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!!