Day at the Zoo

The other week my boyfriend was in town, we did lots of fun things like going to some galleries and seeing the Star Wars exhibition at Scienceworks. Yes, we’re both big nerds! We also went to the zoo. One of the highlights of that day was seeing a duck swimming innocently in the tiger’s enclosure, then moments later being snapped up, plucked and eaten for lunch. Well, I suppose ‘highlight’ is not quite the right word (sorry, duck!), but it was pretty exciting.


Being the lovely guy that he is, Leigh anticipated that the duck would get eaten so he took a ‘before’ shot. At this time, the tiger was not out on display yet, but was about to come out.


The bird was swimming in the water when the tiger came back out, and within seconds the tiger leapt into the water, splashed around and snapped up the helpless thing. Well, that’s what you get for swimming in the tiger pen! We asked the zookeeper if this sort of thing happened often and she said pretty much any bird that goes in there has a slim chance of making it out alive. They even catch and eat peacocks that go into their enclosure.



The tiger is a young male Sumatran tiger.


We went on to my favourite part of the zoo… the bears, of course! This beautiful fella was lying right next to the glass. He was huge, but looked so soft and cuddly. He would occasionally lift his foot up and press against the wall.


Look at that smile! He must have been having some beary nice dreams. *chuckle*


I’ve never been up so close to get a good view of a bear’s paw. It was huge! I love the little tufts of fur inbetween the padded bits. And check out those claws!


And here we are all tuckered out after our zoo trip! We have more photos, but the tiger and bear ones were my favourites. Only a few days ago I got another free zoo pass, so I will probably go again very soon and take my sketchbook with me.

Numbers, croc teeth and one lovely lady

WHEW! Busy busy busy busy busy. All of these are Photoshop, with the exception of the lady, who was painted with gouache on pastel paper.

Illustre was great! So much wonderful work. I met some really awesome illustrators and designers from NMIT and met some people from the industry too. I even managed to sell a few pieces and win an award! Wooohoo!!

Best of all though, I met someone who was very interested in my work. And I am going to see them on Tuesday and show them my portfolio. So I am very excited and super nervous as well, but it's so cool. I am one very happy illustrator right now!!

Will post more soon, but for now, back to work!

FIVE!

Brought to you by the number 5! Hoo-rah! The giraffe has 5 spots, and he is eating 5 leaves.

My beary good friend

Uh oh! Better keep out of this angry bull's way.... I drew him to go with my happiness bear. I'm also going to do a pelican and a wolf.





Also, I'm doing a series of black and white ink drawings for my portfolio.

The theme I chose for the first few drawings is a story about a boy who wants a pet- but he doesn't want a boring cat or an annoying yappy dog. He wants something FEROCIOUS - a lion, or a tiger, or a crocodile....

One day while on his lengthy walk home, he finds a bear. Next to the bear is a sign saying 'freE BEaR'. Could he have finally gotten his wish...??

Alice and the Gryphon and the Mockturtle

Quick update, finished a painting last week, I decided I wanted to do a scene from Alice in Wonderland, of two slightly underappreciated characters as well. Sorry the colour scan is pretty terrible, I need to get onto getting a better scanner or something Ugh!





I also did this bear, who stands proudly on the front of my new business cards, which I should be recieving tomorrow. Hoo-rah!




I'm also updating my links to the right. More artists!

How does a tiger brush his teeth?

We have an awesome little project at school that I've been scheming and planning for kind of slowly. It's an artist book and we have free reign over everything, pretty much. I want my book to be a fun and playful exploration of images, type and colour, and I want it to be chock-full of animals of course!

So here's a peak at one of the pages I've finished today. How DOES a tiger brush his teeth? I'm not really sure but it seemed something interesting enough to make into a cute picture.




And here's a close up of the tiger. I'm quite proud of him! Rawr!

Ferret Boy

Whew! I haven't updated in a while, have I? I've been so very busy and a lot of stuff has happened. Some good, some bad, but yeah. Here are some drawings, paintings and sketches from a recent assignment I completed. Ferrets are ridunkulously adorable.

Zebracorn

Fun little image I'm doing for a series of little promotional cards. I was originally going to paint it but, for some reason I ended up doing it in Photoshop instead. I think I've been agonising way too much over these pieces and want to get them out of the way quickly.

I showed this to a friend who liked it, but mentioned that the girl's pants blended in a bit much and were hard to make out. So I did a little bit of a colour change and the difference is huge!



Looks a lot better I think!

I uploaded the colour rough before, but just thought I'd show it again.

Boa Lady

I am thinking I'd like to jazz up my website a bit. Maybe with a bit of artwork for the title of each page. This lady is an idea for one such artwork, inspired by the Dr Sketchy's session I went to last week.

Some things!

Been busy lately but here's a few rough thingies I've slowly been working on, some assignments and commissions.