Man of Mystery (#2)

January 21, 2011February 5, 2011 thecreativepanicLeave a comment

OK, here is drawing two which was done on Friday, 21st January 2011. The drawing took 20 minutes.

I had heard someone say Kenoath that day and was chuckling to myself how some friends of mine used to shorten down the saying to just Ken! (for those who don’t know what Kenoath means, it is aussie slang for f**king Oath which in turn is in itself aussie slang I suppose).

Anyway, I got down to drawing! I started off with the word kenoath, just playing around the size, style etc and thought it was a little plain by itself. So I added in a crude map of Australia, reversed the text out of it and thought, yeah… looks cool but it’s not really saying anything to me. I pondered on this for a few minutes and asked myself what would I think Kenoath means if I was not from Australia and had never heard the term… would I think I was a person, this Ken Oath fellow? So I went with that thought and started drawing in the Aussie Mystery Man.

Now, the mystery man bit got me thinking again of another mystery man that had his name used without people really knowing what the term meant… WHO IS JOHN GALT from Ayn Rand’s huge tome, Atlas Shrugged. With that in mind I added in the WHO IS, drew a quick silhouette of an Aussie looking outback man and there you have it!