More yada-yada-yada...

Finished this off a little differently from what it used to be. Sometimes less is more. Though often Less is just Less, other times More is More.... and so on.

Bit too smooth on the 'paint', but what the hell!

BadClown!

Ad-work Compile

This image is a compilation of all the bits that I was happy with from the last year or so of advertising work. Cars, food, animals, men, women, cartoons, trees, scribbles, Cary Larson cows, a Mermaid, Cherubs, Running Donut, Ninja on a Motorbike, Chicken Roast with nappy, engine, Sea-monster, tea, Cowboys, and Indians, Ice-cream, you name it! it’s all there. Even squirrels…

Seinfeld and the Gang

For the Aussie Mad magazine, finished about a month ago.

Flynn Effect

Big Man II....

Same story as before...

Davenport of Dispair...

...or the Couch of Pain?

The Good, the Badly Drawn and the Ugly Mess Called Art

Fun, trying to draw like a kid. Or rather a like someone with an Arts Degree. Well known fact (that I just made up): The more you know about art the worse you are at it!

I am Walken here!

Pregnant Pause...

There will be slight break in transmission until I get through my current assignment and/or until I figure out why I thought blogging was a nifty idea in the first place.

My cursor is inching toward the 'delete blog' button as I sit here pondering the pro's and con's of this little hobby.

My friends call me 'Meat'.

I’ve had some pretty tough deadlines lately so to sustain the tissues I have been hopped up on coffee and baclava, but that can only carry one so far. To help keep the energy levels up I’ve been playing Queen and Meat Loaf's 'Bat out of Hell' -hey, I’m a eighties kid!- with consciousness altering volume and repetition.

So this is my little ‘homage’ to Mr. Loaf. It started as a pretty small scribble - a little like Marvin himself- and in between saves and crashes on the computer, it kept growing. You can see where I had to keep sticking more paper on to fit the big guy in…

...anyway, EVERYBODY secretly loves Meat Loaf... "The sirens are screaming and the fires are howling way down in the valley tonight..." It all makes sense at three in the morning.

Still Pink...

I seem to be in the fevered grip of revision or early onset OCD. After reworking Al Gore, I re-jigged some more older work. Here's a new version of Pink and in the 'Spartlicus' posts I replaced the older versions with new ones. 'Why' you may well ask? The answer is funnily enough also a question... 'what else does one do on a Sunday night at 11:15?'

... Have to stop... step away from the computer... slowly...slowly...

Rotten to the Gore

This is a old one, I never felt happy with... reworked -or overworked- it a little more. Better colour on this than the original, I think and a more refined paint job.

To qoute Ralph Wiggum "Hoorah, I'm learnding!"

Walkies!

I seem to be drawing our dog –Jennie- a lot these days….

Yes, that’s a Yellow Raincoat she’s wearing along with a smile. The Rabbit is now, sadly, deceased.

Yada-yada-yada...

This is for a Mad article. I did each face separately and only viewed them together when I compiled this pic…interesting. Elaine was the hardest to ‘get’, not surprising really, women are always tricky to caricature.

Now I see things I want to change... but it's not worth it moneywise... the stuggle rages on...

Anyway, interesting thing I noticed: caricaturing several people closely associated with each other makes the whole process easier because the viewer has more clues to the identities of the subjects. Often though, you loose the destinct personalities and the 'feel' of the individual characters. So, that's why I did these each by themselves, with a day between each...

Spartlicus...the book...

I had the body drawn when I did the caricature, but no time to paint it up to the same level as the face, so I pulled out the old bag of tricks and five minutes later this popped out! Almost looks like this is what I intended all along...almost...

Sort of looks like a book cover.

He's Spartlicus!

Finally had some free time to go wander -and wonder- around under the trees, smell the flowers and feel the sunshine on my face. Instead I did this… strange.

