Red Head Warrior

this was created for the Deviant Art Childrens Illustrators club monthly theme of Red Head.

this was pen and ink with digital colours

Merry Christmas

Magazine illustrations

Here are a couple of illustrations for the Coast Kids Magazine.

one for an article on "Men in Childcare" and the other for "Mums in Business".

Peter Pan

this was created for the Children's illustrators club on Deviant Art.

the monthly theme for November was Peter Pan.

I used pencil and paper to sketch then a brush pen to ink followed by digital colors.

I had a Birthday on the weekend and my 12 year old son Talin made me a special birthday card.

I just had to share what a great job he did on the card and how lucky a Dad I am that he would go to so much effort.

I had a great day and received many nice cards and gifts, it was nice to be spoilt for the day.

Rats

I've been busy with some other illustrations and now have some spare time for goofing around just for fun.

Dragon sketch

here is an unused Dragon sketch from a few months ago it was for a book pitch I unfortunately didn't get. was a fun idea and would have been nice to do but thems the breaks. you can't get everything you want.

just playing around

I was just playing around with background textures in photoshop just having a bit of goofing around time. and this is the result.

some recent childrens book samples- Meg

The elusive Illustrator

Proving to be as elusive as Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster. Rarely seen outside his natural habitat.
Finally, proof that the illustrator Craig Phillips does exist.


Marcelo Baez, Craig Phillips and I got together in a local Wollongong Vietnamese restaurant for lunch and a chat about comics, illustration and one of life's great mysteries the shortcut keys in photoshop.
It was good to catch up with the guys face to face again and hopefully it wont be as far between untill the next meet up.

Marcelo and Craig, very casual.

Craig and I

Spot illustrations

Here are a few spot illustrations that were published in the May /June issue of Coast Kids Magazine.

Ghost boy

this illustration was created for the Deviant art illustrators club site which this months challenge topic was Ghosts.

I really wanted to try and get away from the usual guy in a sheet, spooky ghost yelling boo and inject some sort of feeling or emotion into the image.

not sure if I succeeded but I did try.

Karate Kids

here is an illustration for an article on martial arts for kids in the July/August issue of CoastKids Magazine.

the monster

watched the old 1930 black and white Frankenstein again. It's still a classic. felt like doing a sketch and ended up coloring it.

the background texture is from a photo of some rocks I took down the local beach.

was a quick color job didn't want to spend too much time on it, it was just for fun.

more monsters

just because it was fun. Fish man Says Blurrrb!

Scary ?

here is a bit of fun
A quick sketch with a brush pen and felt tip markers, colored in photoshop.

todays thought

"overnight success takes years of hard work"

CBCA Literary Lunch

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be involved with the Childrens Book Council of Australia's Literary lunch.
The CBCA organised for school groups to come along and have a day with a wide selection of childrens Authors and Illustrators. Dave Hackett also known as Cartoon Dave was the special guest and he presented a 45 minute cartoon workshop that had the kids enthralled and doodling cartoons madly.

I was lucky enough to be a table host and had Dave Hackett as well as a group from Mt Keira public school who were a very well behaved, well manered, charming young girls who had a great time getting Cartoon Dave to sketch crazy cartoons for them.
Dave Hackett did a great job on the day and after spending some time chatting and observing I can see that he has a genuine gift in entertaining a room full of kids and making cartooning easy and fun. He is also a really nice guy and it was a pleasure to be able to meet him in person.

I would have to say a big thank you to Di Bates president of the local CBCA and organiser of this event who invited me to participate in the day It was great to be involved.

The Amazing Tim Sale

This is me on the right meeting one of my favourite artist's the Amazing Tim Sale at the 2009 Sydney Supanova comic convention. What a great day it was.

Tim sale is artist of so many great comic book such as Batman long Halloween, Batman Dark Victory, Superman for all seasons, Spiderman Blue, Hulk Grey to just name a few.

Tim is also the artist for the TV show Heroes. So when you see one of the shows characters produce a painting or a sketch that's Tim Sale's artwork.

