Monster #1

The first monster for our monster design assignment, which is also an actual competition. This is a 'Nose Ghoul'. They're really tiny and like to do mischievious things with super glue... There's another image of these guys in the works as well.

Bearprints Type

Playing around with some type ideas for my website Bearprints.com.au. I'm having fun playing around with typography! Anyway, I wanted a fun, hand-done look for my site and business cards, and I also wanted to incorperate the bear print somewhere in there. At first it was going to be some background element but I decided it'd be better if it was actually on one of the letters.

Vaudeville 1914 huzzah!

Yay I finally did it, the vaudeville project! This is about 11x16inches, acrylic and ink on illustration board. This is really inspired by a lot of the work seen on Cartoon Retro, mainly the old style comics and pinup illustrations. The ukelele looks a bit wierd to me but other than that I am pleased with the result! Yay!

Business bear and tiger man!

Whew, home at last after a fairly productive day at Tafe, I would say... this happy bear is going to make his home on the front of my business card! I have heaps of fun making this and by the time I had finished, my headache had gone away!


And these are some concepts for a drawing piece. It's looking a little bit too 'Disney' for my liking at the moment but it's getting there.

Vaudeville 1914, take 2

I'm a horrible sketcher, I know- my sketches are always so dirty and unpolished! I also need to work on drawing hands. But anyway, these are two explorations for my revamped Vaudeville illustration. The other ideas that I had were not very good; they were a bit crude and probably a bit offensive and inappropriate. I've been having a tough time with this project unfortunately and it's been wearing me down a bit.

Instead I wanted something a bit classier and more suited for a general magazine or paper. I wanted to combine some elements of Vaudeville - performance, music, a cute girl in a skimpy yet dazzling outfit, and for some reason, a tiger (dead or alive). I opted for the first sketch here since tigers don't really have much to do with Vaudevillian entertainment, though I'm sure they'd jump at the chance to star in a show or two.

Is it Friday yet??

I am glad, that after a miserable morning of being too self-critical and all that, I was able to end the day with a picture that I like. It may not appeal to everybody, it might be too simple for some people's tastes... oh well. I enjoyed working on this a lot. That's what matters, right?

Actually, it seems like the cub looks like it is in a different style to the mother. I might change that tomorrow.

I might use it for a business card, or a postcard or something... seems to work well with 'Bearprints'.

Monster practice

One of our new assignments at school is designing and illustrating 3 monsters for a competition, which we will actually submit and hope to win! The prize is pretty awesome: 10 thousand bucks, and the opportunity to illustrate an entire book and design about 70 monsters for it. And it will be published all around the world!! The 3 monsters we have to do are basically 1) a tiny vampire 2) a long legged pig and 3) a duck with boots! The brief has much more information on each monster. The book is a whole 'manual' about all different types of monsters.


I keep playing around with style. A little while ago I did the image that is over on the right- the bookish owl, and I loved it. But I still don't think that is the style for me- I want to be a bit more illustrative and use more line in my work. So here I am again, experimenting... trying to find something right for me. I'll find it soon! I just have to keep drawing.

Jungle Girl

Eh, not much to say about this one... except that her legs look a bit funny to me. Oops..

Beasties of the Night

Every time I visit ConceptArt.org I feel really inspired by the incredible visionary work of the pro's working in the game industry. It's a great place to kill a few hours looking at all of the amazing work there. Tonight was one of those nights and after a while of browsing, I wanted to sketch some fantasy beasties! Now this is the type of stuff I would draw when I was 16-17. I'm not sure if I really have it in me to draw things like this all the time now, but it's fun to go back to where I started out sometimes.

It also shows how much I have improved in the last year or so, even though I've mostly been doing graphic/cartoony looking work. This was so fun though that I might come back to it a lot more!

Black bear, black bear

I sketched this cute little guy and decided he deserved some colours. With this one I tried to keep it as simple as possible - large shapes defining the form of the character, simple background, bold colours. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.


And here's a polar bear! I may add some colours to him aswell.

Tiger on the loose!

Just a little bit of sketching before hitting the sack! I might colour this kitty up tomorrow, depending on whether I decide I like his face or not - I feel like I could abstract it a bit more to make it a little more interesting. Since doing the owl yesterday I have felt like I'm really onto something cool. I just have to keep working at it!

Oh yeah, I got around to jazzing up the layout today, I think it looks pretty groovy. Next up is my portfolio website, Bearprints.com.au - but still a ways to go on that one yet.

The Bookish Owl makeover

Well, I think I've had the most productive day in a while today! For once I put the computer games away and forced myself to sit down and do some work for my portfolio. One thing I made was this bookish owl, who will be a part of this blog's new design! Hopefully I'll be able to get it up tomorrow. I'm very proud of this one - for once, out of all the pieces I have archived on my computer, I can point at this one and say, 'yes, that's my style, that's what I do'.


Earlier this morning I completed this one. I think the lineart on the tiger may be a little overdone but overall I quite like it. I was going for a silkscreened look wth parts of it, and you might be able to see the parts where I have coloured outside of the outlines where the registration is off. I don't think this bear is all too thrilled by the tiger's attempt to gain his attention, but maybe he'll warm up to it sometime ;)

Blake's Bear

A while ago I was asked by a friend's partner if I could do a commissioned painting for their nursery room, in time for the birth of their baby. I had a lot of freedom - they wanted something to go with their teddy bear theme, and something unique and in my style. So to start I drew them a bunch of bears and they picked out the ones they liked. They were very fond of the bear playing with blocks, so I drew that one out again and did a few colour roughs for them to choose from.









After we worked out some colours that we liked, I set up my painting stuff and began! Here's some progress shots of the painting, and the final is at the bottom. They were very happy with it, and they've gotten a few comments about it apparently. I was certainly happy with how it turned out, I would say it's my best painting to date!!