ON LOCATION!

For Christmas my parents bought me a great new watercolour field set for on-location mark-making! So, we stayed in cabin for a couple of days after Christmas and I carefully chose a prime spot to sit down and capture the joys of nature with my new gift. Below is the result... not bad for a first effort.

THE FOG!

Here's an original piece I did for the Black Christmas show opening at Q-Pop in downtown LA this weekend. The brief was to do a piece based on a popular horror film (not necessarily Christmas themed), I chose to do 'the Fog'.
My super-talented fellow doodler, Rikke Asbjorn also did a piece for the show. Be sure to check it out on her blog and buy it before somebody else does!

Above there's a photo of my piece on the drawing board, and below it's all framed up! It's Gouache and ink on Watercolour paper, and will be available to buy at the Q-Pop store or through their website.

PAW-TRAIT!

Our littlest cat turned one year old the other day, so I captured her youthful glory in portrait form.

SPIDEY!

Here's a piece I did for the Hero Tribute Project by DGPH in Argentina. It's a double tribute to the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Fella himself and comic artist, John Romita Sr.

GRRR!

Here is the cover (bottom of post) and a bunch of black and white illustrations from a children's book of poetry called GRRR! by James Carter and Graham Denton, published by Macmillan. Out next year!

I went a bit more nuts with the colours than I normally do, but it came out kind of fun! Below is a version of the art showing a behind the scenes peek at the rough edges that get cropped for the final cover artwork. It almost looks like I'm a real painter, rather than a conjurer of digital fakery!

  

Q-POP!!!

The Q-Pop Takusatsu exhibition opening took place last night in downtown LA. Here are some photos from the night and the two pieces I did for the show. Thanks to Chris Mitchell, Mikael and Miki for putting on such a great night.

The first one is called 'Kaijuniors', named after the Japanese Kaiju monsters.
16 3/4" x 12 3/4"
Ink, watercolour and gouache on pastel paper.

The next one is called 'Bugga Wugga Wugga'.

16 3/4" x 12 3/4" 

Ink, watercolour, gouache and acrylic on acrylic paper.

Here are some details of the two pieces. They're both available to buy through Q-Pop's website if they haven't sold already.

Q-POP EXHIBITION - SNEAK PEEK!

Here's a sneak peek of two original pieces I scribbled and pooped for the Tokusatsu Exhibition opening this weekend at Q-Pop in the Little Tokyo district of down town LA. The exhibition runs from September 15th to the 30th, with the opening party this Saturday at 7pm. There'll be bucket loads of great artwork on view and available to buy (I believe the artwork will also be available through the Q-Pop website). Come along and say 'ey up'! 

OUT FOR A STROLL!

NEW DOODLES!

Here are some black and white illustrations I did for a new book of poems called A Cat Called Elvis by Brian Moses.

TEACH YOUR MONSTER TO READ!!!

Here's a job I did towards the end of last year through my illustration agent, Arena for the Usborne Foundation in the UK. It's a bunch of concept designs for an online educational game to help kids to read using the principles of synthetic phonics.

I designed LOADS of monsters as the game allows you to have your own monster avatar and collect rewards/items/points for it as you successfully progress through the game. I also gave them a bunch of ideas for environments.

Unfortunately this job coincided with me moving to the US, so I couldn't follow the job through to completion, but they got the very talented Rich Wake to pick up where I left off and he did a fantastic job!

Check out the game here and also watch the little trailer they made to promote the game.

Congratulations to Antonio, Berbank and Jon for a brilliant job. And many thanks to Michelle at Arena for helping me through all the doodles!

All these images are copyright to the Usborne Foundation.

 Below are the environment designs. The first one is from the original prototype game, and the rest were produced once the project jumped into full production.
I only got a chance to colour up one of the finished BGs unfortunately, but Rich did an awesome job with the rest!