Tim was very friendly and graciously posed for photo's and signed my copy of the Tim Sale black and white hardcover book of sketches and artwork.

I was lucky to get in early Saturday morning and Tim's booth was very quiet and my two sons and I had a chance to talk and get photos with out to much hassle.

My most treasured Art book, Tim Sale Black and White,

revised and expanded Hardcover edition

this is me looking on, very much star struck to be meeting an artist whose work is so inspirational

this is the page that Tim Sale signed for me, Awesome.

Sydney SuperNova 2009

I had a great time at the Sydney SuperNova and it was great to be able to meet with so many other artists and just talk shop.

this is Cefn Ridout, Marcelo Baez Creator/Artist of the Diabla comics, Colin Wilson comic artist whose latest work for dark horse will be out just about now called Star Wars Invasion and that's me Me on the end.

this is Me on the left with Tim McEwen. Tim is such a nice guy and it's always good to catch up at the conventions.

A Little bit of Zort

Zort the stage show every little kids dream.
felt tip pens with digital colors.

Secret Garden

Another illustration for the Deviant Art childrens Illustrators club monthly challenge titled the Hidden Garden.

this was pen and ink with digital color.

Satyr's are fun

I had a good time working on this illustration for the Children's illustrators club on Deviant Art.

the theme was " On the Roof " and this is what I felt like Drawing.

I had a hard time coming to terms with what colors to use and it was a small battle to feel like I had the right tones but eventually you know when it feels right. other wise you can tweak it Ad- infinitum and just go around in circles. sometimes it is best to go with your gut and listen to your instincts.

not that I am saying this is perfect, far from it but there are some things I learned on this illustration that I will definately use on one of my next. and to me that's Art, a learning curve of self improvement and exsploration. Always trying to get a little closer to the image thats in your head.

BackYard Buddies

It's been a while since I last posted and thought I should add something before the end of the month. So here are some illustrations that were used for an article in the Coast Kids Magazine on Back Yard Buddies.

just fooling around

I just felt like playing around with color and different brush textures. these quick character sketches are always good for that, they are expendable no need to feel precious with them.

Painter Pete's Pocket money Perspiration

It' about time I posted some new work. Been busy the last few days working on this series of illustrations as samples for the childrens book market.

Photoshop brushes

I was just playing around with some new photoshop brushes from Brusheezy web site.

they are a heap of different brushes. I tried the angry painter 2 and came up with this back ground for this angry old woman cartoon.

Cracked Jack book cover Dummy

this is a dummy book cover for Cracked Jack and the Nautical Nightmare Race.

take a look at the full image with title lettering here. Cracked Jack Book Cover

Happy Easter

watercolor playtime

I am trying out the watercolors again it has been a while. I have been wanting to experiment with them and see what I can come up with. I sketched the boy using a waterproof brush pen and then just hit it with the watercolor paint

I need to use better paper for a start this was just a rough go at it so I just used a piece of regular copy paper. I now know that heavier paper bleeds better and I would have gotten a more interesting result. but this is step one and it was fun to use a real brush and push the wet paint on the page instead of painting digital.

will try some more again soon

Bob Trimbole

Here is a painted sketch of Bob Trimbole played by Roy Billing in the latest Underbelly TV mini series

youtube Art song

you can only be inspired after listening to this beautiful song

sketches

Here are some more practise sketches using a brush pen then digitally colored

Faces Sketches

here are a few sketches of faces just playing around with shapes and colour as well as brush pen markers versus regular markers.

Some More Sketches

Here are some more sketches using a Blue Biro Pen.

Biro pen sketches

these are some sketches or doodles with a blue pen just for fun. It was interesting to realize that using a pen, that I was more conscious of the lines before I put them down as I couldn't rub them out. But it was fun as I just treated them as doodles and wasn't fussy as to what I drew. It is interesting to see what appears on the page when there is no real intent or preconceived objectives.

Superman quick sketch

Here is a quick sketch of Superman which was inked with felt tip markers, trying to stay Loose. I will have to work on being free with the inking. this one still feels a little stiff but was fun to do. All up it took about 40 minutes to pencil and Ink.