Grenville

I've been busy on a character design project but alas, 3 NDA documents I had to sign says I am not allowed to post any of that stuff here or anywhere, really. In fact I am hardly allowed to even look at it myself.... Anyway doing that stuff made me want to do some more of my own character work again. This is Grenville, a character from one of our pet projects. I lifted the pose from a drawing I did a few years ago, why let any work go to waste right?

...CRASH!...

Yes, still fudging it...

Addo

New work! I've wanted to do something with Elephants for a long time, but could never figure out exactly where to take it to. In this image I played with the idea of the time when Elephant herds still roamed right up into the foothills around Table Mountain in South Africa. Today this would be the industrial area of Epping, not as nice as it used to be... Also with this painting I wanted to do something that could exist, instead of a completely made up world.

Mumu Land

I have been tweaking this one for a while now, it's still a little 'off' but it's time to move on to other things. The mountains to the right will be farmiliar to Capetonians. It's the Sentinel overlooking Hout Baai. Used to live there. Great place, long walks on the beach... ah yes...

Some filler stuff...

Busy on a huge animatic , so to fill time here is a older work sample. This one was for the Aussie Mad. John Howard and Peter Costello. Ended up being more trouble than it was worth...

Blame Al Gore...we have to blame someone...

Since I seem to be doing political type work all of a sudden, I thought this one might be the 'mot juste' at the moment. I think we can blame Mr. Gore for the global warming panic gripping us all, if he never piped up we would have remained blissfully unaware of how cool it is to worry about something we have no control over. Anyway, Old Al has a cool profile, as Harbringers of Doom go. Here is the initial drawing and the digital painting that followed.

Hils!

And then the muse swung weirdly the other way... I had to do some caricature stuff again. Here is Hilary Clinton. Interestingly, the way her neck runs down to the shoulders did lots to capture her likeness, usually that's not very important. Maybe because she has a short neck...

Revisited painting...

I did this one about three months ago, I finally have it at a point that I am reasonably happy with it... It's based on a book cover we did in 1993 called 'Insident van Stilte' -'Incident of Silence'. I always loved the idea but never felt we did the image justice, so I used my new bag of tricks to try it again, with much better results.

...and there it is...

Like I said in the previous post, there are many versions of this landscape. This is now the prefered version. It feels colder somehow. I also pushed back the horizon further, makes it all feel nicely isolated. I'll leave up the previous one for comparison. I suspect this one will change soon too...

At it again...

Still plugging away at it. I've wanted to do a 'snow-scape' for a while now, and finally found some time to work on it. Took about a hour and half, there are many versions of this one. This is the one I like today... can change anytime. I was happy that I got a chance to use refrence photo's from my trip to Vienna in this one... love the place.

And since the spirit was upon me...

The HOG with devine carpal tunnel creating the universe and Steve the Rat, whom we re-made to be the Million Dollar Rat... acts of random cruelty, both

Needed a hand...

This was begun about two years ago for a illustration assignment that got cancelled. I always wanted to finish it off and finally I got it done. Ah the joys of Photoshop. I am happy the tricky bits are not visible, but as always there are things that want to be fixed.

New new way to waste time...

This is one of my concept pieces for an idea I am playing with. Many happy hours wasted on these... Photoshop with some paint -the digital kind- here and there. Fun!

In the PINK!

Here are two Pinks, the initial drawing and a much more rendered painted version...

Bono and Waits

I did these a while ago. Kept tweaking them, but I think they are done now...maybe...

Playing with Obama

I wasn't going to finish this one, stopped working on the drawing for a while early on -about five minutes into it- and sort of gave up on it becuase I thought the likeness was a little off. But as often happens, the drawing sat on my desk, annoying the hell out of me! So I quickly finished it and now I am glad I did. Took about forty minutes all up, pen on paper -a rare thing now, I did add some Photoshop stuff...

Hitch!

Love the guy's work... This is an old one, did it a couple of years ago while I was still at Disney. I still like it today. That very rarely happens, usually I love something for about a day and then slowly grow to hate parts of it, if not the whole thing...

More...

And since I am adding some images tonight, here are some more...

Fun...