No Alien.

Above is my current desktop background. It's a beautiful thing. I quickly scribbled it out and created it in a few minutes while waiting to be picked up from work. It's 1680x1050 if you want to use it as well - I know you do.

Not much has been happening lately and the lack of warmth in the air has caused me to play Xbox rather than do anything productive. I might have to start posting up more older images to insure the blog remains 'fresh'.

Or I could keep posting up more dumb pictures like this?

Dirty.

A Start.

This, my friends, is the start of something very very ... new (ish).

It's not going to be amazing, but it'll be finished in a few days. And that's good enough for me.

Enjoy.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing ... that's what I've been posting up for the last few weeks.

Been a bit busy lately (as per) and haven't really found the urge to do any new stuff. Hopefully something will spark my imagination soon and get me drawing.

May As Well.

And there goes May. That didn't seem to last very long.

Haven't updated in a while due to being a bit busy on the house. Hopefully I'll have some new work up here soon. In the mean time here's something a bit different. It's the inside of a CD booklet I designed for my friend Matt Shepherd and his album Still Small Voice.

Randomly the name 'Robert' is visible on the newspaper in the background. I didn't even realise till after it was finished.

I think it's a nice image to welcome in the cold month of June.

Suburban Poetry.

There's something about comics that fascinates me. I love the way illustration, design and narrative come together in a single piece of art. Unfortunately most comics (including a lot of graphic novels) are total rubbish, aimed at teenage boys interested in very simple plots about super heroes and evil villains. I'd love to see a greater variety of graphic novels, telling more complex tales about 'real' people and that use the medium in a way that shows it's true potential as a story telling device.

This brings me to this particular piece of work. It's a single page from what was going to be my attempt at producing another graphic novel (other than the one I completed as an assignment for Uni). However my lack of ability to write or focus on a single thing for more than 5 minutes, never saw it completed.

I came across it recently and have since coloured it up so as to give it a more completed state. For some reason I quite like the end result. It's not as 'finished' as a lot of my other stuff and kind of has a 'cut and paste' feel to it. However I may wake up tomorrow and have a different opinion.

And that's my biggest post so far - man, what a big mouth I am today.

A Bit of Old Skool.

Here's something a little different (ish). This is a painting I did a couple of years ago. The outline of the figure was printed onto clear plastic. I then painted the colour on the reverse and placed it over the painted background. Pretty simple stuff with a pretty ok result. You don't really see it here, but having the background from the foreground gives the final image a unique 3D feel.

This was going to be the start of some paintings I had planned ... but they never ended up being done. Traditional painting scares me a little, there's no 'undo' and 'layers' like in Photoshop, but I do plan to get back into it in the near future. When I do I'll be sure to post some up.

Anyway, I've got something else up sleeve at the mo', so the next post shouldn't be too far away.

Grrrr PaNG.

At the end of this week my good friend Sue Pang will be leaving New Zealand and heading off on an exciting adventure to never never land. Sue is an unbelievably angry Asian girl who has threatened to consume my house (and cats) on numerous occasions. Although I will miss her, I'm sure New Zealand will feel like a much happier place with out her.

This illustration was mostly created in Illustrator and then finished in Photoshop for the added texture.

And before anyone says anything, I know the text is Japanese and I know Sue isn't Japanese. It just looks cool and reminds me of 5th form ... and it was late and I couldn't be bothered finding some Chinese text to copy. I'll try and fix this when I've got a bit more time.

Goodbye April.

To farewell this lovely month I thought I'd post up another old piece of work and ponder the question "Is 'goodbye' actually one word?".

This piece was probably created about 3-4 years ago for my "Ammunition" website. Ammunition was the name of the small business I started back when I was contracting (thankfully that old life of mine is now dead and buried). It's one of my better old pieces. I like the way both photographic and hand drawn images blend well together.

On another note, I only just realised commenting on here has been restricted. However, I've now changed this so all you freaks and weirdos out there can abuse me as well. Top notch.

Righting the Wrongs.

I have just now updated the 'Hornet' illustration and given it the much preferred pink background, which it should have had all along. Originally I chose against it because pink had featured earlier and I didn't want to seem like a 'one trick pony'.

It was a foolish mistake.

Robots With Guns.

If there's anything Ashley Wood has taught us over the years, it's that robots with guns are cool.

This little illustration was a result of extremely long processing times at work (see earlier blog). I quickly coloured it up at home and got this. I'm pretty happy with it. Nice strong lines, the colours seem to work well together and the shading isn't over worked.

The Hornet.

Finally another post with some new work. This was supposed to be a real quick illustration but instead it took ages, has been over worked and looks far too static because of it. Nowhere near as loose as I'd like. The final details were rushed too. Oh well, the Earth's still spinning, life goes on and more drawings await.

Oh, this was also done without any scanner business. Good one.

Digging Up the Past.

I haven't posted anything for a little while so I thought I'd sort through some old files and post a few examples of previous work. The above is a mixture of old work created for both University and real life clients (yes, including McDonalds - but no matter what you think I still have a soul). Like I mentioned before, my usual style is often quite tight and controlled - I'm constantly trying to break away from this.

I'll have something new soon ... just gotta finish painting the lounge first.

The Blue Bar.

While I've become a huge fan of Macs over the years I'm very much not a fan of my very lame G4 at work. I have spent far too many frustrating hours sitting and watching the blue bar extend during rather dull loading and saving times. However, the upside is, during these times I get to waste company stationary drawing stupid things. Above is a collection of a few random pages from my note pad.

Lets hope 'The Man' sorts himself out soon and hooks us up with the new Macs we've been asking for (note: I said Macs - not PCs).

Testing 123.

Alright, here's something I've been working on these last 2 nights. Again I didn't use my new scanner at all (the only thing I've used it for so far is as an excuse). The whole thing was pretty much illustrated using just my Wacom tablet - which I've never really done before. This is also probably a lot looser than I'm used to working, so it's been quite experimental. It's not perfect but again, I'm pretty happy with the result considering all things.

I might post up some older stuff soon, so you have some idea as to where I'm coming from.

Pretty Things.

Finally, my first post with some images, and I didn't even use my scanner to make them (which is now working, by the way).

These were created for a friend at work, her younger brothers were having birthday parties and they both needed some cool invites made up. The concepts aren't entirely orginal, but for only a few hours work I'm pretty happy with the results. And I got a nice thank you letter and some cake for payment too - sweet!

Still Alive.

.. but still no art. However I've now ordered a USB cable for my scanner so once that's here (and I've installed it) I'll post something of interest up.

Honest.

Day 01.

Welcome to the first post on my newly created 'blog'. How wonderful. At the moment I have no interesting work and my scanner isn't installed so this will have to be a text only post.

I plan to use this site to post random illustrations created in my free time, these will hopefully interest someone out there. I may also at times use it to share my opinions and thoughts, but I'll try to keep this to a minimum in the fear of appearing far too emotional and unstable.

Anyway, hopefully you'll hear from me soon(ish).