Another film star

Since I was in the mood and still inspired by the 1927 Picture Show Annual, I created another film star illustration using ink washes, drawing pens and gouache. Again, I really like the dramatic lighting and contrast and romantic poses too.

Here is the cover of the book itself for those interested.

Film stars

I bought a beautiful old 1927 film annual at the book fair last week and got inspired by all the dramatic sepia tone photographs. I love the poses and stark lighting effects. Here is the drawing I came up with last night using ink washes, gouache and drawing pens.

Along the same lines, I created the painting below a couple of years ago, acrylic on canvas of a 1940's film star.

Godzilla visits Parliament House

Here it is, the postcard you've always wanted to buy from the Parliament House gift shop, 'Godzilla visits Parliament House'. Todays challenge for the Comic Meetup for March was to draw Godzilla attacking any Canberra landmark of your choice. Here is my interpretation...

In pursuit of the ultimate cute baby illustration

For ages I've been attempting to create a cartoon version of a baby that actually looks cute... yes, I know, a weird pursuit but believe me, they're actually quite hard to draw and previous attempts have ended up looking like fat, cranky old men or seriously ugly looking sumo wrestlers. I created this one below using reference material from photos and catalogues and it seems to be getting there in terms of cuteness factor. I think it's all to do with the size of the eyes and how far apart they are (I could get into Hello Kitty philosophy here) and the chubbiness aspect. Hmmm, fascinating stuff! Let me know if you think this is a successful attempt or not and if you've also struggled to achieve ultimate cuteness in your own drawings (I'm sure there are some self help guidebooks out there somewhere).

Robot Reject

This is a little robot I created last week as a proposed image for a web graphic but he got rejected in favour of some clip art so thought I'd post him up here instead so he can get seen somewhere! He's a cheery little fella. I sketched him out first then scanned the drawing and used that as a template layer in Illustrator. I basically redrew him using bezier curve tools and shapes for solid colour areas.

Lady with cat drawing

Here is a drawing I pencil sketched at the Wig and Pen at the beginning of February during a Comics Meetup and finally decided to finish it off yesterday on a rainy afternoon. I just used a felt tip brush pen for the thicker outline strokes and added the details with a 0.1 felt tip. She could be some weird Bond villain otherwise just some chick with bizarre hair! It feels good to get some drawing happening again and hopefully I'll keep it up, even if it's just dodgy doodling whilst watching telly.

First post to Strawberry Sketches!

Here it is! Finally, I have set up a blog to post some of my drawings, paintings, comics and sketches. I've spent a good hour just fiddling about with the look of the blog which is pretty entertaining in itself. I haven't done anything too amazing but it's a start. Hopefully I can figure out how to drop in my own banner later down the track.

Currently I'm not working on anything creative besides a funky robot which John West rejected. I'll post that one up shortly. In the meantime, here is an illustration I completed last year as part of a competition to see Neil Gaiman at Graphic held in the Opera House, Sydney in August 2010. I won two free tickets which was pretty damn awesome! Shame they were dodgy seats up the back near fat smelly blokes who walked out 10 minutes into it but you don't win something everyday. Plus there's the adrenaline rush just trying to get the entry in on time. The entry had to feature Neil Gaiman so I went for the indy comic approach ...

For those interested in the execution, the illustration was drawn by hand using paint brush, black ink and fine felt tip drawing pens. I scanned it at high res as a bitmap tiff, dropped it into InDesign and added the colour using three pantones and bezier curve tools with layers.

By the way, what's with the name of the blog? Well, I've always loved eating strawberries and I also love sketching. Put the two together and you get 'Strawberry Sketches'. It helps too that the title wasn't taken, gotta try to be original these days and that's a challenge. Catch you soon with more pictures.