Postcards!

I'm slowly getting prints and other bits n pieces together for Chromacon, here are the postcards I ordered, just arrived today. Although the photo of the back is a little obscured by the flash, but if you look closely you'll see that I put a website address at the bottom, exciting stuff! Although it's not ready yet so don't go there yet.

Going potty

In the British sense, not the American one. You may recognise these plants from my Wooly Bully paintings, I'm resurrecting them, you see I really want to get some fabric printed, maybe with this design and the other one, the potted plants, pears and pineapples print I did a couple of months back. Just searching round for places to get them printed.

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Seed Gallery invited me to be part of their upcoming Alphabet exhibition. To match the W I decided to base the work on the word 'wanderer' and then lo and behold it turned out all wild west-ish, albeit a funny alien wild west.
There are 26 artists in the show and Seed is producing a pack of alphabet cards from the show and the original works will be for sale too. The exhibition opens on the 25th of June, more about it here.

Cabin in the woods...

This painting is for my submission to the Chromacon art book, inspired by Swedish Falu cottages. I'm really pleased with curtains and the colour palette. Might get some prints of it made to sell at Chromacon, less than 2 weeks to go! Also if you want a copy of the art book or just to support the festival you can do so here.

Sketchbook page

Back on the pineapple-gators

4 seasons in 40 something days

Spring

 Summer

Autumn

Winter

These are the final four illustrations for the project I've been working on. I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to show off the final designs with fonts and all yet so I'll keep em under my hat. 

I've just noticed I have a tendency to put headless ladies at the top and legless men at the bottom, hmmm.

Busy little bouquet

Just an evening sketch, still using up my extra gouache from my Diverse City paintings. Fun to do something a little more folky.

Moist

Well the drought has broken and now all manner of mysterious mushrooms have been popping up, the weirdest was a sprinkling of small pale shrooms the size of lawn daisies which were all through the garden but then had disappeared an hour or two later.
This painting is a couple of months old but I thought it appropriate to post considering that there is currently grass poking through our deck and the aforementioned mystery mushrooms.

Quiet time

I'm trawling over new and old images of mine to make into prints for Chromacon. This new one is a reworking of this sketch from last year. Not sure yet whether to do it as a postcard or print....

Any suggestions of my old works to turn into postcards or prints would be greatly appreciated! 

Morning sketch

Today's lil sketch was a self portrait, done while listening to mine and Nigel's radio show(!). New heights of narcissism?
Done from my head and not from my reflection. Got my glasses all wrong cos I had to take them off to look at them then wasn't wearing them when I painted them on. Now that it's getting colder I will have a permanent red nose and warm ugly sweater until at least October

Dailies

My Zombie Resume is still going strong, it's in this awesome comics anthology. Looking forward to seeing it on lovely newsprint! The Auckland launch is at The Audio Foundation on the 20th of April with a bunch of bands, starts at 6.30. More info here

Good morning

I'm trying to loosen up my work, this lil' morning sketch was laid down in paint first (no preliminary pencil sketching, eeek!), with no idea of what it was going to be before I started. The colours are left overs from some recent paintings.

Gratuitous cat sketch

Winter!

Here's my winter painting for the set of illustrations I'm working on.  We don't get snow here, only wind and rain. The colours are sort of ugly, not sure if they are good ugly or bad ugly though. My favourites from this one are the stressed mum and downcast granny. Also I wish I had that orange and black jacket in the top right hand corner.

Here it is in progress, I've been keeping cling film over my wet gouache, it dries out so quickly in this heat.

Autumn in Aukland (geddit?)

Here's my autumn scene,  it's going to have text on it because it's the cover of a publication but this is the final image done (although not properly scanned - damn blurry edges). Click on it to see it proper sized.
I'm having a love affair with gouache.

Sneak peek

Here's a quick look at a commission I'm in the middle of, it's hard to paint wintry scenes in the midst of a glorious summer drought. It's so hot I have to sit on a towel to stop from sticking to my chair!

- Actually this is now the autumn scene, winter is still to come...

Wedding beer!

Here's the beer labels in the flesh, on the rambunctious yet delicious wedding homebrew. I feel like I should have made them slightly wider to account for the curve in the bottle, but oh well. They were very well received anyway. Photo courtesy of the lovely Alyson Eberle

Variations on a theme

Har har. I thought this was pretty funny last night. Fucking bananas!

Chromacon!

I will be having a stall at Chromacon, a new expo for illustrators and comic artists, looks exciting! The event is on Sunday the 12th of May, I'll be there with printed tote bags, more prints and other odds and sods. Come for a visit, it's free for the public!

I spy something beginning with p

A simple little repeating pattern I made based on some sketchbook doodles. Potted plants, pineapples, pears and a couple of stray leaves. I like the combination of smooth and spiky shapes.